As adults we get locked into modal thinking - breaking those modes is not something we (usually) do naturally. As children those modes aren't so deeply grooved

As adults we get locked into modal thinking - breaking those modes is not something we (usually) do naturally. As children those modes aren't so deeply grooved so coming up with arbitrary models of the world makes for a lot of eye-opening exploratory activity. I recently went to an exhibit on the Reggio Emilia approach (famous for pioneering this method 70 years ago) and one of the videos on display was an activity involving the children drawing sound [1] - I hadn't thought to look at the world this way but for these kids (and a bit of guided prompting) it came very naturally. Things like painting the sound of water rushing over stones[2] - at first glance don't parse - but if you tilt your head a bit you can 'see' it. [1] http://www.acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/proceedings/papers/hDilkes.pdf http://www.acousticecologyaustralia.org/symposium2003/procee... [2] http://imgur.com/a/RAOmy http://imgur.com/a/RAOmy