Tom Bedard’s 8 Axioms of Play
Tom Bedard, M.Ed., has worked in the field of early childhood education in Minnesota for over 40 years, teaching thousands of children from infants to preschoolers, and representing diverse backgrounds and abilities. Guidecraft has long admired his expertise and continuing exploration of sensory play as a gateway to better understand children’s curiosity and competence in all areas of development.
As a lifelong promoter and analyst of play, Tom has observed that there are 8 axioms which children will naturally explore and test during their sensory playtime. Throughout his tenure as a teacher, he built many multifaceted sensory tables for his classrooms, in order to offer unlimited sensory play opportunities and various ways for his students to test and express every axiom of play. When it came time to build our own Sensory System, Guidecraft turned to Tom who guided our designers to include as many features as possible to provide these important opportunities for sensory play.
Studies show that when all of these opportunities are offered and a child is allowed to fully explore sensory play, they become self-starters, develop fine and gross motor skills, learn to test cause and effect, begin to understand the basics of physics and exercise their inventiveness and creativity.
To understand children's innate play patterns, Tom describes 8 axioms that every child will engage in during play.
Messy fun using a handmade sensory table from Tom Bedard's blog
Axiom 1: Children need to transport whatever is in the table out of the table. During the transporting, children will spill.
Axiom 2: Children will explore all spaces in any given apparatus no matter how big or small. More space equals more exploration.
Axiom 3: Children will find all the different levels of play for any given apparatus. Children will use all levels of play including the highest and lowest – which includes the floor.
Axiom 4: Children are naturally drawn towards pouring, rolling or sliding materials and objects down ramps, chutes and tubes
Axiom 5: Children are compelled by nature to put things in holes. Children will find every hole in and around an apparatus no matter how big or small.
Axiom 6: Children will try to stop or redirect the flow of any medium in the tables for any given apparatus. Whenever possible children will try to completely block the flow of any medium.
Axiom 7: Children will always devise new and novel activities and explorations with the materials present that are tangential to the apparatus itself.
