Affordances of Clay at the Clay Topos

The “Clay Topos” is a playroom in a nursery school (Takahashi Chuo Hoikuen, Japan) where children can be surrounded by and play with up to 0.8 tons of high-quality soil clay used by artists. The Clay Topos has been conceived and realized by a Japanese sculptor Hideki Maeshima. In this collection of videos, a group of children played freely in the Clay Topos, where the structure of spontaneous activity of children and the nature of the forces that cause structuring of activities can be observed. In the first session, 11 children (from 16 to 26 month-old. Group 1) were invited in the Clay Topos for the first time to play freely for 35 minutes. Caregivers of the nursery school were present and interacted naturally with children. 3 roughly square-shaped lumps of soil clay (about 90 x 90 cm, 15-cm thick, with uneven surfaces) were placed in a row on the floor about 70 cm apart from each other. In the second session, the behavior of the same children in the same Clay Topos was recorded 5 months after the first session. Between the first and second session, these children had played in the Clay Topos for several times. Third set of recordings show the behavior of different children from different age group (29 to 38 month-old. Group 2) when they were invited for the first time in the Clay Topos. All sessions were recorded with 4 video cameras simultaneously from multiple perspectives so that it is possible to follow the behavior of each child wherever they move in the room.