The many languages of friendship

The many languages of friendship
Laura Magnavacchi / Deb Wilenski

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The many languages of friendship
A year in the three year olds’ Atelier
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Contents
1 / My daddy, my fish, my sister
2 / Fish are my friends
3 / I am my best friend
4 / Look how lovely is my friend the duck
5 / We tell stories because stories are friends
6 / I need to sort out all the languages
7 / I have got a story in my hands
8 / My baby is scared of the snake
9 / The snake is someone’s best friend
10 / I was the snake
11 / The forest speaks a different language
12 / The tower of the beauty of the countries of the world
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1 / My daddy, my fish, my sister
When we called our year-long focus The Many Languages of Friendship we knew what
some of these languages would be. We anticipated that friends would be closely connected
through proximity, visual contact, gestures of affection and physical play. We also expected
friendships to form through fantasy play; children often meet each other most intuitively
and easily in stories and imagined worlds. We wondered whether children’s collaborations
in project work could be seen as friendships and what we would learn if we considered
them this way. And we anticipated that friendship in all its forms would be important to
children, that it would be a subject about which they would have significant things to say.
Extraordinary Friendships was a project that began early in our focus year, in the three
year olds’ Atelier. It was extraordinary for many reasons and opened our eyes to young
children’s fundamental beliefs about themselves and the world around them. But it began
with an unexpected connection, a sad silent friendship between pet fish in a tank and a
child who only days before had been part of a circle of close friends.
This book tells the story of how from one extraordinary relationship many more grew
and how children explored friendship by creating a series of characters and stories that
recognised friendship’s opposites; loneliness, abandonment, the possibility of having no
friends.
The subtle mechanisms of these narratives surprised us. Although the characters
were often alone, the children’s relationships with them were defined by empathy,
companionship and love. Whether their friends were present or absent, real or imagined,
drawn, found, human or animal, the children brought them into their daily lives and found
ways to communicate with them.
We began to realise that three year old children were making a radical proposal: that
nothing in the world is truly alone, there are words and significant stories in many
languages, nobody exists beyond the reach of friendship.
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‘You know,
people
sometimes
speak
different
languages,
but they
can still
be friends.’
Albie

2 / Fish are my friends
At certain times of year children across the nursery move into new spaces. Although these
transitions are made gradually and supported by experienced educators, the social changes
they bring can be difficult for some children. In September 2016, Lilian came into our three
year olds’ section with a group of familiar friends, but there was a noticeable change in her
mood. She was often subdued and sometimes tearful. She found little consolation with her
friends but eventually found a solution for herself, a new routine, which was to stand next
to the Atelier fish tank, observing these slow creatures moving silently in the water.
Laura Magnavacchi, Atelierista in this part of the nursery, asked Lilian: ‘Why do you like to
stand by the fish so much?’ Lilian answered: ‘Fish are my friends.’ When a child makes a
surprising statement we may respond to its eccentricity or humour; we may hear it and not
know what to think. But what if we can accept that the words are straightforwardly true?
In Lilian’s case the fish did console her when nobody else could. The fish literally stopped
her feeling lost and alone, as friends do.
Laura invited Lilian to spend more time next to the fish, at a table with drawing and writing
materials. She did not insist that Lilian join the other children’s conversations. This decision
allowed Lilian to become absorbed in an astonishing piece of creative work. For over an
hour, filling a whole page in her book, Lilian made small, elegant, distinctive marks. When
Laura asked Lilian what she was doing, her reply was even more fascinating: ‘I am writing
families, I am writing all the fishes’ names...the story is called ‘Family ‘. My daddy, my fish,
my sister.’
On the page there were over eighty marks. Although Lilian worked silently and separately,
in her imagination she was connected to a large and extraordinary family. When Laura
shared Lilian’s story with the other children it made immediate sense; they recognised
themselves as part of a circle of friends which included children, sisters, parents and fish.
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‘They are my friends. Fish are like people. I am people too.’ Travis
‘Yesterday
I was with my mummy
and a fish kissed me.
Yesterday
that fish kissed me.
They are all fish here.
Fish are playing
together.
That’s the story
of the holiday
of the family.
The story is called
Family.
My daddy,
my fish,
my sister.
This is all the writing
of the story
called Family.’
Lilian

Fish, Collaborative drawings by children aged 2 to 3 years.
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3 / I am my best friend
From Lilian’s feelings of disorientation and the children’s conversations about fish and
friends, a new research question emerged in the Atelier: Who or what can be a friend?
At first the children’s thoughts were literal; they drew the friend who was sitting next to
them, friends in other parts of the nursery and important family members. With soft
brushes they traced the shapes of each others’ faces. A series of portraits and conversations
developed over many days and we offered mirrors and two-dimensional sculptural material
to extend the ways in which children could represent their friends.
Into this world of deliberate observation, Eileen introduced an unexpected idea. Pointing
to her new drawing she said: ‘That’s my friend duck. Hello duck! I made the body, the beak.
That’s my duck.’
Can you really create your own friends by drawing them? If fish can be friends can a duck
made from lines on paper be one too? The other children seemed to agree that this was
possible and when we projected Eileen’s duck on the wall along with other portraits, it
provoked reactions as strong as any human friend:
Eileen:
Lilian:
Eileen:
Holly:
My friend the duck.
My friend the duck!
No! That’s my friend the duck. I did it yesterday.
I am not friend of a duck.
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‘I have got so many friends,
I have a list of friends.’
Tanaka
‘I am my best friend.’
Lilian

‘This is my best friend
Natalia and this is me
dancing with my best friend
Natalia. She is not here, but
she is in my mind.
So I can draw her. I made her
long hair and I made ears.
She has got ballerina shoes,
she is a bit wobbly.
I am going to draw myself
next to my friend Natalia.’
Darcey
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4 / Look how lovely is my friend the duck
The duck quickly became a central character in the children’s daily lives. Conversations
grew into collaborative stories and from these stories other narratives began. An unlikely
association of parents, children, fish and a duck extended to include dead bumblebees, ‘the
naughty cat’, ‘the ugly mum’.
The children’s invented friends were unconventional, often alone, often the opposite of
friendly. But each morning the children greeted them, literally saying good morning in fish
or bee or cat language, in the same way that they said good morning to each other, through
a familiar morning song.
The children’s need to explore not just friendship but loneliness and rejection was clear in
their developing story of duck. At first duck is surrounded by friends, by fish friends and
friends in her own family. But gradually she loses them all and is crying so much she falls
into a pool of mud. Duck is so covered in mud that nobody likes her and in a devastating
line the children tell us: ‘Everyone was sleeping and the duck was crying, but nobody could
hear the duck’.
The children’s story is two stories though. It explores loss and ostracization but
simultaneously expresses the children’s empathy and companionship for a misunderstood
friend. As duck cries in the mud the children’s own eyes often filled with tears. There was a
physiological anchor of friendship in their own bodies and emotions.
Laura collected the children’s words and illustrations and made a series of books which the
children quickly learnt by heart and read to each other. The pages were also arranged in
sequence on the Atelier walls so that children could read the story together. Around these
stories the children gathered, elaborating important points of each story or event.
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Once upon a time
there was a duck.
Little duck was living
with her mum.
They were speaking
Chinese together.
Little duck was so happy
and she was having
a lot of parties with
her friends and ducky food.
One day little duck,
she was sleeping
and then crying.
She was very sad.
She was lonely.
She lost her mum,
her sister, her dog.
Little duck was
crying so much
her eyes were
full of tears.
She couldn’t see
and she fell into mud.
There was no one in the mud.
Only the duck...

5 / We tell stories because stories are friends
After several months of creating, illustrating and telling stories to each other
some of the children asked for pens and pencils and started to write their stories using
invented and emergent language. The idea spread quickly and we began to see individual
voices translated into marks all around the Atelier.
We decided to share with the children images of the earliest known written human
language, Cuneiform script, stamped into clay tablets more than five thousand years ago.
They were fascinated by this ancient recorded language and we added further examples
from Greek, Latin and Egyptian sources.
We created spaces where children could sit and write together and as the children found
the idea of writing in clay particularly funny they spent several sessions using this material
as a base. They made symbols and lines for text with fine tools and composed them into
‘stories’. Sometimes they became absorbed in watching someone else’s language appear.
Often they concentrated on developing their own distinctive marks, but compared them as
they worked, picking up new ideas and adapting them.
On paper and in clay the children wrote in many languages. Many were associated with
their own families; Chinese, Italian, French, Spanish. Some were invented specifically for
their Atelier friends; Bumblebee language, Duck language, the language of the Naughty Cat
and the Ugly Mum. There was nobody with whom communication was impossible.
Looking back at the documentation from this stage of the project we noticed that even in
duck’s moment of greatest sadness, when she fell in the mud and lost all her friends, Lilian
and Eileen drew her speaking Chinese.
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‘The bumblebee was my friend. He was my friend forever today. He broke his wings and he was poorly. Forever today.’ Elodie

‘Our friend the
bumblebee’
a collaborative story
Once upon a time
there was bumblebee.
She was flying away,
then coming back,
then flying away,
then coming back,
and joining the
children’s meetings.
One day he fell into poo
and he broke
his wings.
The bumblebee couldn’t
fly anymore,
so she started to run.
She ran but she fell
into some water
and the soap
went in her eyes.
He couldn’t
see anymore.
Then Eileen arrived.
She was his friend.
She picked up the bumblebee
and she threw him
up into the sky.

6 / I need to sort out all the languages
In this prolific period the Atelier had many purposes. It was a workshop and space for
experimentation, a research room and a home for friends. It also needed to function as
an expanding and varied archive, gathering together the work of many months. Books,
portraits, sculptures, illustrations, writing experiments, written stories and source materials
were made visible and clearly ordered in the room.
Laura recorded children reading their own stories and used MP3 players and headphones
to create an audio library. Each story was kept alive and relevant in different ways and
when collected side by side the children’s own languages of comparison, identification and
connection began to develop.
Although Lilian and Eileen had known each other for over a year they seemed only to
realise at this point, that Chinese was a language they both used at home. By collecting
the writing pieces together and talking about them, new realisations began to grow into
fundamental understandings.
We discovered the Atelier was full of people from different countries, speaking different
languages. Some of us spoke more than one language and changed languages depending
on where we were. The children began to talk about other places in the world, realising
that every country has a language and that we can learn to speak to each other in ways that
might sound and look very different, but carry the same meaning from person to person.
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‘I have a lot of stories. I always write a lot of stories for all the countries where people live.’ Lilian
‘This is my chinese.’
Eileen
‘This is how you do chinese. This
chinese is for everyone. This is
everyone’s chinese.’
Lilian
‘I have got a language about an ugly
mum. It’s not a nice language.’
Rosalind
‘My language has got a big scary
mum who killed my friend the duck!
The duck was stuck in the mud, sad
and lonely!’
Eileen
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‘My language
is the language
of my family.
My family
just died.
My mum
can’t talk.
The boys
are gone.
My mum
just died
and my sister
died too.
This is the end
of the language.’
Elodie

7 / I have got a story in my hands
Looking back into our project archives we remembered that Eileen, who first introduced
‘my friend the duck’, had been telling stories expertly for a long time.
Two years before The Many Languages of Friendship we had a year-long focus on Storying
- children’s use of narrative in their everyday play and investigations. We asked whether
babies playing the game of Peekaboo were in fact telling their first stories: ‘I am here. I
am gone. I am here again.’ Eileen was one of the babies at the time, but unlike the other
babies who played the game, Eileen also narrated what she saw in sounds and expressive
hand gestures.
When we shared some photographs of these interactions with the group in the Atelier,
Eileen explained how she was able to communicate at the time:
‘I was telling stories even though I couldn’t talk, I had stories in my hands!’ Eileen
Picking up Eileen’s idea the children started to experiment with different ways of narrating.
They tried using their hands, the shadows of their hands, facial expressions, their eyes.
They tried speaking in these new ways and listening too, physically passing a story from one
hand to another or from hand to ear.
Solomon:
Eileen to Ava:
Ava:
‘I can tell stories with my eyes.’
‘I have got a story in my hands, I am passing it to you.’
‘I can listen to your story. It sounds like the sea.’
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‘When I was a baby I couldn’t talk,
but I told stories with my fingers.’
Lilian
‘I wasn’t talking when I was a baby.’
Ella Mae
‘When I was a baby I went into
mummy’s tummy.
She picked me up
and she put me in her tummy
and then she taught me
how to talk in Chinese.’
Eileen
‘Once upon a time I was a baby and I couldn’t talk. I had stories in my hands. Once upon a
time there was a girl called Holly and I was talking to her.’ Eileen
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8 / My baby is scared of the snake
The Atelier was now an environment full of shared friends, stories and languages. The
children, extending their conviction that communication with everything was possible and
prompted by the photographs of Eileen, turned their attention to babies. They met babies
in the nursery who talked in sounds and they talked about themselves as babies, before
they learnt to speak.
Into this harmonious world a controversy erupted suddenly and dramatically. The children
were making plasticine models of babies when Elodie introduced her friend ‘the snake’. A
serious disagreement broke out about whether snakes and babies could ever be together:
Sophie: My baby is scared of the snake.
Elodie: But this is such a friendly snake.
Lilian: We need to put a lid on the bumblebees and the snake, so they don’t scare us.
Elodie: No, no, no, no! I love them, I love them, don’t put the lid on please!
Sometimes we need to make clear space for children’s fascinations, as Laura did when Lilian
stood watching the fish. Sometimes we need to provide materials that will add detail and
depth to an exploration. Occasionally we choose to introduce a dramatic provocation, with
a specific purpose in mind. The argument about Elodie’s snake was clearly important to the
children and pushed their thinking into new areas. What would happen if we introduced a
real snake into the Atelier? Could the children explore further their beliefs about the limits
and powers of friendship? Could they extend their understanding and empathy to this
silent animal, often depicted as an enemy rather than a friend?
One of us had an 11 year old son who had kept a pet corn snake for several years. We
asked if we could borrow this harmless, venomless animal, who was used to being handled.
We showed photographs to the children of Pip and his snake together and then calmly and
quietly we moved the snake and his home into the Atelier.
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‘Fish don’t talk, babies don’t talk, the snake doesn’t talk’ Holly
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9 / The snake is someone’s best friend
On the morning of their first introduction, it was clear the children had already welcomed
the snake in their imaginations. They moved slowly, whispering, asking: ‘Where is Secret?’
- a name they had spontaneously given to this mysterious animal who made no sounds.
And Secret responded in kind. He moved slowly towards each child, his tongue tasting
the air around them. It was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship that, more than
any other, showed how children enter imaginatively and actually into another individual’s
world.
Secret was bathed by the children, fed by them, observed and studied, drawn in detail,
painted in his fully-extended two metre length. The children told stories about him in
which he was the good character, often lonely and without friends because of the other
animal’s rough behaviour. When Secret shed his skin they were fascinated by it, placing its
thin transparency over their own skin, becoming snakes for a while.
We had wondered whether the introduction of the snake as an archetypally unfriendly
animal would change the children’s beliefs in connection. In fact, the opposite happened.
Their existing friendships with characters and stories grew deeper, their own friendships
became stronger. As the children’s illustrations of Secret now stretched across the floor, so
their ideas, beliefs and actions followed another in smooth sequence.
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‘Once upon a time there was a snake, he was living in his cottage. He had no friends.
All the other animals were pushing the snake. The snake was crying. He had no friends.’ Eileen
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10 / I was the snake
Secret’s movements were fluid and strong as he traced curves across the table. We found
x-ray images and photographs of the internal skeleton, muscles and organs of corn snakes,
so the children could see in their imaginations what lay under Secret’s skin. As they grew
in confidence they let Secret climb and settle around their own arms and bodies. This
surprising friendship found a new language in physical connection and touch.
We decided to introduce music and dance as expressive languages in which to explore
further through the body. We projected footage of snakes being ‘charmed’ out of baskets
and swaying in the air. The children at first matched the snakes’ movements but soon
improvised their own, expressing their understanding of the animals’ musculature and
seamless movement.
‘I was dancing like a snake.
I was so happy.
A tornado.
Pirouettes.
A handstand.’
Isabelle
And, of course, Secret prompted written language. Lilian who had begun the whole project
with her fish writing, wrote Secret’s story in a series of angled, forked, meticulous symbols.
Many of these, like the children’s hands during their snake dances, repeated the V shape of
Secret’s forked tongue.
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11 / The forest speaks a different language
The children’s fascinations with languages and relationships travelled with them. As some
of the older children from the Atelier started to visit the forest each week, they talked
about the silence of the forest and its sounds, which were often mysterious, on the edge of
hearing, or without a visible source. A robin and a pheasant were frequent visitors to the
camp where children ate lunch together. They both had clear voices and distinctive calls.
The children tried to replicate their sounds and find ways to communicate with them.
Back in the Atelier the idea of forest communication widened the possibilities of friendship,
as the children expressed a desire to be friends with plants, spiky branches, tall trees. They
worked in their familiar languages of sculpture, drawing and storying to explore these
expanding connections and combined old stories with new.
‘I am writing a story about a forest.
My forest.
It’s a forest called Interesting Forest.
Be quiet.
Because I am writing a story about the forest.
The forest is so dark.
Because the forest is so silent.
The bumble bee is just flying up.
And the sky.
Be very quiet.
Be quiet and I can read the story.
I need to read the story gently.
Be silent everyone,
because the story is a real one.
It’s about the forest where I go
and that’s important.’
Lilian
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’The trees are holding hands.’ Lucia
‘My tree talk with his eyes.’ Amelia
‘I am making a happy sad. I made tears for him. He has no friends.’ Eileen

‘In the forest I was scared.
I had to hide.
I hid with Sophie in a tent, no
up on a tree.
I climbed a tree and got even
higher.
The tree was very kind to me.
The tree let me go up to the
top, but he didn’t allow the ugly
mum to come.
He saved me. I was safe.’
Rosalind
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11 / The tower of the beauty of the countries of the world
Can a place be your friend? A project? Drawings and sculptures made over time? We saw
friendship expressed in more conventional and anticipated ways as friends played together,
explored together and kept close contact. But more surprising was the extent to which
what they were playing, investigating, creating and proposing were also friends. Children
in the middle of a project are deeply invested, excited to see and remember their work, to
continue making connections. They tell and retell stories ‘because stories are our friends’.
Children who meet through each other’s imaginations become friends because of what they
imagine together, even if they were not friends before.
Our learning from this project continues to deepen, but even at the time it was profound.
We saw children in only their third or fourth year of life express a powerful belief that
connection with all things is possible. We followed the children’s detailed and deep
explorations not only of friendship but its opposites – loneliness, enmity, abandonment and
despair. We realised how complex children’s meaning-making can be and saw clearly how
creative languages work together to carry different layers of the same exploration. And we
understood that silence, too, can be a powerful language of communication.
Lilian’s fish language began this project. An image she drew eight months later seemed to
us to carry great significance towards the end. ‘The tower of the beauty of the countries
of the world’ was made painstakingly, from outline to solid shape. It included writing in
different languages, marked boldly on the page, but reaching upwards and outwards to the
whole world.
Language is a city to the building of which
every human being brought a stone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson / Letters and Social Aims (1867)
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Edited by: Laura Magnavacchi / Deb Wilenski
Graphic Design: Laura Magnavacchi
Text: Deb Wilenski / Laura Magnavacchi
Pedagogical consultancy: Deb Wilenski
Atelierista: Laura Magnavacchi
Photographs: Laura Magnavacchi
Children: Albie, Amelia, Ava, Ben, Cameron,
Darcey, Eileen, Ella Mae, Elodie, Emilia, Giorgia,
Holly, Isabelle, Lilian, Lucas, Lucia, Mansa,
Mia, Millie, Minnie, Olivia, Reuben, Rosalind,
Santiago, Solomon, Sophie, Tanaka, Travis
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Reflections Nursery & Small School in
Worthing, West Sussex (UK), draws inspiration
from the preschools and primary school of
Reggio Emilia in northern Italy and the forest
nurseries of Denmark. Children at Reflections
have opportunities to follow their own lines
of enquiry and are supported to develop
these into long-term collaborative projects.
Each year Reflections also has a nursery and
school-wide research focus. From September
2016 to August 2017 we explored The Many
Languages of Friendship to develop our
pedagogical understanding of children’s social
and emotional relationships, as well as their
beliefs about who or what could be a friend.
Reflections Nursery & Small School
www.reflectionsnurseries.co.uk
t. +44 1903 208208