So it's the end of term at the nursery and we're trying to tidy up our assessments to make sure we have noticed progress or lack of it in relevant areas of learning. Reading, writing, number, speaking and listening are all fairly straightforward; the one that's harder to identify is Problem Solving.
Once they get into Big School, "real life" problems tend to include number, but quite frankly, 3 and 4 year olds don't give a monkey's how many people were left standing in the queue, once they've got their icecream.
So our problem spotting is more practical. Like the child above, who has carefully created a flat surface for her building, has worked out she has to keep the blocks level for the cross-pieces to stay on, has understood about balancing, and has also reached the parts she couldn't reach before by standing on a spare block. Perfect - all problems solved to her own satisfaction.
Trying to engineer a similar situation, for the sake of getting an obs for a child who has been more secretive about his solving abilities, is well nigh impossible.
Today, I got out the guttering pipes, balls and water to see what would come of it. Children came to pour water, but the water was stalling because the sloping gutter was perched on top of a horizontally laid one. "What can we do to make the water go into the flower bed, to water the flowers?" I enquired.
Child V, a prolific problem solver with this equipment, fetched another piece of guttering and extended the horizontal one to reach the flower bed. Child D ignored me and continued pouring water. "Hmm" I continued, "The water still isn't flowing into the flowers properly, is it? What else can we try?" Child D says "I dunno" and continues pouring. Child V puts the horizontal gutter end on top of the sloping one, so the water isn't flowing underneath and going on the floor, but it's still stalling in the flat section. "It's still not quite right, is it? What else could we try?" I persist. I bring a plastic crate to put under the end of the horizontal pipe to raise it and extend the slope. "What could we do with the crate?" I prompt. "Make a space ship?" suggested child D.
Child V puts the crate into position.
Child D goes off and plays on the climbing frame. Hey ho.
LissaT
Pro 
Grown-ups do problem solving too!
We had our termly staff meeting on Friday. We spent the morning in various activities, dicussing open and closed questions and various ways of making sure the children get the most out of their days at the museums. One 'team building' activity was dividing into two teams and making a moon shelter to frotect 4 people from dangerous UV rays using three garden canes and an oversized dustbin bag. The point was a bit lost as two of the new EAs have dropped out before starting and the remaining one couldn't come until the afternoon as she was doing supply in the morning, moreover two of the regular team were also not there (one holiday, one supply) which left a very small team of friends to team build. So we problem solved by interpreting the lunar landscape - we used rocks (chairs and a table to support the H frame over which we put the slit open bag, while the others decided that they were huddling in a crater and had strtched the bag over the top and weighted it down with rocks. Each team suggested that in real life we would have sought the other team out and pooled resources. Have they thought of this for you?
In the afternoon I taught the others the Florence Nightingale outreach and we had the regular business of the meeting.