This field note offers a visual narration of an ongoing material inquiry in a multi-age in-home program where children and their educator work with charcoal in tactile, corporeal ways. Charcoal unsettles expectations of order, marking skin, surfaces, and moods as it moves through the space. The images trace these lively relations between bodies and material—gestures, residues, and rhythms that invite slower, more attentive ways of being together.
This field note accompanies the blog Seeing Otherwise: Photography as Pedagogical Storytelling Practice, which asks what photography might make visible that conventional observation or written reflection often overlooks—what stories it might help tell about how children live, feel, and relate with the world.