Tuning into Everyday Ecologies: Children’s Slow Noticing in Food Gardens

Paper Title

Tuning into Everyday Ecologies: Children’s Slow Noticing in Food Gardens

Publication Info

• Topic area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in early childhood education, focusing on nature engagement and food systems.
• Keywords: Slow noticing, food gardens, early childhood education, human-computer interaction, digital technologies, ecological literacy, multispecies relationships, temporal noticing, play-based learning, sustainability.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Many children are disconnected from nature and lack awareness of food systems. Existing HCI research has insufficiently explored how digital technologies can support young children’s noticing acts in everyday nature experiences, particularly in food gardens.
• Significance: Strengthening children’s connection to nature and understanding of food systems is critical for fostering ecological literacy, sustainability, and well-being.
• Motivation and related work: Prior studies have highlighted the importance of noticing as a sensory engagement method in HCI and education. However, little is known about how children aged 3-5 notice and interact with nature in food gardens, nor how digital technologies can enhance these experiences.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study investigates children’s noticing acts in food gardens through three guided play design activities using bush food cards, an IoT-based camera, and the Bee-Bot educational robot.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of the concept of slow noticing to support children’s sensory engagement with nature.
  2. Exploration of how digital technologies can enhance focal, relational, and temporal noticing in food gardens.
  3. Development of design opportunities that bridge hidden elements to noticed phenomena, connect parts to patterns, and attune children to ecological tempos.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Activity One: Playing with native bush food cards to prepare children for noticing plants.
  2. Activity Two: Exploring the food garden with a screenless IoT-based camera to make noticing explicit.
  3. Activity Three: Using Bee-Bot to model ecological relationships (e.g., pollination) and trace the garden-to-table food journey.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Children’s noticing acts were categorized into focal noticing (e.g., attention to active animals and bright colors), relational noticing (e.g., understanding interspecies connections like “bees like flowers”), and temporal noticing (e.g., awareness of ecological tempos through events like plant growth).
  • Digital tools like the IoT camera and Bee-Bot enhanced children’s ability to notice hidden elements, ecological relationships, and temporal changes.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • The study demonstrates how digital technologies can complement sensory and embodied experiences rather than replace them, fostering deeper engagement with nature.
  • Structured play with digital tools facilitated more focused noticing compared to free exploration.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Conducted with 35 children (aged 3-5) and 9 educators at a childcare center in Brisbane, Australia.
  • Data collected included observational notes, photos, videos, and children’s artifacts (e.g., Bee-Bot route designs).
  • Reflexive thematic analysis was used to interpret data, guided by a noticing framework.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Study conducted in an urban childcare center; future research could explore regional or non-garden contexts (e.g., home backyards, farmers’ markets).
  • Limited sensory engagement in current activities; future work will incorporate richer sensory experiences (e.g., touch-smell-taste activities).
  • Need for larger, more diverse samples and quantitative approaches to strengthen findings.

Summary

This study explores how digital technologies can support children aged 3-5 in noticing nature within food gardens. Through three guided play activities, the research identifies focal, relational, and temporal noticing as key aspects of children’s engagement. Digital tools like IoT cameras and Bee-Bot robots enhanced children’s sensory awareness, understanding of ecological relationships, and attunement to natural tempos. The findings highlight opportunities for designing technologies that amplify hidden phenomena, foster multispecies connections, and attune children to ecological rhythms. Future work will refine these design ideas and explore co-design approaches with children and educators to deepen engagement with everyday ecologies.