An end of the year project: Child Care, Reggio-style.

Wall display of child-designed games

We have ended our school year at our Reggio-inspired Child Care center. Our last Pre-K project was about games. The children were indignant if we didn't put out board games with activities each day, So Sue and I asked them to design their own games. Which they did with gusto! Where do you begin? Where do you end? What is the objective of the player? What are the hazards and rewards? Actually, the children knew these questions before we asked because they had internalized the idea of what a children's board game is. After designing their own board, they decided on either a die or a spinner. Creating a die was chosen by only two children, the rest loved creating a spinner, with our help. Fashioning the playing pieces ("people" they called them) involved using differently shaped wood pieces, pom-poms, small marbles, and connecting them with white glue. The children glued their players together, and, after heart-breaking discoveries in the morning ("my pieces fell apart!"), I used a glue gun to repair them. 

Then came the game tournament! We turned activity time into a gaming festival (no electronics needed)! Children played their own, and each others games. Individually, they reflected about what they liked about their games, and what they might like to change (mostly nothing...they were delighted). Sue displayed the games in our stairwell, along with the baggies of playing pieces (the baggies didn't like being on the wall, so they fell). Parents and others coming up the long two flights of stairs could admire each game, and children could narrate the story line of each.

Enter emergent literacy! When I asked each child I worked with about their game, I prompted them to tell the "story" their games told. They seemed to understand that starting somewhere, overcoming obstacles, and finishing victorious (you get the lollipops, the cloud heaven, the rainbow, or the bad guys) was a story. Children understand such concepts in a general sense. One little girl told me only, "Well, you WIN!" That was enough for her!

If we'd done this project earlier in the year, I would like to have laminated the games. But it is the time for new beginnings. These children are going to kindergarten in two weeks! The "little kids" (their term) are coming over to our side of our huge, lively space, and even younger ones are coming up from the first floor. New projects are in the future

You say Pigasso, I say Picasso...

I love four year olds! They are in a transition stage of development, at the cusp of separating reality from fantasy. You can see the wheels turning in some of their amazing brains, shifting gears from, "Is this real?" to "Of course it's not real". I can see it when I bring out my puppet, Melvin the Monkey (named after my beloved first voice teacher, Mel Hakola). "He's not talking, YOU are!", they say, at the same time speaking with Melvin directly. "Melvin, do you want a banana?" 

We read When Pigasso Met Mootisse, and I carefully explained that there were real artists named Picasso and Matisse, showing them pictures of the artists and their art. But throughout the subsequent activities related to the story, each time I said the artists' names, they corrected me. One little boy, a concerned look on his face, said, "Gail, you mean Pigasso, right?". I admit I caved. That "G" started creeping into my pronunciation. 

Here is how we did our Pigasso, er, Picasso art project, and the objectives you as an early childhood educator can reference if you do it with children. 

We gathered at morning meeting and listed our choices for activity time, as usual. On the art table Sue had prepared a long mirror down one side of the table so that the children could draw a LARGE circle, eyes, nose and mouth, looking at themselves while they drew, sitting three at a time.. Children, speaking their thoughts aloud, said, "My face is a circle", or "Mine's an oval". Some, remembering the cubism we discussed prior to the activity, said, "I'll make my eyes triangles like a pumpkin". 

The next step was to cut their picture into five largish pieces (these instructions were to prevent the inevitable cutting into shards and iddy-biddy pieces that often happens when we say, "cut"). Sue had demonstrated in morning meeting that pieces of a drawing could be reformed into a "new face", just as Picasso, I mean Pigasso had done. 

We saved the pieces for each child by putting them together with a paper clip with their name attached. The next day they pieced their "new faces" together on a sheet of construction paper of their choosing. After gluing them down, they used my favorite colors, Creamy Crayons, to give vibrant colors to the new faces. As these are children of varying age within the "fours" bracket, not to mention varying individual interests and passions, the result was a broad range of "new faces" to put up in our stair well.

On the subject of directions, which I raised in my last post, we only provided those I have already mentioned except for encouraging children to color pieces so that the idea of a face be preserved. They were left to interpret that direction as they wished. Our direct instruction was not to tight, not to loose. Hopefully, it was just right!

Virginia Visual Arts Foundation Block 1: Visual Communication and Production, all four objectives.

Virginia Visual Arts Foundation Block 2: Art History and Cultural Context, objectives b and c.

When Pigasso Met Mootisse

This story has many admirers among art teachers. There should be more admirers among early childhood educators. It has everything! War! Grudges! Messes! Hurt feelings and most importantly: Making up. The story is based loosely upon the friendship of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, with animals subbing for the historical humans. 

The children are enthralled with super-heros and fighting, as so many children are. When I started reading When Pigasso Met Mootisse to my kids two years ago I was not convinced it would hold their attention. What I discovered was that the concept of an "art attack" hit the sweet spot in their fight-loving brains. Subsequently I also discovered that fighting for fighting's sake wasn't what they were really interested in. They were in love with the brio of the battle between opposites.  In super-hero stories, it was the battle between good guys and bad guys. In this story it is the battle between two different styles of self-expression. Feelings run very high in either case, but the idea is the same. 

So we are thinking about doing a "unit", as we say in the biz. 

The children mostly favored Picasso's style of art, which is cubism in the story. All of the blogs I've looked at show children's versions of Picasso portraits. They are way cool, folks. I applaud the teachers who give explicit directions, teach art style, and still get creative, individual results. I'm of two minds about this. I love the result. The children get away from houses, butterflies, ninjas, etc. for a while, as my friend, Angelique, says in her blog. They produce something original, with a set of learned skills and techniques. There is so much value in this. The children, as another art teacher friend has said, need to be taken seriously. On the other hand, in our program, which values process over product, we usually give materials, scaffolding, and time. We ask them for their ideas. We even wait for them. Can we resolve these two approaches? 

Should we ask them to produce their own Picassos? Or should we expose them to Picasso and give them the materials and time to see where their inspiration leads? 

What do you think?

Virtual Classroom for Young Children?

November 27, 2011

On: Washington Post “Virtual Schools Expand Territory” Lyndsey Layton & Emma Brown.

My hair stood on end. That’s the best way I can describe my reaction to the article in the Washington Post reporting that Virginia public schools were paying for some young children to learn “virtually”. 

 When I think of virtual education, my mind goes immediately to the online course I teach for Northern Virginia College’s Extended Learning Institute, a course for adults who need college credits in their field and find that online learning helps them maintain their sanity by cutting out driving to “brick and mortar” classrooms. They are already working full-time and raising families. Online learning for them is the perfect solution.

Why would virtual education for young children make my hair stand on end? Because the courses I teach at Nova are on Early Childhood Education. I teach that young children do not learn subject matter in separate categories. Quality programs do not teach science for one period, language arts for another, and physical education in another. Young children learn all of these things all of the time through working with other children and knowledgeable adults. They learn not only how to write, but how to share pencils; not only how to observe a science experiment, but how to discuss that experiment while jockeying for position around the science table. Learning about vibration, letters, math facts, and insects goes hand in hand with learning to disagree without being disagreeable; to encourage a friend; to converse about a topic of interest.

According to the article, the most successful virtual student has a learning coach/parent at home to supplement the lack of social-emotional learning that is crucial to a child’s future, but that definition of success is test-scores. Test-scores don’t measure ability to get along in a group of diverse children. In the workplace that ability will be as important as the ability to do math or to read and write. Relating to your loving mother just won’t replicate this experience.

Most young children are also kinesthetic, or physical learners. According to my friend, Rae Pica, a nationally known expert on movement education, children learn best through movement. How much better can a math lesson get than when children learn to count, add and subtract by participating in a game involving the whole body? Physical cues integrate the various areas of the brain involved in learning all subject areas.

Creativity also gets short shrift in today’s test-driven world, but those we most admire in society, from the late Steve Jobs to Gloria Steinem, have lived on the creative edge, pushing for change to improve the lives of millions. I pose the question: Can young children who are educated by sitting in front of a computer from the age of four be able to access their own creativity when that treasure chest inside their body/minds is relegated to last place in their educational toolkit?

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), children learn through play in a nurturing learning community of peers and knowledgeable adults. Does this image match that of the child sitting alone, or with his/her mother in front of a computer screen? You decide.

How do you motivate teachers to be creative?

As anyone who reads my blog knows, I love to write with a picture in mind, even if the subject doesn't necessarily connect to the topic, I will make it connect. So if you read this, you can give me a thumbs-up or -down on how well I connect this picture to what I'm about to write!

In this photo, I am four and my brother is two. We were brought into a photographic studio of a tall blonde woman who had a large studio with big, rectangular shaped lights. I wasn't thrilled about having my picture taken with my dopey (sorry, Bob) little brother to begin with, and then we were asked to sit together on a table all cozy while the photographer struggled with her equipment. When she was finally ready to take our picture I had already had enough of her fussing, ignoring moi, and giving us curt commands. I did not want to smile and I definitely didn't want to look directly into the big rectangular light that  hurt my eyes. I fidgeted, and kept looking away. My mother, somewhere to my right, pleaded with me to cooperate. You can see from the picture that I did. but I was not happy about it!

What, does this have to do with motivating teachers to be creative, you may well ask, and with good reason! I will attempt to explain.

In the first place one has to consider that there are preschools where teachers and management have little interest in creativity in the first place. I am  not going to go there. They have their own reward, as they say in church. I am talking about how schools that have NAEYC accreditation, and have, in their literature, explanations of how their curriculum is creative, stimulating and developmentally appropriate. How does management--"heads of school", directors, and other administrators--motivate its teaching staff to go beyond creating the everyday, ordinary curricular learning experiences that usually satisfy the majority of parents who know little of what can really be done in the service of learning in its broadest sense?

One model I know of does it this way: Teachers are told to create exciting learning activities aligned with the school's yearly curricular goals and its literacy curriculum. Coming into the situation, a new faculty member believes that she can, within the parameters of the school's curriculum, create learning experiences that are as creative and interesting to children as possible, drawing from the world's cultures, traditions and arts to do so. But this teacher soon gets a surprise! Just as my four-year-old self came into a room of cold light, and admonishments to be still and smile, this teacher is asked to put aside her ideas and try to emulate other teachers, the reasoning being that if one teacher does something different, parents will demand the same from other teachers. Go ahead and be creative, but don't "show up your colleagues".

Imagine if the four-year-old, instead of being asked to sit still and stare while the photographer was getting ready, was given permission to explore the studio with parental guidance, and then asked how she would like to pose? I know, it isn't an analogy that quite fits (thumbs-down?), but there is some parallel here. Bear with me.

A second program expresses that it wants teachers to be creative, to bring their own strengths to the job of teaching young children. If teachers do projects that are different from those of other teachers, administrators encourage it, and when parents ask for the same in other classrooms, the pressure is on those teachers to be more creative, to make more connections, to go beyond the boundaries of the average aggregate of activities that are ordinarily used. That the administration has the back of the creative teacher ensures instruction and planning will evolve into new learning and new experiences.

Which way do you like? In which program would you want to teach?