Stories to Teach about Life

 “Yes!” I thought, reading Peter Gray’s blog post about the importance of stories for young children. My mind traveled back to all of the stories I have read, and acted out with, young children over the course of my career. Dr. Gray focused specifically on reading to children; how this act has been singled out, with good reason, to be more important to the future education of children than most others. His excellent point is that there is more to story reading than cuddles and close relationships, though these are essential for human growth and development, not to mention human joy!

“Knowing how to deal with evil as well as love, how to recognize others’ desires and needs, how to behave towards others so as to retain their friendship, and how to earn the respect of the larger society are among the most important skills we all must develop for a life.”  These skills are actually something we learn all through life, but giving children stories to reflect on gives them a huge advantage, psychologically, as an early start on braving human relationships, and fostering skillful interactions. Dare I say, also, that stories help children learn to be wise rather than right, as in, “right, not wrong”?

One book that, surprisingly, became a favorite with a group of pre-k students, and demonstrated the difference between wisdom and “might makes right”, was The Cloud Spinner, by Michael Catchpool and Alison Jay. This entrancing story starts out, “There was once a boy who could weave cloth from the clouds”. The boy sings as he works: “Enough is enough and not one stitch more”. Immediately, Alison Jay’s illustrations captivated our children. The hills and houses reflect the moods of the characters. Our children noticed this before I did! Smiles on hills are made of trees, and sheep. Houses smile with windows and doors. In the beginning, nature is in harmony because the boy with his magical loom only makes what he needs. One day, the king notices the boy in a crowd and madly desires clothing, of both himself and his family, made of the clouds. He commands the boy to weave for him. The boy balks at first: “It would not be wise to have (so much fabric) made from this cloth. Your majesty does not need it.” The king is apoplectic, commanding the boy do his bidding. So he does. He weaves, and the illustrations reflect the sadness of the task with darkening color and forlorn hills.

The Cloud Spinner does not so much have a cheerful ending as a wise and uplifting one. The children, absorbed in it, noticing details of the varying shades of color that reflect the boy’s, and the King’s daughter’s moods (She helps him to reverse the tragic disappearance of clouds that cause drought, and discontent among the people). The King and his family are astounded by the gratitude of the people after the clothing he ordered is turned back into clouds, causing welcome rain. The boy and princess exult in the restoration of a wise order in nature and among humans. The children, sitting before me, sigh in contentment.

Our preschoolers learned about what greed was, some demonstrating it by acting out the concept—“Mine! Mine!”, with gestures of raking in loot! A teacher took up the phrase, “Enough is enough and not one ____ more” when children wanted ALL the blocks, or pizza. And, amazingly, this story was one of the most requested during reading time, rivaling Dragons Love Tacos!

If children have a deep interest in this or any other story, it is wise to follow their direction and see what they do with it. Our children drew and painted clouds in an array of colors, and told stories with greedy characters and children with magical powers. If you teach to standards, these activities can be used to fulfill them—Language arts, social studies, even math and science. Arts standards go without saying, and the text of the song can be set to music. Ask any child! They will have a tune before you know it!

Children do need stories to make sense of feelings and wise social interaction. They need myth, I dare say, to hold on to the important values of society. As human interaction and social relationships are varied, so, too, are the stories we read and tell.

Stories in the Woods

Anyone who knows me knows I worship Vivian Paley. I have asked children to tell me their stories for over 25 years, and we have acted them out in the classroom.

This school year I have a new job teaching young children half days where the playground includes a wooded area that provides children with the opportunity to do what children love to do in the woods. Running through, staying still, gathering natural items in their hands and pretending these items are supplies for soup or ice cream, they are free to do what I loved to do as a child. They are free to be children. So how does this relate to stories?

I have a new friend I will call Opal. Inexplicably, Opal has adopted me and made me a member of her group of friends who gather in the woods and tell stories. Much of the time the stories are more like newspaper headlines such as, "Do you know what wonderful thing I am going to do? I am going to Disney on Ice!". Today Opal found me on the playground and asked me to come into the woods and tell her and her friend, Annie, "scary Halloween stories". So I went. We sat in our usual place, a crossroads of tree roots, covered with fallen leaves. Here I began recounting the story, The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. Opal and Annie didn't know the story, so they were trying to "help" me by including monsters and ghosts, then, when they understood the nature of the benign evil in the story, underwear that walked on its own. I offered that maybe they would like to tell a story of their own. "I can't tell stories", Opal wailed. "We don't do that in my class". So I started a story about one of the many children who had come over to us to see what the fuss was. Soon each child was adding part of the story, and even more interestingly, an item from the woods. Children came and gently laid bark, berries, sticks, and leaves in my open palm as if conferring  a sacrament. With each item we named the next character of the story.

I couldn't write it down, and with so many children coming and going with pieces of nature in their palms I don't think I'll ever remember what we said. But we left the items in the "story circle" for another time. The next time I'll come with paper and pen.

Story offerings

Play: Learning in Motion

I read in the Washington Post today about a preschool classroom in Arlington.  In the column, the teacher, Launa Hall, describes her struggles to teach reading skills to preschoolers while feeling guilty about not being able to allow them to play. The Pre-K standards she uses are doable in a play environment, but the mandated curriculum in which they are delivered, as we say in the trade, are not developmentally appropriate. The joy of childhood is a secondary characteristic, not a primary one, in public Pre-K programs. 

In our program, children are given multiple opportunities to construct their own knowledge. During our early morning, late afternoon, and outside times, when we set the environment for learning, they do just that! 

New York City

The picture above is New York City. Several children have been to New York recently, and, have parents who talk WITH their children, rather than down TO them. They come back to school with a fund of knowledge that flashcards and lesson books can't teach. If you look hard enough, you will see the Port Authority, and the Empire State Building. The builders were inspired by each other, and as an impromptu small group demonstrated their knowledge in the block corner. This whole enterprise was preceded by a flurry of drafting in the drawing/writing center. 

Design Team 

Our modeling of drawing, planning, and building all year contributed to this project, but the children did it on their own.

Hayride

We went on a hayride in October but children are still conspiring to create their own. These girls asked me for rope, but I didn't have any. I was at a loss on how to help them, but one of them "got an idea" and organized a committee to create a "hayride" out of a wagon, scooter and tricycle. They did it themselves, based on their own past experience playing on our playground, and interacting with us and other children.

After the snow, children wanted to create "plows". Here is a picture of their idea:

Snow Plows

The boy on the left has worked out that a Tonka truck with a tire and a seat on it, pushing a shovel, makes an admirable snow plow. The boy on the right is using his friend's idea to make his own plow. Children learn from each other, as well as from adults. Vygotsky explained this many years ago. The children learn within a social network. That network includes each other as well as their teachers! 

Our program is alive with discovery and design. Interactions with adults are frequent, and powerful,but not coercive.We "teach" through setting the stage, following the learners and enabling their ideas with materials and methods. A program for preschoolers needs to be rich in materials, ideas, and loving interactions with knowledgeable adults.Those adults must, daily, discuss among themselves where and how the children are going with their learning, knowing that math, language and science are inherent in children's interests. The children are on their own developmental train riding into the future. We need to climb aboard. 

Star Moon Drummers: The genesis of a small group name and the importance of rhythm to children.

As most of you know, my first profession was as a singer. I prided myself on being able to read complex rhythms, and to sing them with accuracy. I noticed throughout my career that many singers (and church organists, by the way) did not "get" complex rhythm patterns easily. No need to analyze that phenomenon. I leave it to music educators. But in preschool, rhythm patterns mean much more than most preschool teachers give them credit for.

Last week my small group needed to come up with a name. Children come into this with different ideas, many animals, and increasingly, media favorites. One boy wanted us to be the "minions"! A teacher said that "Gail's Minions" would be pretty cool! But I also knew that this boy had told me he was glad to be in my group because I liked drumming, and so did he. So I prompted him: "Remember you said you like to drum? Want us to be the Drummers?" That did it. Everyone wanted to be The Drummers. The next step was to find our descriptive words. One new boy said, over and over, "STAR!" Several girls said, "MOON!" in response. I was overcome. "What a beautiful name!", I said. "The STAR MOON DRUMMERS!" There was instant buy-in. We are the Star Moon Drummers. We have been drumming and scatting rhythm patterns all week.

Rhythm exploration is math. So providing drumming opportunities are an easy sell in educational circles. Rhythm work is social. The children we teach at our center become so much more organized and cooperative when they drum or use our hammock-style xylophone. Social-emotional skills are the backbone of kindergarten readiness.

Rhythm exploration is science. I hung our xylophone out this week. How may ways can you play one? I had never even thought of some of the experiments the children did. How does it sound if you crawl UNDER the xylophone and play it? How does it sound if you tip the beater back and forth, making it play with both ends? And of course, can I make a "glissando" (my term)? Heck, yes!! I did not suggest any of these alternatives, because the children are natural scientists, experimenting, processing data, coming up with new ideas and making observations. Here are some (albeit headless) photos of our children in action;

Drumming on the Playground

The xylophone is made from bed slats cut from large to small. The sound is not unlike Japanese wood blocks, The drummers soon dragged their drums over to the xylophone so that there was a sort of combo. The xylophone players looked like this...

Xylophone made out of old bed slats.

We look forward to a year of music experimentation. I will introduce videos of street drummers to this group to validate their awesome efforts on the playground. I would LOVE for them to see street drummers in person, to even participate. A field trip? Dancing to each others' drumming? Of course.

We must never underestimate the power of the arts to teach. We must not forget that, as Loris Malaguzzi said so often, in teaching we must do "Nothing without joy".

What I learned at the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance Conference--Albuquerque, Summer, 2014

I won't go into the Reggio conference itself. Needless to say I heartily recommend doing one of these splendid conferences if not actually going to Reggio Emilia (I want to!). But after listening to these amazing master-teachers for three days I came back with a renewed confidence in the children's capacity to question, analyze, and discuss.

Here is a tiny example:

On our daily walk into our building the children had formed a habit of, after picking grass with "pom poms" at the top (their term), and placing the stems of these pom-poms into holes in the cinder block walls on the way to the bathroom. Now, as any preschool teacher can tell you, if you need to walk in a line with fours, and you want them to go to the bathroom before lunch, you need to keep the line moving. No matter how much we admonished them to stop picking the grasses that were growing from the cracks in the sidewalk or along the brick wall outside the school, they stooped quickly and swiped their prizes. Once we entered the building they fondled the soft ends of these treasures...

They were kind of like this, only more scraggly!






And gradually, over days, they began to place them in the little holes along the cinder block walls leading to the bathroom. I realized that part of listening to children, a core Reggio value, was watching them and validating their interests. So during small group time I took them outside to pick grass! They were ecstatic! It was like watching a game show where a person is given the choice of a TV or a trip to Bermuda! Then we took our grasses inside to create what I called an art installation. Because it was! They loved calling it art. They told all of the other children not to touch their art! The next day we went into the classroom and found holes, which led to conversations and questions about what a hole was. If it was square, was it still a hole? Was the top of an empty butter tub a hole? And what made the holes?

Here are some of their ideas on what made holes in the cinder block:

"Someone could have been picking at the walls.""Maybe a people got sharp thing and stick it in the walls.""Because maybe they want to put a design in the walls, they get like a knife…""It could be there from like electricity wires.""There might be a nail inside and someone was trying to drill it and they kind of got it wrong.""Maybe they put a screw in the wall and then try again to put it in a different place.""Maybe some bad guys came in the school at night and drilled holes in the wall."

This wasn't the conclusion of this line of inquiry, but a tiny sample. I want to demonstrate that something teachers often (not always) see as a nuisance or distraction may be something important to a young child, and a portal to inquiry. If we don't pay attention to their interests, how can we ask them to pay attention to ours?

 

Inside and Outside: Teaching Naturally

Sometimes life in a child care center is routinely extraordinary. We live our lives together, adults and children, looking for every opportunity to learn and to teach. In our program we blend the outside and the inside to create an organic whole where our children make connections no matter where they are, and they contribute at least as much to the curriculum (as defined by NAEYC, our professional organization) as we teachers do!

Even though we went on several amazing field trips via walking and metro, the crux of our exploration has been the connection between inside and outside.

It rained recently and a child noticed while the windows on one side of the room had raindrops on them, the windows on the other side did not. She commented on this and asked why. So my teaching partner, Sue, brainstormed with our older children on what might be the reason. Here are some of their hypotheses: "The rain is grey and camouflaged",;"One side is used to it"; If you are close to the window you see more"; and "The wind is blowing the rain sideways".

Some of these answers show where the children are in their cognitive development. One child says the windows on one side are "used to it", indicating personification of an object, a classic sign of preoperative logic.  Another comments that the dripless side isn't visible because the rain is grey and in camouflage, an generalization from prior knowledge of how things can seem invisible. The last comment comes closer to the truth (wind makes rain move). A great guess!
Sue designed an artistic experiment by giving the children paper, pipettes, and blue water. The children dripped water on paper and experimented with turning it in different directions, waving it about, to see how the drips traveled. No final decisions were made about the cause of the dripless window, but the children learned about the effect of gravity and movement on water drops. Here is the result:

The Virginia Foundation Blocks, our Pre-K standards, state that children should be able to "ask questions about the natural world related to observations" by the end of the year. This was what that first child did, and it resulted in a learning activity related to both science and art.

Looking for worms

The boys above are looking into a raised bed filled with dirt. They are looking for worms. As every preschool teacher knows, worms and slugs and bugs excite preschool children, both boys and girls. They worked with some worm-loving girls to create a "worm hotel". It's interesting to note that another field of study has been building and construction, so hotels are an interesting application of that learning! Here is the worm hotel:

Worm Hotel

Worms gathered for the honor of staying in a ring-shaped hotel with sturdy rubber walls rest or dig in the dirt. They also can lounge on an "easy chair" provided by a leisure-loving girl:

Worm on a chair.

The whole worm hotel is situated in our dirt box, a wood-bound dirt pile specifically dedicated to digging. In dirt. With small shovels that are modeled on adult models. Yes, we encourage getting dirty, and yes, the children are encouraged and cheered on in this endeavor. My adult students express frustration with their own situations when I share this information with them. They work in centers where parents are unhappy that little Sarah or William are dirty at pick-up. The teacher is held responsible, and the administration doesn't support this research-based, "best practice". Shame on them! Playing in dirt is healthy.

Inside/outside learning is the most healthy and natural kind of learning for young children. It is engaging and whole-child oriented. We read a book on worms inside to support the engaged exploration of the children outside. 

Outdoor learning is becoming more respectable these days and with good reason. In my next post I will share some examples of indoor/outdoor music. 

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?

How to Use an Opera to Teach Nearly Everything--An Integrated Study for Pre-K

I sang with Frederica Von Stade twice at the Washington Opera. I was one of six "spirits" in a wondrous Canadian production of Cendrillon, produced there when I was (ahem) young. Soon after, when I began teaching young children, not knowing that children weren't supposed to be taught about opera, I introduced Von Stade's performance in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel from the Metropolitan Opera to my unsuspecting young students. And not knowing that they weren't supposed to understand opera, they fell in love with it. I developed a unit for the opera and the story that included writing, drawing, acting, singing, and what I called "stage magic" (making something appear to be real when it is not).

Fast forward many years and we come to a holiday season when my teaching partner was going to be in her native Australia for three weeks, and I was planning for sixteen rather than eight children. What to do? Duh! Hansel and Gretel, of course!

I introduced the unit with storybooks, like any good unit about a fairy tale. This story in particular isn't devoid of controversy. Teachers routinely caution me about it. "The mother tries to get rid of them. It has a witch. It isn't appropriate for preschool." Well, yes, the mother, or step-mother is a problem. I use at least two versions of the fairy tale, especially Beni Montresor's version.
Signor Montresor created the picture book from the opera's libretto, which has the mother shoo her children out the door to pick wild strawberries in the woods. They get lost and the rest of the story is more or less the same. We also read James Marshall's version, which is comic to adults, but still has the mother trying to lose her kids. We discussed the two stories and I polled them on their favorite one. The children were split. The more nurturing the children, the more they preferred the Montresor. The more exuberant preferred Marshall.

This is when I brainstorm with them about how stories can be told, and introduce the concept of singing a story. Do you want to see the story sung? Well, what do you think they said?

We watched the video of the opera bit by bit over a few days. The children asked many questions as we watched, such as, 1.) Why are the people are always singing?  2.) Is that Hansel a boy or a girl (the role is a "pants role". 3.) Is the witch really flying? (she is in a harness and flies in on wires) 4.) Why is her tongue green? (Let's suck on a green candy to find out about stage magic.) and on and on!

We sang "Brother will you dance with me?". We created a giant cardboard cookie to use to pretend to turn each other into one, like they turn the witch into one in the opera. Then the question came up, one that other classes haven't asked before: "Can we do it as a play?" One boy in particular lobbied to be the witch.

Ah! The emergent curriculum teacher rejoices! "Well, of course!" And so it began.

Gail casting the production.

First we have to agree on who is doing what. It isn't nearly as difficult as you might think. Four and five year olds can be highly motivated and focused when they want to do something together that involves every part of themselves. They easily accept double and triple casting so everyone gets to do the roles they wish to portray. They accept direction (not always true of divas and divos). You don't have to talk to them in high motherese. You can direct them and yet accept  their creative proclivities at the same time. It is a joy, pure and simple.

It helps a teacher to know the opera plot well. There are characters the children adore that aren't in the storybooks, such as the dew fairy and the sandman, or all the enchanted animals portrayed by children in the video of the opera production. They revel in the happy ending, when the mother and father find the children and everyone sings and dances in jubilation (this was their favorite scene to portray, besides tearing up and pretending to eat the gingerbread witch). It is sort of a "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead", but the music is Wagnerian (Humperdinck was a student of Wagner).

Originally I had planned to have the children make a book to contribute to the library for the other children. I honestly believe they were more prepared to do this after they had explored the story and it's themes through drama. So I gave each of them a scene from the opera story to illustrate, and we used new art material for the illustrations: Sharpies and Creamy Crayons.

The first step

The first step was for each child to draw what they remembered about the scene they were assigned. The above picture is one girl's favorite: The angels coming from the wings and above to guard the sleeping children in the forest. She chose triangles because "they would be pretty" as angel regalia. 

The second step was to use the colors. The above girl chose to color only the angels. 

Others put color into their illustrations to represent the set...

"I wanted the ceiling to be blue, the walls brown, and the floor green. It's Hansel and Gretel in their house, and I drew a frog, because I like frogs." 

The book will be laminated and bound next week. I will be delighted to share their reactions when it happens!

So how have I proved you can teach everything through a project like this? I can use standards to show how they have been met. 

The Virginia Foundation Blocks for Early Learning include standards for visual arts: Create specific works of art based on a common theme, .and: Develop and use fine motor skills necessary to produce two...dimensional works of art. For Language Arts, they list: Use size, shape, color, and spatial words to describe people, places, and things.

I thought that these standards were addressed and then some, so I took a look at the Kindergarten SOL's for visual art and language arts as well: "The student will describe the sequence of steps in making a work of art", and: "The student will comprehend fiction by retelling familiar stories using beginning, middle and end. Also: Discuss characters, setting, and events."

When a teacher uses the arts to teach, standards are met naturally. In fact, standards are exceeded. 

Let's revisit the classroom to see what the children decided to do after they had digested the story of Hansel and Gretel thoroughly, acted it out, and made a book out of it. I asked them if they would like to invent their own version of the story. I suggested they add a helicopter, a la Gianni Rodari, , an idea that tickled them. They took turns speaking, and this was the result.

Once upon a time there was a boy and girl named Hansel and Gretel. They lived in a forest. A  helicopter came and took them to another part of the forest. They thought they were at their house but they were at a witch's house. The witch came down in a plane, not wires (like in the opera). Gretel saw something to distract the witch, a tunnel. Gretel freed Hansel and when the witch was coming out of the tunnel they pushed her into the oven. She came out as a witch cupcake! They ate it. Then they danced. 

The End.

I think they "got" the idea of stories, don't you?

How We Went from the Farm to a Phone Booth.

My totally cool colleagues created a phone booth for the children. How did we get to a phone booth? By emergent curriculum and the Project Approach.

Curriculum that emerges out of the interests of children and teachers has been very important to Early Childhood Education, at least in the preschool years when standardized testing has yet to make an appearance. It is a concept carefully explained in a multitude of textbooks from which I teach, and you can find many resources by googling the term. I want to describe a process from my own center, so that its example can be examined by others. Everything that emerges doesn't necessarily have to be extended or studied, but sometimes they are, and they become a project. In this case, a metamorphosizing project.


So how did a dramatic play area be transformed from a farm to a grocery store and then to a grocery store with an old fashioned (British-style) phone booth in it? Was this whimsy? Well,...yes, but read on!

In October we went on our annual field trip to the Potomac Vegetable Farm.. The children enjoyed a hayride, a walk through plantings both common and uncommon (who would have thought Coltsfoot was grown in a vegetable farm, but it is commonly used in stews in England. My teaching partner, Sue, told the children about eating it in wonderful, aromatic stews as a child growing up in Australia. We also ate cherry tomatoes straight off of the vines. Yum!)

The children enjoyed the pigs and hens. One girl almost fell into the pig pen by leaning as far out as she could. She wanted to pet a pig!
We ended with a picnic, and buying vegetables for our afternoon snack table at the center.

The dramatic play area quickly became a farm. The children made vegetables for planting, and used masking tape for rows. No, we did not use plastic vegetables. They are very colorful and fun, but they cut out a step necessary to our approach: The children need to do whatever they can to contribute to the project. We don't magically do it for them. They have ownership, an important part of self-esteem and self-efficacy. Fine motor skills get their due, without artificial activities to practice them.

After a while the farm idea got old. The children didn't play in it anymore and at the same time they began showing an interest in cooking and recipe writing. So...

I put out flower, oatmeal, sugar, salt, spices and water. I told them they needed to "write" a recipe before they cooked. So they drew pictures and invented spelling of the ingredients they wanted in their cooking, and "followed" the recipe on trays. We even put some of the concoctions into little cups, and put them in the fridge to see how they would change. The children predicted results ranging from actual cookies to "mush!". They wanted to cook again and again I decided that they needed to actually do the real thing. With Thanksgiving approaching we decided to make applesauce and pumpkin pudding. Of course they wrote recipes, first! The amazing thing about an emergent curriculum is that writing practice is painless. Children are motivated to use the tools of emergent and developmental writing when they have something they dearly want to do! Each child participates at his or her own level.

Pretend Cooking

Pretend cooking and actual cooking easily introduced the idea of where the crops go from the farm. Children are very much aware of grocery stores and what they can (and sometimes can't) get from them! They began bringing in empty cartons and containers from home. Our amazing teacher, Carrie, made shelving, and they were stocked by the children. We hauled out the toy cash registers. Did we use play money? NO! The children were more than happy to produce money at an alarming rate, and much of it had numbers on it (Ah ha! There's that emergent math!). They learned through trial and error that the money needed to fit the cash register drawers so they began cutting it down. All the while they were shopping and checking people out, taking their food "home" to the library and the loft. Social skills were tested through negotiating who would be checkers and who would shop. I suggested creating a crew of "Night Stockers" but that was voted down by my colleagues. The children never see the night stockers. They aren't a part of their shopping experience.

Which brings us to the phone booth...

When I was little, every grocery store had some form of public phone either inside or out. In Australia, Sue says there are still red, British-style phone booths. Phone booths are a part of our childhood memories, not of our students'. But we described them, each in turn, to the children, emphasizing that, once upon a time, people didn't carry phones in their pockets! There were public phones and people actually stood in line to use them. The children were entranced.

So Carrie and Sue made one out of cardboard, plastic, paint and duct tape. And the children began lining up to use it. It was and is a delight for all of us.

So here it is, a documentation of a series of projects and activities that emerged through the day to day life of a multi-age classroom of three and four year olds. I didn't even mention the books we read as part of our work with the children, but there were many. There was probably more we could have done. But having done this much has been a joy for everyone. And the emergence of curriculum will doubtless continue.

Becoming a Life-Long Learner

I will start backwards, since backwards design is the rage...
This is the Welcome Symbol of our stairwell ocean. He/she is an octopus made by children, stuffing shredded paper into stockings and gluing buttons on the tentacles to represent suckers (Wiki Answers says they are called that. I'm not making it up!). I suggested that, as younger children are starting in a week, we may have to give the octopus a smiley face, to make sure they aren't put off preschool permanently.

Seriously, though, the ocean in the stairwell is painstakingly designed and executed by creative teachers and eager children. The children take full ownership, calling it "Our Ocean". I shiver with delight when I hear this.

Since I do teach integrating the arts with curriculum, and emphasize project learning, this is a terrific example for me to document. What is at the top of the ocean? At the bottom? In the middle? What are these zones called? The stairwell answers and illustrates them answers. Our incredibly creative teacher, Carrie, made the adult signs for explaining to parents what we all have been teaching. There are various zones of depth that have differing amounts of light, and the sea life of each zone is adapted to that light. I do not intend to explain that here, but would rather show pictures and comment on the cross-curricular opportunities afforded by teaching this way. To have children just barely four and children turning five and a half participate in a project where each child has a creative role and can explain their own understanding of the learning appropriate to their developmental level is what we call "best practice" in the business. I call it amazing.

Our children used reference materials to illustrate their understandings. Sometimes they strove for accuracy and sometimes for whimsy. Being young children they usually combined the two to some degree.

Invented or developmental spelling is a literacy element in the project. Children sounded out the zone beside the adult explanations of each zone.

The most colorful and elaborate part of this exhibit is the coral at the top of the stairs. Children painted the coral and cut out sections. They helped tape the pieces up with teacher guidance. Fish and other sea life were added to show how they lived among the coral, which itself is alive.

The deep water has unusual sea life, not often shown in children's storybooks so it is helpful to portray it.

Jellyfish, made with coffee filters and either yarn or paper curls, were very popular with the children. They enjoyed both making and helping to hang them.

At the bottom of two flights of stairs lay the "trenches" where the life that can live with little light resides. Here we have an example of that life, an explanation, and a child's attempt to write the name of the zone. Accuracy isn't the point. The attempt to express meaning through letters and pictures is a hallmark of early and developmentally appropriate literacy practice.

I could go on, but I hope I've made my points. As I wrote in my first post about this project, children in the fifth grade are learning this material. And they are doing most excellent reading and writing, listening and discussing, I'm sure. When our children arrive at the fifth grade, they will have had this grounding experience of having been immersed in the life of the sea, a virtual world in the stairwell of their school. During the years between now and then we hope they will retain their keen love of participating in their own planning of projects, and that they will own their own learning. This is what we as educators want for our children. This is what makes a "life-long learner".

Learning to learn

A month and a half later, we are sitting in morning meeting, and I show our group a flyer from the Washington Opera's coming 2013-2014 season. On the front there is a color picture of the three ladies from Magic Flute confronting the (two-headed!) dragon over the fainted body of Tamino. I show this flyer to our children and they exclaim in joy--"Magic Flute! Look at that dragon!". A visiting former student asks, "Is he dead?". A student patiently  explains, "He's the prince Tamino". Another: "He fainted when the dragon came." They begin reminiscing about the performance, and who was whom, leaving the visitor baffled. She had never heard of this story that our four/five year old children know so intimately and recount with such enjoyment. And she is almost seven! 

I have written about the benefits of the project approach, and about how music connects with language in the brain to form richer concepts, and improve long term memory. But what about what I consider to be the dirty little secret in early childhood education? Many practitioners do not know how to or want to share the realms of art with young children because they themselves do not feel comfortable with them (the realms, that is). My adult students are usually enthusiastic about learning new ways to provide arts experiences, but many teachers have difficulty envisioning going beyond the traditional format of providing pre-cut pieces of paper or even coloring sheets to cut out and form scenes or stick puppets, or other "art". Thinking outside the box is possible but going there? Maybe not. Using classical music is considered great for "calming" children but giving them the experience of music and drama? Maybe not. If teachers think that learning about new children's authors is exciting and fun, they do not always think so about learning to appreciate opera and ballet. Yet young children are so drawn to these forms of art when the teacher is also open and enthusiastic about them.

What is needed is training that demonstrates to teachers that they can learn about anything new (as they expect their students to). Just as they learn about sea life to teach about it, they can learn about Mozart (start with Mozart's Magic Fantasy). They can explore Wikipedia and YouTube. They can talk to friends who are familiar with these theater arts and ask questions. Just as children ask questions to learn, so can we, the "big kids" who teach them. The teacher's brain must continue to make connections in order to be fresh and open to everything children can learn. And they must not underestimate their own ability to learn, anymore than they do their students'.

Our Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle

Cardboard and duct tape go far in our classroom. After some study of space and a visit to the Air and Space Museum, two talented teachers built a space shuttle for the dramatic play area. As I've written before, dramatic play is where children practice their new knowledge and connect it to what they already know. Using dramatic play for learning language, social skills, math, and every other area of development is the sine qua non of early childhood education. I teach about it in my course, Art, Music and Movement for Young Children.


In our center found objects are more valuable than commercial ones, so the control panels, the heat tiles, and whatever mechanical innards we need are made with old tubing, tape, bottle caps, clips, straws, cork, and anything else we can find. Commercial products do not teach little ones about process. Something already made reinforces the idea that everything you need you can buy online, and you aren't a part of a creative process. Children learn through the process of exploration and invention. As my friend, Rae Pica, wrote in her recent Huffington Post blog, learning about child development should be required for all early childhood (and late childhood!) educators. Children cannot learn through their senses, intellect, and emotions if they are treated as if they are older than they are.

In our space shuttle some of the control panels were created by the children, and some by ingenious adults using a colorful assortment of junk.
Children made art for mission control (the loft) and used developmental spelling to reflect on the theme. They worked under the loft with tools to "fix" any problems the shuttle had, and did "space walks" with tethers, wearing home-made oxygen tanks. Having read stories about space walks  the children understood the use of these devices.

Rae's blog suggests that there are still people out there who doubt the effectiveness of this type of project approach even though it has been the cutting edge of education for all ages for some time. If any of these folk spent some time talking to our children about space and rockets they would soon find out that children do learn through the power of projects that recognize the process of learning, and of development. Conversations with children who have experienced this type of learning should be required before parents send their children to school for the first time.

Adult-created panel

Answers to a question

Oxygen supply

Child-created panel

Creating in Three Dimensions

Three dimensional construction is a mainstay of the preschool curriculum. In my school we have a center for these small wooden blocks, a large muscle rug for the huge wooden blocks we call "hollow blocks", and we also stock plastic milk crates in two outdoor closets on our playground. Construction is very popular among both boys and girls. And since there has been an ongoing major construction project across the street, construction has become even more meaningful. The children see the steps of real building going on in their neighborhood.

In this photo the children have constructed a zoo. We haven't gone to the zoo (to be arranged) but when we brought out the plastic animals the children saw their opportunity and took it! Their passion is intense. They cooperate in ways that are amazing for three and four year old children. They don't stop and ask why we have blocks. The reasons to them are self-evident.

Why do we use blocks in preschool? Do children play with blocks in first, second or third grade? Why aren't we sitting them down and making them do workbooks? Why aren't we asking them to make Winter pictures of snowmen since so many children's books equate snow with Winter, regardless of the fact that many regions of the world have no snow at all? Why aren't we drilling them on letters and numbers, rewarding them with stickers for correct answers?

Because we know that what the children are passionate about are also interests that lead to a broader and richer development of their talents and abilities. What children learn through block play is how to manipulate three-dimensional objects in space. They learn to visualize what they want to accomplish before they even take out a single block. The more practice they have, the more accurate their visualizations become. Over time their creations become more complex and intricate, not to mention surprisingly skilled. They are practicing Spatial intelligence. Schools beyond preschool have traditionally neglected it (see the above link). These skills are devalued by traditional schools when they could become an integral part of a child's future. This is a vacuum in education that needs to be filled.

Kindergarten, first and second grade are still considered early childhood by all experts in the field. Yet recess drops to almost zero, children are asked to sit still way too much for their growing bodies and intelligences, and they are asked to do work and take tests that have no relevance to their actual futures. Learning is dynamic. Children are active learners who have all of Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences in their growing brains and bodies. Let's continue to exploit these intelligences into the early elementary school years. They will learn to read and write and compute, but they will do so in an organic way that includes engagement and interest in truly creative work 

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.

Dem Bones: Our Fabulous Field Trip

How do you take sixteen four-year-olds and eight parents to the Smithsonian? By metro, of course! We decided to finish our project on bones by visiting the exhibit, Written in Bone . The advantages of working with children in a center located near a metro stop can't be exaggerated. The trip was easy, the learning monumental. 

We prepared the children with personal metro maps easily printed from the internet. They consulted their maps frequently and asked questions such as, "How many stops until...?" and, "What's the next stop called?", all while hugging poles or sitting in seats, giggling, as the train moved and rocked, . Including this practical literacy element made my professional heart quiver. Embedded Language Arts! Project learning! The children weren't thinking of such things. They were learning and using their learning outside of the traditional methods of worksheets and flash cards. We had examined deer and cattle bones. We'd played physician's office and hospital with xrays and a light board, leg braces and slings. We'd created art, both small and large, representing our own skeletons. Now was the time to see what the professional anthropologists did with bones.

We reconnoitered on the Mall, a sweeping vista that mocks the usual meaning of the word in American culture, and walked to the Natural History Museum. I won't describe the marvelous exhibits to you. Visit the museum or its website for the details on those. Suffice it to say the children were enraptured, and they impressed their parents with their new vocabulary words and knowledge, as well as their burning curiosity about every aspect of the exhibit. They greeted the adventure of eating in the museum cafeteria with equal enthusiasm. That's the rapture of early childhood.

We will return to the human body this year. Already the children express interest in muscles, ligaments, and organs through their book sharing. The Magic School Bus and the Human Body has become a popular book in our small library. For now we say adieu to our project. I encourage you who teach young children in traditional programs to embrace a more project-oriented approach. The learning goes on and on.