Stories and Child Development: A Happy Marriage!

How do stories and child development intersect? 

Reading stories to children is often recommended to parents as a way to encourage later literacy. It also promotes healthy emotional development through the sharing of special time with parents. A parent reading provides terrific role-modeling for children--"my Dad/Mom reads! I will, too, when I'm bigger!"

Parents and grandparents telling stories should also be encouraged. Nothing in my early life do I remember more fondly, and with more enjoyment, than the stories my Greek grandfather, a survivor of Turkish genocide, told me about his early life as a boy in Asia Minor. The stories were always about a young boy who braved dangers all alone while running between towns selling goods for his father. Wolves, bulls, bears were all easily defeated by my grandfather's trusty knife. I thought he was the most amazing man who ever lived. In adulthood I learned that a Greek grandfather traditionally has a similar array of stories that he tells to his grandchildren--none of them true!  This influenced my teaching practice. I tell stories as well as read them. Some of them are even true!

The story language children hear from adults enriches their literacy. It gives them a structure that lodges inside their hearts and minds, helping them comprehend how a story works, Not only does it have a beginning, middle, end, or who, what, when, where, why. A story has a sense of conflict, and resolution of conflict. These are literacy conventions taught in elementary school. Children also learn about how others solve their problems, how other humans see reality and each other. Stories heard together bind children to each other and create a shared context for future discussions, or future stories.

When children go to kindergarten how many of them have created stories already? I don't mean captions on pictures, or vignettes. I mean progressively more complex and sophisticated stories that interest and entertain their peers? Vivian Paley, the most deservedly revered teacher/researcher/story teller in recent years, wrote about children writing their own stories and then acting them out. I have done this with young children for many years. I ask them to illustrate their stories as well, and we post them for all parents to see when they come to pick them up.

When I read children's stories aloud to the whole group, the look of pride and confidence in the eyes of the author is worth the price of admission. They glow.

Today I experimented with a new (for me) technique. See if you think this would work for you...

We bathroom after both outside times at our center. One of us usually reads to those who are waiting their turn. But each time we go to sit for stories some children scramble to sit in the teachers chair. Today I asked, "I notice that someone always wants to sit in the teacher's chair. Why do you think that happens?" One boy responded, "Maybe we want to tell stories". So I made a list of the children, checking them off one by one, as they came to sit on the teacher's chair and tell a story. Any story, but originals preferred. As each child came to sit and tell a short story, the children listened respectfully, with minimal horsing around (they ARE four). Spontaneously they began to applaud.

Development of social, emotional, and language skills is an important part of this practice. But what is more important to me is the development of a shared sense of community. As they say in Reggio, which I've written about earlier in this blog, everyone is a protagonist. Everyone is their own story, and their stories connect with each other.

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?

 

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

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. 

Preserving the old, preparing the new.

This is one of the WPA mosaic tiles built into the walls of the North End Pavilion at Spring Lake (NJ) Beach. That pavilion was totally destroyed by Hurricane Sandy. The tiles, we heard, had been removed for safe-keeping before the storm. The new pavilion is an almost exact replica of the old one, which is such a joy to those of us who thought that a new construction would be a new look. Even better, there are replicas of the old tiles in place. To those of us who love the Jersey Shore, this was the right thing to do.

New and original architecture, and new art are good for culture and society. New and original people are, too! Once the WPA employed artists were the breath of fresh air, the innovators, the vanguard of art in the early 20th century. When I think of how the government actually financed them, I feel such pride that the U.S. Government saw employment of artists as equally important as employment of steel workers or machinists. This attitude towards the arts has not been carried along into the new century.

Ironically, teaching through the arts has been shown in research to be the most integrating path to healthy, mature and consistent learning. I find that using the arts as a pathway motivates students to bring all of their own "human capital" to their efforts. Just as those early WPA artists, paid by Uncle Sam, threw their best efforts into working with other craftsmen to produce useful and beautiful buildings, our students will work through the arts to produce beautiful "products" that demonstrate what they have learned. New and original people are the human product of this approach. 

Teaching through arts integration is rigorous. Students must address learning standards in both the arts and in other subjects, such as history, literature, science and math. They use their hands, bodies, voices, feelings AND intellect in the learning process. This is what we call, in the Early Childhood field, integrated curriculum. There are many ways teachers can learn this approach, one being at the Kennedy Center's CETA (Changing Education Through the Arts) program. Becoming a CETA school means getting teaching artists into your building. Wolf Trap also works with schools to train teachers to teach through the arts. There are many online resources ask well. Here is one example of a digital documentation of teaching both visual art and mathematics to kindergartners, and here are examples of lessons for grades 5 through 8 addressing both social studies and language arts.

An old building is not always worth replicating. Certainly old teaching methods aren't, either. We need to teach to the whole person, preserving the best the arts and education have to offer. Let's not ignore this challenge.

Peinture en Plein Air

Ou, la la! The story of Pigasso and Mootisse continued today!

We have been experimenting with colors indoors, mixing black and while, black, white and green, and the usual primary colors into secondary colors on paper with tempera. The children delight in "discovering" combinations. Some already know that blue and yellow make green. They've read Little Blue and Little Yellow for some time. Fewer know The Color Kittens, but are veterans of science experiments where other combinations have been tried. I asked my small group what they would like to do that the characters in When Pigasso met Mootisse did and one little boy suggested painting the fence!

Instead, we painted a big piece of cardboard.

I brought out a variety of bright colors, along with white and black. The children took turns being painters and art critics. The art critics were to tell the painters what they liked about what they were doing and what colors they saw evolving. This was slightly challenging since there were other children playing on the playground while they were critiquing their friends' art! Considering the distraction, they did well. 

Next we added leaves. This girl decided that, rather than stick leaves to the paint, she would make sure the leaves stuck by painting them individually. This worked well. 

The task took longer than I imagined it would, and so we stowed the painting in the shed to continue with tomorrow. We will see what transpires!