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

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! 

A little Reggio, a little Vygotsky: A snapshot of how to provide arts experiences for young children.

We discussed in "staff meeting", which is our version of the Reggio Emilia approach to teacher collaboration, how we wanted a new set of materials for our art shelf. This shelf is an array of materials children can use on their own to create art. We had sequins, buttons, pipe cleaners and paper out and decided we needed to go natural for a while. There was a lively discussion about how, using natural materials could end up being colorless, or at least multiple shades of brown. So it was decided that some paint would make it into the mix.

We brought a tray of paints and fat brushes outside. Children gathered thin sticks and brought them to the picnic table for painting. "That one's mine", one girl told me later. "I'm going to use it in my art". Luckily there were several deep blue sticks so that she ultimately could claim whichever one looked like "hers".

On the lowest shelf of the art center inside we placed small squares of corrugated cardboard. Above that are bowls with seeds saved from years past that never made it into the ground. Tiny shells and stones, some of which I brought from the Jersey Shore invite children to touch and examine them. I added non-toxic "Tacky glue" so that the heavier items would adhere. Children worked with intense concentration on constructing their art with some help from teachers. Here are several samples.

I am looking forward to seeing what the children do with these materials, and what else they decide to bring to the mix. Building upward isn't something they think of instinctively and my teaching partner, Sue, taught some of them to "go up". By the end of the month I know we'll have a collection of masterpieces. 

Art in preschool is always process art. I have written about the importance, though, of demonstrating  new ways to use materials so that they learn by example. Vygotsky wasn't against this approach. On the contrary, he said that children learn through social interaction. How they express themselves depends on the quality of the environment, and that includes the quality of interactions with more experienced children and adults. Adults can give children permission to explore and delve more deeply. Sometimes they need just that little push to go further than they thought they could. 

I don't recommend coercion or taking over, but the reason we as early childhood educators say, "Great job!" all the time is because we want children to feel good about their work, and fear discouraging them. But we have neglected the needs of children to be taken seriously. We give them encouragement to pursue their ideas at our center, and offer new and different ways of looking at things. Children will benefit to the degree with which they are developmentally ready. That's all we have the right to hope for!

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 

Music and Movement: Inextricably Intertwined

How amazing it is to put music on during centers, put out a tote full of scarves, and watch children swarm the bag for the colorful banners of movement they would like to wield! If you are lucky and very sneaky you will be able to catch one of them in the act of finding their center and expressing the feelings evoked by the music, as I did in the photo. I have taught college students from several excellent texts that each emphasize a different aspect of what we call "Music and Movement", but these two concepts have no separate meanings to young children. They are inextricably intertwined. In Rae Pica's book, Experiences in Movement, she demonstrates the connection between music skills and movement skills. If the music is pizzacato--plucked strings suggesting light, quick movement, like in Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, Playful Pizzacato Movement--children can use movement skills like hopping or jumping. The creative movement becomes perfect for integrating science curriculum concepts about grasshoppers or fireflies blinking on and off! If the music is legato, or smooth and connected--like in Mozart's Rondo in A minor, K 511--children can use movement skills like sliding and swaying. These movements show the smooth movements of fish in water, or birds in the sky. 

Once I played this last lovely piece for my fours so they could move smoothly and freely. One little boy sighed and said, "I love this song...". How glorious to bring together the beauty and power of great music for young bodies to give expression to their innermost feelings through movement.