Learning sequencing skills through the Arts

I want to tell you about a project that started with a child's need to understand the concept of sequence. There are eight hundred ways to teach this concept but this one involves many children, puppetry, storytelling, and art.

Older preschoolers love stories and understand so much about what is going on in them, even though they don't all communicate what they know. If you ask a child about a story you will hear an episodic account, and if you ask for a story you will get something like a dream or a joke. Perhaps a combination of both! If a child does have a story to tell it will include elements of other stories and loved elements of their own lives. You might hear a beginning, middle and end, or you might not! (Joke: "Here's my story: 'Once upon a time...THE END!!'" Insert gales of laughter here!)

Sue wanted to do Three Bears,  and puppets. I wanted to do the children's own versions of Three Bears, and a book of all of those versions with illustrations. We ended up with both.

Sue has a rap she does of the story of the Three Bears. All of our children adore this and it was a good place to start because music cements learning in many different centers of the brain.  The children enjoyed several good versions of the story in book form, especially Byron Barton's simple picture book which we placed in the library for morning reads with departing parents. Repeating the story allowed the children to internalize its structure. I gave a short lesson in Morning Meeting on how every story has a "who, what, when, and where". I explained that each of them could write their own version of the story of the three bears and that all they had to do was change the who, the what, etc. and voila! They would have their own story. I wanted to teach beginning, middle and end, but wasn't satisfied with any of the methods I saw online.

I woke up the following morning with an image in my head for teaching story structure--the head of a horse was the beginning, the middle was the middle of the story and then end...well, as Sue said, the end was the "horse's ass"! I drew a large horse in the meeting area for the children and continued to take story dictations. The array of stories, with characters ranging from three chickens to three elephants, and interlopers ranging from vampire bats to pigs, was staggering. Few outside of early education know how four and fives can generate so many versions of an old fairy tale that everyone knows.

Sue, meanwhile, was asking children to choose which of their characters they would like to represent as puppets. These were made from scratch out of materials brought from home. We used no models or lessons in how to create the puppets. In keeping with our Reggio philosophy, we provided materials and consultations. No two puppets were alike, and each was a recycler's dream! Baby food containers, plastic bottles, paper towel tubes and even beer bottle caps became torsos, legs, arms, and eyes. Our idea was to ask each small group to write a story including each puppet, thereby asking the children to attempt to leap their characters from their own stories to the group story. After this the puppet show would commence, creating one of two culminating projects. The other would be an illustrated book of the children's parodies of the Three Bears. I asked each child to create a drawing with markers of a scene from their story. This helped with the sequencing objective because I needed to communicate to each child that they needn't draw the whole story, but just one part of it. With coaching they rose to the occasion eagerly!

In the end we had a colorful book of Three Bear parodies for our library, and a hilarious puppet show in school. My group's story was totally collaborative, and I worked to help them achieve their own goals, making some conciliatory suggestions when no one wanted their character to be "the bad guy".  In the course of the creative process situations from several stories the children had studied appeared in this work. Perhaps you will notice them, having read my blog about other lessons. Here is my group's story using their "Three Bears" characters:

"Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a house in the woods with his pets: A panda, a bear, and a chicken. They lived all together in a tree house. A hungry wolf came by and started sniffing around their tree so they lowered a rope to catch him by his tail. "Got him," the man said. "He'll never eat us, now", said the others. The wolf said, "If you let me down, I won't eat you and I'll be your friend!" So they let him go and made friends with him. They decided to go to the beach. While they were there they met a duck who gave them a tour of the beach. They saw surfboards and went surfing. A little fish jumped onto their surfboard and started gasping for air. They all shoved him back into the water. "Thank you, " he said. Then the man, panda, bear, chicken and wolf went home to their tree house. The fish and duck made friends and played on the beach. The End."

My group created a story with a beginning, middle, and end that included characters, settings, and structure. Learning through the arts, being immersed in an environment of literacy and creativity, they easily used their learning to create something new. How good is that?

Learning Naturally

Outdoor learning is the name of the game at my center. We have an amazing array of possibilities linking classroom to playground. Our playhouses are cobbed. We have piping all around the fences so that we can attach a hose to any outlet for making wet sand and mud. Our shed, also cobbed, has a garden growing on its roof to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter, and a gutter system for dripping rain into a rain barrel! Our children are encouraged to get wet and dirty, not discouraged from it.

Last week we put out easels. We brought out paint, glue and water for the children to mix and encouraged them to collect natural materials to include in their art. Using natural materials in art is not new. When I was first aider for my daughter's Girl Scout troop we encouraged the girls to find natural materials to make centerpieces for the tables on camp-outs. Usually this consisted of a jumble of leaves and pinecones but it served its purpose: Natural beauty arranged as artistic expression. I was skeptical of the artistic worth of this enterprise but now I am coming to see how amazingly this practice encourages children to explore nature, satisfy their curiosity about the sensory qualities of sand, dirt, leaves, plants and sticks. It's sensory learning but more important it contributes to a sense of connection with nature.

The approach at our center blends the outdoor learning movement with Reggio-inspired teaching and learning quite "naturally". Which among our outdoor artists will grab hold of the idea and run with it? How will our teaching staff continue to provide opportunities for these particular children to realize their creative vision? These are liberating questions for teachers who are tired of inventing artificial learning activities with no relationship to a child's reality.

Our teaching is more labor-intensive than paper and pencil teaching. While we have cupboards to hold many different types of materials, including traditional buckets and shovels but also including tubing and pipes, we must haul many inside materials outside, such as paint and paper, brushes and paint cups. What we provide outside is also always an important question. Never satisfied with what we have, we look for better ways to provide the necessary environment for children to work for long periods of time building, creating, and exploring.

We meet daily to discuss who is doing what both inside and out. We don't always agree on how to go about things, but we come to consensus rather quickly. In early childhood, which spans children's development through age eight and therefore through third grade, can traditional schools meet the challenge of providing rich learning experiences through the natural world while using computers and textbooks at the same time? Can teachers collaborate to follow the child's lead? I believe so, and am sure someone will tell me who is already doing it. I am eager to hear from you!

Integrating Language Arts

Sue and I did a three-day brain gym training ("Brain Gym 101"). We are interested in whole brain learning, as our field has long espoused teaching "The Whole Child". As far back as 2004, when Educational Leadership devoted a whole issue to this special subject, I have tried to teach children as whole individuals. In the Early Childhood field we teach that a child learns through play, and that play involves all aspects of the brain and body. Play is the serious work of childhood. I maintain that play can also be the serious work of adulthood, if by play you mean being alive and creative. 

In a previous blog post I recounted an encounter with a graduate of our progressive preschool program who was  now in a (good) public kindergarten. He marveled at the difference between his experience in our program and his present one, where he was told he couldn't play because he "had to learn". More recently a former student visited our playground and told me he had only "fifteen" minutes morning and afternoon to play outside. Our children are in for a rude shock when they enter the "real" world of education.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course, but, as teachers have lamented for years, only non-educators need apply when policy is made. These policies are forced on schools and schools must respond with less movement, more worksheets, more focused lessons on content areas (Language Arts, Math, Science, Social Studies).

Above is a picture of a plate crudely crafted on our carpet with that magnificent magic tool of early childhood, masking tape. The children were interested in food preparation and (surprise!) eating, so we decided to sneak some content into the mix by introducing the new dietary guidelines. You can see that words are printed in each quarter-plate for the food categories (Content areas: Language Arts; Math). The first day I asked the children individually what food they wanted to "be" (no sweets, boo hoo) and then invited them to stand in the appropriate quarter. The children debated among themselves where each of them should stand, which made this collaborative (Content area: Social Studies). The next day I had laminated pictures of food for them to place in the quarters. We discussed cooked and raw foods (Content area: Science). In each whole group activity the children were moving, talking, listening, and reading. Oh, and learning, too. 

I believe that for Sue and myself the Brain Gym training reminded us of the importance of movement for teaching the whole child. Sometimes teachers fall asleep. That is, we go into automatic pilot and do what we usually do, such as talking..talking...talking. That's when we need to wake up in our own bodies and teach from "The Whole Teacher".  If would be excellent if we could send policy-makers to Brain Gym training, or any other workshop on developmentally appropriate teaching and learning, so that they could "wake up" to their own learning potential. They might concede that whole-brain learning is right for children, too.

A Student's Feedback

I so enjoyed teaching Art, Music & Movement for Young Children this semester. I teach it often, but for some reason this time was special. I think having my blog available to students to see how I teach the arts myself helped make what I told them more credible. I wasn't just teaching out of a text. Working in an arts-oriented program also helped me do the best work I could which served as a model for them. One of my college students was so intrigued by my presentations about my work "in the trenches" that she came to observe our program to take notes for one she is forming for her church.

In a final exam one student expressed her enjoyment and learning from this course by saying, "This class taught me a lot because there were manydifferent topics that we talked about. I had no clue about them or justhadn’t realized them. I’m really glad I took this class. Prof. Multop was agreat teacher and she taught this class very well. It was full of greatexperiences and activities. My favorite in particular was when our class got upand listened to different types of cultural music and we danced around in acircle. It was a lot of fun!"

What more could a professor want?

Project learning: Peter and the Wolf

Thank goodness I work in a center that values children's inherent passion for and interest in learning through the arts! Where would I be if I didn't? I would be creating lessons to make seasonal crafts each month, Jack-O-Lanterns in October, Turkeys in November, Christmas trees and Menorahs in December.  Instead we watched the opera Hansel and Gretel in December, and began a unit on music and sound exploration after Christmas that is still going strong.

We began with exploration of sounds, including jars of varying amounts of water that the children tapped to hear similarities and differences in pitch and timbre. Musical instruments were mixed with boxes, Boomwackers, and paper plates on an exploration table. My teaching partner brought in real band instruments for the children to try, and my director brought her collection of world instruments and made a presentation. Parents and siblings came to share their own instrumental talents. I contacted the local high school band director and asked if we could bring sixteen four/five year olds to observe a band rehearsal. Soon we were walking to the high school with parent helpers, and watching a musical education program created just for us! The children were enraptured. They already knew so much, and displayed their knowledge when asked questions by the band director. This experience helped the children own and consolidate their new knowledge, which led to the next phase: Peter and the Wolf.

While I had some misgivings about the length of the piece, the children scuttled those quickly. Listening to the story, moving to the music, they were fully present to the work. They created simple headbands that served as costume designations and began spontaneously rehearsing this half-hour drama every morning before morning meeting, during activity time. All I had to do was put on the CD. There were arguments about blocking and characterization, and settling of differences through more rehearsal. My partner and I knew then that we had a "hit" and went further with the children. We planned a staged version of Peter and the Wolf to perform for the younger children, the threes and fours.

I can't say that everything went smoothly. Having been in opera and concert work before getting into education, I didn't expect it. There were the ego crises we solved, for instance. How to put on Peter and the Wolf, a play with six major parts and an indeterminate number of hunters. We solved our problems by asking each child who wanted to play a popular character (Peter, for instance) to share the role, dividing up the program into sections. Surprisingly, because, I believe, we included the children in the ongoing trouble-shooting, they easily accepted solutions that gave them a chance to be who they wanted to be. We created a tree from paper and indoor climbing equipment. The bird could climb up and be away from the wolf's jaws. We used blue paper for the duck pond. Our scene design sufficed for the children to imagine themselves in the play. My partner and I debated how to do some of the "stage business". I wanted to mime the part where Peter attaches the rope to the wolf's tail, but Sue won out, using a rope and clips to make that part of the play more real to the children. It worked well.

What especially impressed me was not only the self-assurance the children demonstrated, but also the attentiveness and sensitivity they displayed for the changing moods of the music and narrator's words. The bird flapped, the duck quacked, Peter skipped and danced, each to their own musical themes. When they music changed, their bodies reflected each cadence and tempo. We did not tell them to do anything specific, in keeping with our philosophy of education that insists on creative authenticity for our children.

What did these children learn? Did we "do" math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies? Not in the traditional method of separating skills and inventing activities to target them. These areas were naturally embedded in the project. They learned and practiced such math concepts as seriation, patterns, and one-to-one correspondence. Language Arts became part of the mix through speaking, listening, reading (the book about the story) and writing (captions of pictures they drew of their favorite scenes. Science came into it when the scenery fell and we problem-solved how to keep it up! Our children displayed inventiveness in all stages of the project along with a strong motivation to master the necessary skills. In early childhood education how can we as teachers offer anything less?

As for the younger children who served as the audience, after the show they asked their teachers, "When can we do a play?"

The arts as cultural identity.

This is a child's mask from Nigeria. Children love masks as much as they love to pretend. We say that children use pretend play to consolidate knowledge, practicing skills. They use it to become larger than themselves. The arts throughout human history have facilitated people's knowledge of themselves, and of who they want to be. Children do the same.

We have been working with sound, have graduated to instruments, and now have come full circle to our original theme, not documented here: Visual art. My group of children created "talking drums" by designing and then reproducing their designs on paint drums with multi-color sharpies. My hope is that we will use these drums to call children to singing circle, using drumming as a way of communication. The art on the drums signifies the personal expression of my group and their communication of who they are.

My teaching partner wants to do the sense of taste next. Food is another way people express themselves and their culture through folk art. Art can be more than decorative. The exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, Central Nigeria Unmasked, would be a good field trip for us. I think we are headed that way!

As many of you know, I teach Art, Music and Movement for Young Children at Northern Virginia Community College. I have just started another eight-week Hybrid course and a student posted in her journal this comment, which I will share with you.

"I can't believe what an eye opening experience this class has been for me!! I am taking this course for professional development to keep my teaching certification up to date. It just shows that no matter your age, career, or life experiences we truly need to keep growing and learning. I have gained so much knowledge of the arts and the importance of cultivating art and creativity in young children in the last 2 weeks…unbelievable!

Art is everywhere. It surrounds us on a daily basis. Having read the text chapters, Gail's blogs and watching videos, I realize I have been really lacking in my own use to explore the arts more with my students and with my own young children. I actually feel guilty, as if I have missed years of opportunities to be a better teacher and mom. So, it's time for a change! Just yesterday, my son came home with an art project that he called "horrible". It really made me sad to hear him say that. He told me the teacher said it wasn't right, that he did not follow the patterns correctly. Now, I am mad. My son is already very critical of his work, and hearing this from a teacher just made it worse. So, I told my son "Art can never be wrong. It is you expressing yourself and that makes mommy happy". I also added that I loved his use of blues and pinks and how he made it a swirl pattern. In the past, I would have given the usual reply of "That's great, cool, or pretty".

All I can say is,  "you CAN teach an old dog new tricks". " All I can say is, this is why I teach!