WARMTH: Practical Issues of the Cold

Dear Families,
In the Waldorf Schools' early childhood tradition WARMTH is highly valued.  I wanted to share an interesting article about how this applies to the growth and change of the children. I hope you enjoy the read.  It has some helpful suggestions, as well as an interesting philosophy. Click here:
WARMTH

Thanks - Giving - Thanks

This is the beginning of a season in which giving thanks must GROW and GROW. Much of our culture goes full speed ahead now from giving thanks to giving stuff, thereby -- at best!-- compelling more thanks. We will see gratitude challenged by greed and giving challenged by getting. The commercialism of the holiday season will likely be challenging for our children -- and for all of us.

Each day at school we are practicing and modeling this notion of THANKS. THANKFULNESS.
Our snack preparations include the "thanks poem" which you can find at the end of this blog. Then, often at snack we have a whole conversation about thankfulness. I see how abstract this concept is for our 3's, and how much practice it takes to work it out. I believe it is a practice (or even a game!) we can't possibly repeat enough. Expressions of gratitude cultivate feelings of gratitude -- and vise versa as the wheel begins to spin within: feelings of gratitude compel (and with practice, have built up the tools for...) expressions of gratitude! This is so crucial in the values-teaching of young children within a culture that takes so much for granted. Dare I remind us all, by example, we teach. Make your daily gratitude visible to your children.

As gift-giving begins to flood the cultural agenda, I wanted to open up the topic with you all and invite sharing. It is so such a tricky time, and easily can trigger intensified emotions in all. I think it is worth sharing strategies and ideas about how to face the highly commercial season with sanity and our children's learning experience as our guiding goals.

How to make GIVING a thrilling and involved experience -- instead of just putting children in the role of "wanting" and "receiving" gifts -- is one challenge worth much collaborative thinking. Along this line, I'd like to invite you all to consider (and even propose) some "community service projects" that we could focus on together as a learning experience and curriculum focus. 

SOUP time -- Time of Thanks

As it starts getting chilly in this fall season, let's make soup. I look forward to children getting to chop vegetables and put them into a common pot to bring the story of "Stone Soup" to life. Then with stones and water as the base, we will all contribute to the soup and be able to eat it later.

I request that each family prepare some vegetables at home by semi-cooking them in 10 chunks -- so they are easy for children to cut, and each child can cut every veggie, with adults role-modeling. A few vegetables are soft enough to not precook, like mushrooms and zuchini. Each child will have a small cutting board and a lovely wooden knife and will be busy with many diverse veggies. To be honest, we do not need to make a large amount, so you don't need to bring a lot of the vegetable you choose to bring. Just 10 reasonably choppable pieces. Imagine that amount times 8 contributers -- and your child's veggie appetite. Make sure to label the container you deliver your veggies in, both so we can thank each child and their family appropriately, and also so you can get your items back after. Ok?

Requests for cooking the soup:
1. I'd love to have a parent volunteer stay and be in charge of the actual cooking of the soup. Please speak up if this works for you.
2. If someone has a HOT PLATE or a small crock pot they are willing to bring, speak up. That would allow the cooking to stay downstairs.

Note: no class on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, of course.

Nurturing Play Expansively & Conflict Resolution

The fall season is here! We are jumping in piles of leaves in the back yard and looking up at the dramatically baring branches. We are singing earthy songs.

In play it is endlessly surprising, indeed epic, to experience it's unfolding of sound, movement and meaning.  Inevitably, cultural characters find their way into the children's play quite often, be they: superheros, cinderella, bad guys, etc. These names become powerful words, said emphatically. Interestingly enough, at this age, they are spoken with only some hints of meaning.  While we may see the commercial character in our minds, they may be inventing as they go, a character to fit into the powerful name they have picked up on.  In fact, as a teacher watching play ensue and not interjecting any character-build-up, and not affirming any of the "knowledge or stereotype" of the character, I leave the character to be defined through play. I observe that these spoken names are embodied in play by a much more open 3-year-old's invention-of-meaning. Not affirming the built in stereotypes of these characters is important.  It opens the character-names,  to the mind of the child, through which they build their character that meets their own needs, expressive hopes, conflicts.

Conflict arises and resolves constantly. Sometimes needing help. We begin each day now with an intention of gentle hands, and gentle words. How to children can assert their HOPES in conflicting interactions is a big theme I make space for these days, and help to guide. The "NO" voice is important for creating a boundary and protecting themselves, but at this age I see the fierce refusal of the NO-voice hurting the feelings of the children being addressed. Of course, this hurtful quality fuels conflict instead of resolving it. Applying a keystone tool of conflict resolution, we can learn to seek the YES that is inherent in the NO, yet often hiding behind the NO. The YES voice expresses what we are HOPING FOR when our safety has been established. This takes our "No, don't do that!" into "I want to be treated more gently." or "I want to be alone right now." or "I'd like to keep this toy I am playing with for a longer time." When a child who is establishing a boundary (NO) is listened to for their hopes, this also dispells the angry build up of energies between the children.

Red light, stop!

We are playing red-light/green-light outside, and inventing moves for many other colors of lights in the game.  This was their idea, which takes it way beyond the realm of traffic visions, into movement paths and rhythmic dances.  There is no lid to play.

RED light, stop! 

GREEN light, go! 

YELLOW light, slow!

BLUE light, fly!

ORANGE light, jump!

PINK light, spin!

PURPLE light, balance!

WHITE light, float!

BROWN light, wiggle!

BLACK light, hide! 

....

Sarah with her Uke

We are singing Baby Baluga in the deep blue sea.

Our tree

This tree is in our back yard. 

We say hello to it each day, upon coming out to play.  

We observe it's changes over the seasons. 

The tree is our teacher.

We breath in the oxygen it creates.

We offer it our exhale. 

It thanks us.

We help one another breathe.

Classroom Cooking

We are used to making bread together daily.  Kneading the dough, cooking it, eating it.

Today we made pizzas! This extended cooking work is pretty exciting with the children.

The children worked in a focused step-by-step process to create their own pizza, and then got to eat their creations for snack. Bread making sets the stage for this work well, but pizza-making adds many layers of action on top of our basic dough-kneading process. Instead of making round doughballs for rolls, we made large flat circles of dough. Then each child spread Nora's delicious sauce around their circles with our lovely new wooden spoons. We used our "spidery fingers" to sprinkle cheese. Mushrooms and zucchini are easy-to-cut vegetables so we each used butter knives to safely cut these into small pieces and decorate our pizza circles with them. Sarah and "her helpers," Asha and Phoebe, put the pizza in the oven.

Each day now, two children go upstairs with Sarah to be her helpers, giving them a more complete vision of the baking process. Other helpers wash the bread-kneading table in our classroom. This chance to be helpers builds new friendship teams.

Parents, I want to encourage you all to include your children in home cooking. One important suggestion about that is to work at a table height they can safely reach.  Another is to give them a task they can play at, not controlling the exploration of it, except through the eyes of safety needs.

Attis & Finn cooking

Theo managing soil, and discovering the creatures within it

Asha & Kaz washing dishes

Kaz and Leila, exploring the huge tube

Self-organized bus

Finn coaches handstands he learned at LAVA

Rapt Listeners

Grannie Annie's Observations of our Group

This is a letter from Finn's Grannie Annie, who visited us for Squash Soup Day last week:

I want to thank Audrey for the opportunity to spend the morning at your school. I thoroughly enjoyed it! I have worked as a visiting nurse in a maternal child health program/parent-child center in Vermont for 22 years. Part of my job allows me to work in our preschool program. So it was especially interesting to me to see how you do things in your preschool.

There were many things that impressed me, but I’ll just mention a few. I think Audrey does a wonderful job of creating a feeling of safety for children. This is so important as they begin their long school careers. They will be comfortable venturing forth in the future from such a secure first experience. The predictable rituals and routines, the gentleness of the teacher-child interactions, the effort made to help children feel a part of a little community--all of this allows children to relax and be open to learning, This is a strong foundation for whatever comes next.

I loved the organic way stories are created around the children’s experiences. The use of familiar puppet figures invites them to enter the stories (which are really about them) and practice their own problem solving skills. I like the use of simple open-ended materials. When children use simple objects--for example, pieces of fabric and blocks to represent themes in their play, it builds creativity and symbolic thinking-the precursors to literacy.

Of course I loved how the big squash from my garden was adopted by the school and eventually inspired an exploration of seeds, soup making, and reading the story Stone Soup. I was impressed by how every child stayed in the circle and listened to the reading of the entire book.

Sarah’s music is a wonderful contribution. I was impressed with how often she found ways to bring music and song into what was happening in the morning. She did this in such a natural, spontaneous way, as if music were just one of the ways people naturally communicate joy and fun in the course of a day. I would like to steal her away to Vermont!

Thank you, Audrey, for the opportunity to spend a morning in a very special classroom.
Anne Damrosch

Stone Soup with Grannie Annie

Happy Bones

This week we celebrate our strong skeletons.
I call this our Happy Bones theme.
It helps children digest with a positive view the imagery all around us for Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos that can otherwise feel perhaps quite frightening. We read a story about our skeleton and touch our bones through our skin and muscles. We dance shapes by moving our bones. A special anatomy book I brought shows the children pictures of the bones inside of other living animals. While bones make up our human skeletons, it's fun to notice what helps other things hold their shape. Wood might be the skeleton of the tree for example.