K-1 Parents Night July 29, 2010
We meet in garden to say hello and set up the sitters with any children.
We enter classroom as the students will, one at a time, greeted individually, by name, with a handshake and smile. This ritual begins the transition from home life to classroom life, gives each child acknowledgement, gives the teacher a first look at the child’s being that day and teaches important social skills.
Form a circle on the floor with individual mats. The mats are kept on a shelf accessible to the children, but whose other contents --which they are free to play/work with later-- are hidden by silks. This keeps the room from being visually distracting and makes clean up simpler. Children do not need many playthings, and the simpler the better. The mats represent personal space-- a visual boundary-- to contain the body, and later in the day, any chosen work or play.
The morning circle is another step in the transition to focused work. The circle will include song, gestures, a seasonal story and vigorous movement. It’s a fun, gentle way to establish the structure of the classroom right away: the students follow the example of the teacher. The structure of a circle allows the teacher to observe all the children. It also provides a foundation for subject matter that will arise later in the day/week/block, gives the teacher another opportunity to assess individuals, and engages them in ways which are natural to their age: movement, imitation, rhyme and imaginative stories. The morning circle is very important; it establishes the tone of the day and gives the students a physical, musical and emotional connection to the subjects we’re studying.
We are sent one-by-one to wash hands with a count-down game; these transitions are the most important part of the schedule, used between all shifts in activity. They signal a change for those who are reluctant to go from one thing to another too quickly. Some activity transitions take eight or ten little "bridges"!
Morning chores: marking the temperature, setting the table and saying ‘grace’. Blessing our food is another transition moment: it provides us with a calm moment before we begin to eat, as well as gratitude for our food. Depending on the verse, it can also teach about plant cycles and the elements. We’ll share a healthy snack and discuss the transformation of the child from birth to age seven.
A newborn must transition from an environment in which every life-sustaining function is performed for it. Upon birth, we transform how we eat, breathe, pass waste, process sensory input, etc. The brain is organized such that the most important things --digestion, breathing-- are taken care of and strengthened first, then built upon.
The young child’s brain is very different than that of an adult, or even a child of ten. He is still fully immersed in the environment and highly responsive to it. New intelligence is built upon interaction, and the activity of the limbs, experiences of the senses and emotions are interconnected. Nature has a specific, tried-and-true pattern and order in which development happens; if it’s interrupted, learning difficulties emerge. The foundation “work” for very young children is singing, reciting verses, exploring the natural world, imitating adult work and imaginative, freely chosen and self-motivated play that is physically challenging! Working on balance and strength is critical to later “book learning” skills.
Cleaning up the table, we hear a story about the beautiful colors of all the summer flowers, and one boy’s dream to be able to make something just as lovely for his grandmother. The trees give the gift of sturdy paper, the bees a gift of beeswax, and the rainbow its colors. Then we pass out these “gifts”, and parents trace their right and left hands in red and blue. They color and cut them out, making a wreath for the room.
This may be followed with a main lesson example from the alphabet block. The lesson is taught over four days, first with the experience of a fairy tale told orally, second day with the drawing of a scene, third day highlighting the letter hidden in the picture (like a “t” in a tree) and the fourth day with a rendering of the child’s choice (in clay, beeswax, painting, re-enactment). Throughout the week, that letter will be our theme, and we’ll be looking for things around us with that sound, practicing the letters in chalk, sand and other mediums, reciting tongue twisters with the sound, etc.
Fairy tales represent the world in which the child lives at this early age: strong archetypes of good and evil, right and wrong, struggle and triumph, elemental “magical” beings fill the world. The subject of “true” fairy tales is a lengthy one, but I’ll just say the stories told to four to six year olds are chosen specifically for them.Because the young child lives in pictures so strongly, evoking images is a useful way to teach abstract symbols; it’s also an effective tool with discipline. It is much more helpful to a three year old to tell her what you DO want her to do than what you don’t. Whether you are giving a direct instruction or words of caution, creating a mental picture in the child’s head of your expected outcome is very powerful (“Put your feet flat on the floor” rather than “Stop kicking your desk”).
The root of the word ‘discipline’ connects it to ‘disciple’; the parent is the first teacher of the child, who learns to discipline him or herself through their guidance and authority. By ‘authority’, veteran teacher Kelly Morrow tells us that the adult is ‘the author of the moment’, the activity, the environment, and who is trusted and followed because he/she motivates the child out of love, not fear or guilt. At school, our goal is to maintain the love of learning all babies are born with, as parents our aim is to maintain their love of life (and teach them to clean up after themselves!).
Web resources:
All the classic, original folk and fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm:
http://www.familymanagement.com/literacy/grimms/grimms-toc.html
How kindergarten has been changed in the last few years:
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-928/shifting.htm
Great articles on the importance of play, damage of “screens” to early learning:
http://www.allianceforchildhood.org/
Local resource for “Montessori in the Home” materials (child-size tools, etc.)
http://michaelolaf.com/store/index.html