Patience and Waiting
What is your fine line between doing something for a child and letting them experience doing it themselves? How long do you let a child work it out before stepping in and helping out?
Some examples:
Putting on shoes. It’s easy to watch the self-directed child that wants to do it themselves. How long do you wait on the distracted child? What about the frustrated child?
Engaging in an altercation with a classmate. How do you determine the threshold both can take before frustrations run too high or it gets physical?
Here are some things to consider.
Are you asking the child to do something or is the child self-motivated?
What will the child learn from the experience?
Match the age of the child to the task. Set reasonable expectations.
If you are a teacher, make sure that the family’s values are matched to yours.
Know your own threshold and make sure your threshold is not too high or too low.
Do you have time or do you have somewhere to be and need to make a quick decision.
Children need time to work things out on their own. We cannot be in a hurry if we want them to have agency and learn to make good choices. Step back and let learning happen!
Exploring Big Feelings
How do big feelings present in toddlers and preschoolers and how do adults support these feelings?
Children should be allowed to express their feelings in a safe place as they learn self-control. What does this look like for a child? It might be falling down on the ground and flailing about. It might include screaming, yelling, and/or crying. Commonly called a temper tantrum! There could be an element of being physical in the form of biting, scratching, hitting, kicking or destroying property. This is all a form of communication. We must check in with ourselves and handle our own emotions first. We must help children negotiate these feelings instead of breaking down ourselves.
First, allowing big feelings is important, this is the way a child learns to communicate. We do not like it if someone tells us, “You are OK”, or “to get over it”, or to stop feeling a certain way. We do not want to be told to “stop it” so why should a child be able to negotiate accepting this. We must check our own feelings first and then support theirs very calmly by naming their feelings and accepting them. We are supportive in positive feelings but tend to shut down the negative emotions.
While the latter is not ideal, we still need to provide a safe place for the expression of feelings. Sometimes we must step back and let them be physical in a safe place as they negotiate these big feelings.
Reach out if you want to discuss further!
Do you have questions about child led curriculum?
This is how we “do” curriculum at FG. Our curriculum is child-led and play based meaning the children choose or show interest in topics and with our support the delivery is through play. First, we observe the children. Next, we consider the season that we are experiencing in our outdoor program. We then make a rough outline for the week. We include activities that incorporate the MA Learning Guidelines and Standards in the areas of small and gross motor skills, the arts, language and literacy, self-help and science. We add activities that we think the children will find interesting based on our observations. If they do not, we might re-introduce an idea or we might watch and choose to scrap it.
We continue to observe and introduce new elements that might extend play and learning. This looks like children playing all day with not much teacher intervention. The children make hypotheses and test theory. They explore natural and man-made sensory experiences. They are read to and read to each other. They paint and draw with many mediums. They listen to music, they play music. They explore sound with their own voices and objects or they use objects to make sound!
They eat when they are hungry. They get emotional and explore feelings both with adults and each other.
If you have any questions about our curriculum, please ask us.
Why Play?
Why do we have such a hard time accepting that play is learning for young children? Schools want to prepare children for what’s next. Play does this by allowing children to construct knowledge and learn conflict resolution and cooperation. Play is innate, automatic and hard hired. Adult imposition stops learning through play cold in its tracks. Why would we deliberately want to stop a child’s learning?
We have no way of knowing what jobs will be available in 15 years. It is best to allow children the freedom to innovate and be independent thinkers rather than force them into an outdated system of education based on the factory that no longer exists. We are trying to mass produce a child’s education by having them in lines and grading them. There is a better way through play.
Children will play, just try to stop them! I witnessed while in Yellowstone National Park at a picnic site, several children moving a large log up onto a stationary structure thus creating a seesaw. I have no way of knowing if these children were related but they found a way to play. Let them play!
Gun Play
I cannot help but think about gun play and how adults react. Children act out gun play naturally at some point in their development. If we call attention to it, add our (often) negative adult values and perspectives especially at school, children are more drawn to it. Children take to hiding and lying if we condemn the thoughts. They will say, “It’s not a gun, it’s a fire hose” or tattle, “Teacher, Johnny’s playing with a gun”.
We must consider that there are professions and hobbies that involve guns and our families might be in either/both categories. What does that feel like to a child and their family when we dismiss their way of life? Collectively we need to accept the fascination children have and make sure that we need to react to create a safe space for open dialog which allows children to trust us and talk to us. We need to have candid hard conversations instead of shutting children down.
On the street in Mexico, three young children were playing with Legos. They had made guns out of three pieces and were shooting us loudly as we walked by. Someone unseen said something to them as we passed by. My husband and I were able to converse about this as we walked down the road wondering what their experience was, what did the adult say, was it protective, corrective, positive, or negative?
Let’s remember to seek perspective when we might be uncomfortable!
When do you help a child?
To help or not to help?
When things get hard for children should we do something for them, solve their problem or do we encourage them to succeed at the task at hand? The answer seems simple but how/when do you draw the line? What questions do you ask?
We look at age, experience and ability. We check in to see what the emotions of the moment are. Additionally, note which educator is trying to help and is there a strong bond between the two?
And what about family? How do we consider their perspective? What does the family want? What are their values? Am I placing my values over theirs? Is that respectful? Perhaps I’m not thinking of their needs to keep a child the way they are which may be perfectly OK with them and contradicts my feelings. And what about other teachers? One teacher says, “I’m always torn between wanting to be present and encouraging and not wanting to be like a helicopter and just doing everything for them!!”
We are so keen to observe progress and independence have we stopped to consider all of the above. We know children are capable and when we see them being held back either by another teacher of family, is this truly a problem? It’s really not ours to judge, it is ours to communicate and work together! It is ours to facilitate learning in both children and families.
Is it OK to take care of the need so they can be on their way to play? As one teacher puts it,
”I have to remember that as much of our job is caretaking, it’s also technically teaching and I wonder what I’m teaching, when I just reinforce that they don’t even need to try and that whining/fussing excuses them from having to practice things that don’t come easily? I think I can really forget to be in service to their growth when I rush to stop them from wailing and crying. Remember ‘The child is safe, I am safe, even though they’re distressed’.
Let’s try a phrase like, “Something about this feels hard, can you show or tell me which part seems hard” and then consider the actual process. It is OK to step back!
Interruptions
Do you like being interrupted when you are busy working on something important to you? Most of us do not! I wonder why we spend so much time interrupting children and simultaneously expect “good” behavior.
We try to keep children on a schedule ignoring their internal biological needs. We stop them in their tracks because we think they must do this or that. We organize their play because we think they should be learning something other than what we see. But how do we know what they are learning. When we impose our ideas, it interrupts their flow of learning and gathering information. Just like me interrupting you, the effect is the same, we are thrown off track!
Let’s step back!
Kind vs Nice
Kind vs Nice, do you know the difference?
Listening to a pod cast had me thinking about kind vs nice. There are plenty of memes on social media that are stressing one to “be kind” and/or “chose kindness”. I had an opportunity to see more clearly kind vs nice and how they are not at all the same thing.
Being kind means setting boundaries, being respectful and in turn being respected. To me, in being kind there is a mutual regard for one other. You don’t need to agree with another person to act kindly. You can be very different from one another and still be kind.
Being nice implies that one is perhaps giving up their own position to avoid rocking the boat. Walking on egg shells so to speak so that people “like you”. One might even be classified as a bit shallow when acting from a place of being nice. Being nice actually devalues both parties.
We might try asking our teams and our children to be kind rather than telling them to “be nice”. Let’s try!
A Child Called “J”
Occasionally, something happens that reminds you of your “why” in early childhood eductaion! In January we met “J” a 3-year-old child who was in foster care. His foster family brought him to us at Friendship Garden. In just a day we fell in love. Did we recognize that this child experienced trauma in their young life? You bet we did. It is important to recognize a child’s background and at the same time to not focus, obssess or overthink it.
This child responded to taking their time to acclimate without being pushed by adults. They felt love and acceptance as evidenced by a big hug in just one day!
After only three days the child was placed in another foster home and left our care. He left a mark on all of us. We proved to ourselves that a wide-open heart of acceptance makes a difference quickly. We saw a spark in a beautiful smile.
One can only hope that our chance crossing stays on both our minds for a long time.
Little Humans
How is it that we spend so much time trying to make children just like us? We think they need to know what we know. We think they should use materials we put out in some pre-determined way. Children are little humans with rights. We should not impose ourselves on them but rather respect them for their inexperience and support them.
We are trying to fit all children into a model of education that doesn’t work for most. The “sit here and learn this” model doesn’t allow for movement, exploration, creativity, and collaboration. We aspire to a model where we acknowledge that we adults do not know what skills will be needed for jobs in 15 years.
If only we could view children as co-“everything” we could sit back and enjoy what they bring to the table. We don’t need to teach them ANYTHING. We need to give them a safe place with caring adults and stand back!