There is no blueprint,
just love and geometry,
as we build, engineer,
wonder solve, spread all over
the furniture, the living room.
There is love and silence clicked
and cluttered in those colored
plastic blocks, those endless
renditions, that time well spent.
“The important feature that design brings is this bridge between the science and the arts. And I don’t think many people understand the power of design to put these two things together.”—Bill Moggridge
There might be magic in children’s books as they have a way to settle down wiggly awkward boy bodies, commanding stares and stillness. Even the busiest little people find time to take in words, images, and meaning. I love how without prompting my eight year old will read to his three year old brother. There is literacy between them, huddled on the bed together, leaning over a book, my eight year old acting out the character voices with such fervor. For a few minutes there are no arguments, no rolling around on the floor, no jumping on the bed. There is only two brothers, finding their way word by word, sentence by sentence, together.
Is it Sunday already? Monday has a way of sneaking up on us doesn’t it? Midday Sunday when we’re setting out our clothes, finishing the laundry, checking our calendars for the week, I’m happy for family, all five of us piled on the bed, wearing Sunday slow and sure, with humor and exhaustion. Monday will be here before we know it.
Here are just a few bits and pieces from this past week slightly rethought and revised. Have a great day.
photo credit: morguefile
Tasty stars and stripes, a lesson in determination
There are some things worth fighting for, worth all the might his 8-month-old, chubby little fingers can muster. There are some things so interesting, colorful, just beyond reach that only one’s persistent drive can wield the strength, the determination to not give up.
There was this flag on papa’s shoulder. Not just any ordinary flag, a flag with stars, stripes, red, blue, and white, braided seamlessly, seemingly stitched tight on his sleeve. But my 8-month-old was curious. With his dad’s slouchy winter hat that seemed to swallow his head, that baby’s eyes were fixed on that flag, colors, the texture, the awkward positioning on the sleeve. Oh yes it was stuck, securely pasted to the fabric.
At some point of the moment, there was a high-pitched squealing cry of frustration, but that baby knew there was a way he could get to that flag. That neither Velcro, nor length of reach could detour him. He stretched, and pulled, and reached again. He shifted in his dad’s arms, grunted, fussed and pulled until right then, right within his developing grasp (and a slight rounding of his dad’s shoulders), sweet, sweet success.
My son’s lesson to me: even if it seems difficult or out of reach, try anyway. Happy Friday!
“Watching a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes through his movements.”—Maria Montessori
I imagine a learning space that resists right angles, creatively contemplates boundaries. I hope for more than one teacher in the classroom. I envision a sea of diverse students learning while engaged at various times in that learning with all five senses, with many different materials and strategies, at desks, tables, on floors, standing up, and outside in the world. I want more than a letter grade and random data from a test to account for how my children are doing in school. I want insight, specifics on what they are learning, how they are developing socially and emotionally, and how we can support what happens in school at home. I want an ongoing stream of communication into how my children are acquiring knowledge and skills, what they are doing in their learning spaces to apply that knowledge, and guidance and opportunities on how to support my children’s learning experiences beyond the classroom. I want to have an open exchange with the school my kids attend, a range of exchange and communication, from face to face, to in the hallways, classrooms, and online, where I always feel I have a sense, a grasp of of my children’s learning community, their growth and develop, their educational environment.
I have expectations and commitments I want upheld not only by the school, but also by our family in partnership with that school. I want a school that sees our family as a whole and as partners in our children’s growth, development, and education. I want a school that puts my children first, even if that means I need to learn to let go, allow my children to grow towards independence and freedom. I want an education for my children, for every child, that seeks equity, justice, and peace.
And while I understand surely no school is perfect, no education theory or philosophy is all knowing or right for every learner, when I see my children excited, eager to learn, and the teachers that care for them just as eager, that is reassuring. When my children say, “mom we love school,” I am thankful.
February 24-March 2 is Montessori Education Week
Education is not black and white, but more sketches of charcoal and gray…
“We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child’s spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.”—Maria Montessori
“Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with the reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”—Paulo Freire
“This then is the first duty of an educator, to stir up life but leave it free to develop”—Maria Montessori
photo via morguefile
Maria Montessori’s quote seems to ask what is Education if not to conjure up curiosity, then leave a learner be to inquire, explore, find, define, and repeat or not. Shouldn’t the classroom represent a learning space that courts the vastness of life? And even as walls of access may exist on varying levels, shouldn’t education represent a ladder, a channel, a bulldozer, a path towards opening up that access, breaking down those barriers? There is a wide open space young learners will soon occupy. What tools, abilities, sensibilities, character are learners taking with them into that muddy terrain?
This week is Montessori Education Week, and to my regular followers, you know I write quite a bit about how Montessori education philosophy impacts my family. Some of you have asked, so this week I hope to write and share a bit more about Montessori, but more importantly, as Montessori is not the cure, I want to explore writings, images, quotes on education broadly. From pre-K through college, Education is in crisis in the U.S. Schools are influx and resources are nonexistent. One of the most imperative, demanding, and complex questions this country will explore in the 21st century is how to educate our children.
photo credit: The Third Teacher
Sometimes I talk with parents who assume a Montessori education begins and ends with preschool. But with all three of my children (from infant to 2nd grade) in a Montessori learning environment, we’ve allowed our Montessori experience to grow with us, stir inside our sons’ classrooms, enter into our home, inspire our thinking, our way of life.
Our kids have developed their own “can do” independence, and drive their own paths to learning, just as they find their way at home, do their part, give a little, get a little. The expectation in their school is one of equity and peace, the classroom is broad to specific, open and contained, experiential and hands-on. As parents, my husband and I have learned to “get out of the way” and allow our kids to learn in a manner that works best for each of them.
It is not always easy stepping back and allowing our children to find their way, but we are reminded that we are guiding them through our actions. They will not raise themselves, but they will watch us, learn, then do. Montessori has taught us to allow them to.
This year I wanted to give my eight-year-old and three-year-old some creative options for their school Valentine exchange. Sure, I could have easily gone to the store and bought a few pre-packaged Valentine’s Day greetings and that would prove to be easy enough. But I want my boys to know they have options when it comes to things like gift giving and holiday greetings. We have plenty of art supplies (and recycled materials) here at home so we don’t always have to go to the store to buy pre-themed greetings. We can make (and say) our own!
What we used:
8 1/2 x 11 cardstock
paper cutter or “Exacto” knife and cutting board (for the adult to use to pre-cut shapes and paper)
rubber stamp and ink pad
stickers
I kept our DIY creative project easy and we had only minor clean-up and recycling to do after we were done. I don’t know if this project was more about making our Valentine’s Day greetings or more about spending some time together. Maybe a little of both.
Is it Sunday already? This week’s posts, slightly rewritten, remixed, and republished… Hope you’re having a good day.
Recipe. Poetry. Slow Simmered Cabbage.
If You Build, It Might Topple Over
“I’m building a castle,” said my three-year-old. There he was, holding one bottle with one hand trying to stack them as they continued to fall repeatedly. I could see his wonder. He had seen many other things stack so easily: Legos, boxes, cups. But in his repetitive efforts, I watched as he contemplated why the science was failing him. Why did those plastic bottles refuse to stack and stay? Why did they crumble so quickly, so easily try after try? Why did his outstretched arms seem just short of reach, not able to corral those bottles into submission? I watched and did not have the answers, but also did not intervene in his playful matters. I watched as he kept trying…
That moment made me wonder how young children know when to keep trying and at what point in their lives does that persistence, that resilience slip away? Failure is a graceful, and inevitable thing. Yet, I work regularly with students who have become more and more afraid of that failing grace, afraid to let go, do something wrong, redo, or revise.
Failure is a part of the learning process I remind students, but I have to often remind myself that so much of Education lacks that process. To take Education as it stands, there are series of tasks students are asked to complete at the same time, in the same way, in pursuit of the same result. All that sameness doesn’t allow much room for process: curiosity, questions, trial and error, mistakes, wonder, thinking.
Process seems far too messy for Education (as it stands now) to entertain. But it is in that messy, unpredictable process where questions are asked, methods are explored, and resolution may or may not present itself as an outcome. Education in its search for new methods must explore failure, and the varied and appropriate responses to not “getting it right” the first time. What if we all failed and just couldn’t bring ourselves to “try, try again”? What would that look like? If Education and schools are reinforcing a culture where kids fear anything less than perfection, how will young people learn to think, problem solve with resilience, strategy, patience, critically and creatively. If Education trades “thinking” (critical and creative) for task-based learning, students will never learn to build and keep building on their ideas, create jobs, new technologies, a kinder gentler world, a future for us all. Education is a “big work” (Montessori).
Now back to the play of my three-year-old. After many tries, I’m not sure how many, I lost count. He finally figured out how to wrap his hands around those bottles, bend and steady his arms to encourage balance, build until those bottles stood steady, towering over him. “A castle,” he said, as he did it without my help, but with the full weight of my hope. “Yes honey, a castle.”
___________________________________________________
Answer: Play
Kids Don’t Play With Their Toys
I was recently reminded that the fascination with the ordinary begins early. The baby of course is in on the action now that he’s a bit more agile and slightly more mobile (if you count rolling and bear crawling mobile). You would think from watching my older kids, I have come to expect children’s curiosity for the mundane. I suppose I have, but it’s still fascinating to me, that curiosity, that clearly begins far before early childhood. It obviously begins as early as infancy, which makes sense because everything to an infant is new and fascinating. Zero to Three, a parenting resource, reinforces that everyday objects like wooden spoons or cardboard paper tubes are a source of discovery and engages infants and toddlers in early problem-solving. Imagine if more adults and older children, who have had the curiosity and wonderment sucked out of them, could tap into that “everything is fascinating” mindset. That sense of wonderment could be delightfully leveraged in educational contexts and the workplace.
What Can We Learn from Babies?
I recently caught my six-month-old in a moment of wonderment, so I sat down next to him and wondered a bit myself. There on the floor, in the basket, on the sofa, the most colorful, noise producing toys; a wonderland for little people without words or teeth. Yet, the objects, all shapes and sizes just right for curious little fingers to grab and clasp were not that interesting to my son. Those objects solely produced to encourage babies to gnaw, stare, think, pull, twist, and throw could not compare to a single random piece of formed plastic, which he played with for so long, I stopped counting the minutes. I wondered if he was curious about its colorlessness, its translucence, or that it kept its shape and felt slick on his skin? What an interesting object his eyes seemed to say, his hands tightly gripped on the edge of the thing-a-ma-gig.
What if as adults we could tune into our sense of curiosity and fascination? How would we see life differently?
“Curiosity is the key to creativity.” ~Akio Morita
“Once upon a time there [were] numbers. They were playing.”
I found this Montessori “work” by my three-year-old among the other wrinkled papers in his take-home pile. It is a story of numbers. His hand traced the numbers with a pencil, providing practice in early writing. He then told a simple little oral narrative about these numbers dictated by his teacher. His crooked little scribbles are practice and play in math and early literacy.
Thanks to a few imaginative kids (who live in my house), everyday ordinary is interesting and inspiring, reminding me as a parent to take note and get out of the way of their learning and creativity. Here’s to a a few laughs, and a new year filled with imagination, smiles, and of course many more days of play!
Click on links below to view posts
Funnel Love Holiday Wrapping Paper The Laundry Basket The “Dirt Devil” Mini Vac
The Art of Untied Shoe Laces “The Dark Knight”… Looking For Music In Unlikely Places
Battle Royale In The Bathroom Sink A Fish Out Of Water Make The “Everyday” Take Flight
Last week on the way to work I forgot, then remembered the fresh carrots I promised to bring my child’s class for their Kwanzaa celebration. While washing and wrapping them, I thought, “over the past few weeks my kids have learned, shared, celebrated Dawali, Hanukkah, Christmas, and now Kwanzaa.” I stopped to think about what that meant, how through books, art, music, food, their friends, and our school community, the kids were on a journey to understand, experience culture, inclusion, and diverse traditions.
Then I thought, “bringing in the carrots was easy,” I didn’t have to think about it, just wash, bag, and carry. But between my wash and carry, I thought about Kwanzaa’s principles. I thought about Unity, Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity, and Faith, and how as a parent I could share a bit of what I, we as a family understood about those principles with my son’s classroom. And though I was already running late for work, it would only take a minute to grab our beautifully illustrated Kwanzaa pop-up book, A Kwanzaa Celebration, by Nancy Williams, a favorite in our house.
A Kwanzaa Celebration by Nancy Williams, illustrated by Robert Saduba
There are some things that just go well together. And then there are mixings, pairings that teach us about others. While other parents over the past few weeks have added to our children’s cultural conversations about Dawali, Hanukkah, and Christmas, I was pleased my family could also contribute to the cultural conversation by sharing what we know about Kwanzaa and its symbolic and cultural references. I was happy as a family we could share one of our favorite poignant and colorful pop-up books that explained the values that influence Kwanzaa, values we honor and celebrate in our home throughout the year. But most of all, I was honored to contribute to our children’s learning community, a community working hard to instill in its children, our children, a voice and an ear for openness, respect for inclusion, understanding, contribution—asking of its families to do more for education and learning than just bringing in the carrots.
Kwanzaa begins today December 26, 2012 and ends January 1, 2013. Learn more: Kwanzaa in the news and other resources, What is Kwanzaa?, Books, Kwanzaa ideas on Pinterest
“Eat lunch with your child day”—My six-month-old isn’t “eating” much other than a bottle and a few bland purees, but hanging out with him in the middle of the work day had little to do with food and more to do with precious time.
What do you get when you mix a strip of tape, a plastic USC cup, and a mini basketball? According to my three-year-old, ice cream of course! This morning on the end table I found remnants of my three-year-old’s imagination—a hand-made, re-purposed ice cream cone with just one colorful swirl (notice the single strip of tape). It’s a good thing this delectable treat didn’t melt, or maybe fall over, I might have missed yet another time to celebrate the creative things kids do with random stuff around the house.
Yesterday, while in the kitchen, I overheard my son playing with the cup and the ball, but I had no idea he saved his simple creation, and added a piece of tape to it. Or maybe he left it out on display for us to see. Either way, finding this continues to remind me that the ordinary shapes and objects we have around the house open up an imaginative world we busy adults don’t always have access to.
Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.
—Maria Montessori
“Beautiful Distractions in 21st Century Learning”
When we think of potential distractions in a typical K-12 classroom, we might envision: students passing notes, staring out the window, doodling, whispering side conversations, or, heaven forbid, texting. What if we could design learning environments as experiences with built-in intentional distractions, allowing a complex and dynamic learning process? In this kind of learning environment, we would embrace, even engage distraction: a choir of inquiry, a beautiful collision of difference (in opinion, perspective, experience), or a flexible lab for hands-on, interactive problem solving. What if engaging distraction is learning?
http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Dionne-Custer-Edwards-Beautiful
(still) photo credit: Christian Long
I’ve been engaged in myriad conversations over the past few weeks about creativity. This subject keeps coming up. Where does creativity come from? How can we encourage it in children, in ourselves as adults? Why is there a battle in education, in our homes, in the workplace between critical and creative thinking? Why do those spaces want to choose between the two—which is more rigorous, beneficial, salient? Why can’t we (as humans) young and older practice both in learning and in the wider part of our lives? Why does education (and often other aspects of our lives) strip us of our ability to see our creative selves, think creatively? I keep coming back to some of the same sensibilities. We have to undo what it is that blocks us from wonder, play: stress, excuses about time, space, money, fear.
I work with young people on how to “undo” some of that fear of creativity before they reach adulthood and can’t find that sense of wonder anymore. I work with adults (other educators/parents), to encourage, give “permission” to allow room in their lives, their student’s lives, their children’s lives to think creatively, to wonder. I watch my own children access their creative selves everyday. They remind me how it’s is done…
I typically use the funnel in the kitchen pouring liquid, grains, from one container into the next. But when my three-year-old gets a hold of the funnel he is much more imaginative. That sputtering sound I heard the other day was no trumpet but rather my three-year-old composing his best kid rendition of some unknown tune on his newly imagined funnel horn. And while I thought that horn might be the only trick he had up his sleeve that trumpet quickly became a birthday hat for his younger brother (not sure if the younger brother was thrilled about that). But you can’t have a birthday hat without birthday cake, so my three-year-old ran to the other room and brought back the small plastic containers I use to organize stuff around the house, for his pretend birthday cake, when the funnel had one more magical use, as the candle on top.
Now I will have to go back to using my funnels in that same old boring and practical way. But next time I use that funnel I’ll remember metaphor, and how even kitchen utensils have creatively secret and interesting lives of their own.
What toys? Kids find play in anything, everything.
Happy Friday!
His vote may not move the electorate, but his voice is part of a future generation engaged.
My three-year-old isn’t writing just yet, but his eye for language led him to some remote corner in the house inside the black bin where we keep our shredded text, including bills, junk mail, and other bits of random paper. And as a writer I was so proud to see my three-year-old trying to “write” (sort of) standing in the middle of a blizzard of black ink and broken typeset, a storm of fonts, letters, broken and bending words.
The rambling shreds spread all over the floor were remnants of our identity ripped and twisted by child’s play. I imagine he was drawn to the pool of white slivers, until he discovered those peculiar little paper strips appear even more magical piled on the hardwood floor, like snow flurries indoors or pollen in the spring. I do love his graceful lettering, sculpting far beyond his vocabulary into a land of faceless characters, unknown “found” poems, and accidental, nonsensical lines of language. Instead of digging for a ready-made story, today he wrote one himself, building on jagged little shapes, crooked strands of paper, a pile of interesting mess. There are some things that are simply better in shred, and I guess today, “play” was one of them.
“A piece of creative writing, like a day-dream, is a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood.” —Sigmund Freud
For more thoughts on word play read: Freud on creative writing and daydreaming by Maria Popova
Back by popular virtual audience demand, my observations and musings on the everyday objects creative kids (and adults alike) find amusing. There is typically a laugh (and a lesson) somewhere in these stories so enjoy and remember—it’s not necessarily what you play with, it’s how you play!
As I reached for my toothbrush a few mornings ago, my eye caught a glance at what looked like a tangled blur of red and blue. As I looked closer, I thought, “Are these ninjas battling to the death in the bathroom sink?” By the look of things they’ve been tossing around in there all night.
And though I’m not a fan of fist fighting, I will endorse an occasional (and respectful) verbal fight (or debate if you prefer) every now and then. But from what I could tell, this brawl was surely not respectful or verbally debatable—these guys (or ninjas if you will) were at each other’s plastic throats. The head of one bruised and broken body is already missing, but something tells me he didn’t lose it in this present brawl. My hunch is some adventurous toddler might have gotten to him first.
I would like to think the sink is straight forward—simply for washing our hands, brushing our teeth and other such hygiene related things. But with kids, I know better. That sink has been known for many a days play with soap and bubbles, cups as waterfalls (that end up in a watery mess on the floor), and as evidenced here: a “battle royale” of headless action figures. And by the look of this porcelain battle ground, there’s not much hand washing going on at the moment. Ninjas, if you will excuse me—I need to break this battle up and brush my teeth.
Happy Friday!
Beautiful Distractions in 21st Century Learning (video)
A reflection on “otherness” in the public and private space
Handwriting Thank You
The Word Friendship is Not Enough
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Dionne
