Birthday Monday and Fire Fighter Boots

Dear Families,

      On Monday, October 20, we will be celebrating a birthday.  Although the activities of the morning will be different from recent Mondays (no painting, no early morning puppet show), the children's joy of sharing the ginger muffins the birthday girl and I will be preparing should more than compensate for the shift in rhythm that comes with festivals and special celebrations.

At the beginning of last Wednesday morning, one parent set up a child's boots and rain pants much like a fire fighter's:  the rain pants were already placed over the boots (pants on the outside) and bunched down toward the ground.  The child merrily took off slippers, slipped feet into the boots and pulled up the rain pants.  It was satisfying for the child and helped the mood during the potentially difficult transition from inside to outside.  I want to express my thanks to that family for sharing this idea with us.  I encourage other families to try this technique as well.  This may not work in a situation where cubbies are so close to one another (the kindergartens of next year, perhaps), but we are blessed with pretty ample cubby space for the Butterfly nursery.

I would also like feedback from parents about what kind of gloves or mittens have worked well with their young children in this climate.  My experience in Baltimore was that mittens or gloves that were easier to put on tended to be ineffective against rainy cold.  Most of the waterproof gloves or mittens for young children tended to be a challenge to put on and keep on.  If you have a brand or idea that works for your family, please share it with me so I can pass along the information.  I do have some thoughts of buying, say, 16 pairs of simple cloth mittens (the kind that look tiny but stretch out to cover the hands) in all the same color (so that unnecessary jealousy does not arise) that teachers can carry along during outside time.  Children could then alternate between wearing mittens; when hands get soaked in the rain, children could take off mittens for a while and then put on an dry pair.  I wanted to see if there were other helpful ideas before I make that move.

Thank you for your help and support of all the children in the class and me,

William Dolde

Visitors, cold, Pictures of play from the last week

Dear Families,

Our nursery children continue to work together to create elaborate play scenarios. They tend to receive the Tuesday Eurythmy circle (there will be a parent meeting later this year about Eurythmy) with reverence. Children request dances and circle games from me on in the clearing near the ropes course. A number of children are recreating the puppet show I present.  I spent Tuesday morning being driven around the classroom in a pretend bus, visiting various children at their play scenarios on farms, at beaches, in the mountains, at pretend kindergartens--all the while knitting woolen apples and pumpkins for the children to play with.

It became pretty apparent Wednesday that the weather has become much cooler. We will begin wearing mittens or gloves as a norm and take them off if the weather becomes milder (as it has this weekend). We will try to continue to have a snack outside during our walk; as it is colder, it will be best to bring vegetables, seeds. nuts, and the like. The juicy fruits of summer begin to feel pretty cold when we are snacking outside on a cool day. Kim also pointed out that fruits tend to get expensive on Whidbey Island in the winter while vegetables such as carrots and the like remain at a consistent price. While you should feel free to send a pear or apple if you still have a bumper crop at your house, plan on stopping fruit and sending vegetables with your child for these colder months--we always have room for them in the soup on Wednesday if we don't eat them all on our walk on Monday or Tuesday. We have a pretty good supply of pumpkin seeds and seasoned walnuts at school for our walks, and Kim and I will be making a little bit of extra bread to bring along on our walk on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Every child eats more than a little bit of rice and bread, and every child is at least eating some of the soup.

The children play for long periods cooperatively.  Some days, they all end up in pairs.  This is wonderful and healthy--and teachers need to be aware that another child is not feeling excluded from a pair.  To help build in a habit of welcoming children into our play and work, I have begun inviting other children to visit our class occasionally to play.  This also helps model courtesy for our children; I sit at the drawing table, write an invitation, and ask for our children to deliver the mail.  A cousin of one of our children had a wonderful time in our room, and our nursery children liked having a visitor.  We will be inviting other children and adults:  a nursery teacher from the Seattle Waldorf School will be observing our class on Monday; my evaluator will visit our class on a Monday in November.   I will work with the kindergarten teachers to determine which children might like to visit us; it will not be healthy for any of us if a visiting older child feels punished to be with younger children or acts in such a grandiose way that her or his behavior causes friction amongst the nursery children.

As a school, we will be focussing on drawing forth courtesy and etiquette from our children; adults will also strive to be polite to one another.  One way I try to build this in the nursery is by having our children take turns delivering rice, bread, and soup to Rebecca at the reception desk or Administration upstairs.  The adults seem genuinely thankful to receive the snack, and this provides its own intrinsic reward for our children in the joy of giving.

As we look at behavior and etiquette school wide, I have been perusing the Parent Student Handbook, and it seems a reminder about the school's dress code is in order.  It is my understanding that children are to come to school with clothes free from distractions, including writing.  As a parent, I know it can be hard to sort out clothes for school days and non school days.  As a parent, I also know that it is possible.  As our school as a whole tries to create a culture of respect and inclusion, it will be helpful if we adults do our best to follow already agreed upon rules.  I encourage you to reread the Handbook.  Even if we see an adult from another class not necessarily following the rules, it will be wonderful if our nursery group can provide an example of unity for the years going forward.

Here are three descriptions of play scenarios and interactions amongst the children in the past weeks with an emphasis on ones in which the children transformed their interactions in ways I would not have predicted. As with the form of this blog, I will describe the activity of all the children in our class without using names. Sometimes the same "role" in the scenarios below can be filled by different children on different days.

1. Two older boys build a house and a puppet theater and bakery behind the snack table. They use many to all of the toys in that corner of the room. They journey off to another part of the room, where they play with other children. While they are away (for a good ten minutes) a younger boy and girl come to the structure they have built, climb onto it, and pretend that it is a bus. A few minutes later, I observe the two older boys returning, saying, "Let's return to our house!" Without saying anything, I follow, ready to help, thinking it would be quite normal for the two boys to feel that their house had been invaded with a desire to cast forth the younger children (just as it would be quite normal for the younger children to be pleased to find something that seems to make a bus so readily). The older boys come up and hear the younger boy welcome them to his bus. The older boys now ask for a ride on their bus to their home. They climb on, pretend to get a ride, and proceed to build a house in another part of the room.

2. When we come to a clearing on the upper loop (we call it the "big rock" because there is a big rock there), two girls rush for a bent-down tree. If you stand in a certain place in this tree, you can grab another tree and bounce up and down. For a few weeks, a number of children had discovered this game and played--sometimes in a group. Last week it seemed just these two girls wanted to be in exactly the same spot. They started sprinting as we got to the clearing. One girl gets onto the bouncing spot. The other cries and demands the space. The first girl says she can have it tomorrow. Matters are tense for a while. In previous weeks, Kim and I had tried to offer solutions, which only seemed to make the girls hold their ground all the more. The two girls negotiate for a while. Then they both leave the tree and play in other parts of the clearing with other children. The tree remains open. At times, one or the other girl climbs on the tree, bounces without great enthusiasm, and looks for someone else to play with.

The next day, the girls again sprint to the clearing. The same girl gets to the tree first. The same sort of negotiation begins. This time, the second girl remembers, "You said tomorrow I could be first." "I meant tomorrow tomorrow" says the first. Again, things are tense, without much apparent room. Then the first girl gets off. The second girl gets on to bounce, tries a few times, and goes to find other children to play with.

Children are often more concerned with process than with product. Joseph Chilton Pearce encourages parents to allow elementary children to create their own sports and games rather than always putting a coach in charge. According to Pearce, the creating and arguing over rules is where the value comes for these older children. I wonder, similarly, if the value for these two girls lay in the negotiation and relationship--as tense as it sometimes seemed. Once that ended, the young child's insatiable thirst for learning brought these girls to new situations from which they could learn.

3.  Four children are playing near the couch; four children are playing toward the door with a rocking boat.  The children near the door have gone on journeys as horses and dragons and cats.  Children have figured out how to have pretend leashes for dogs as well, and animals and people are gathering for a breakfast after a pretend sleep.  The children near the couch had set up a puppet show and picnic and farm.  One child near the couch says, "And now it is time for our picnic."  A child from near the door says, "We need all these things!" indicating the enamelware cups and plates--this even though the children near the couch did not seem to be asking for them.  The child repeats, "We need all these things!" several times.  I am ready to help.  I have observed when children tend to protest loudly to defend themselves, this so interests other children that a conflict might start.  In this case, however, the children near the couch, when spreading out silks for a picnic, have realized what a good puppet show scene it would make and are now seeking puppets.  The child who had been holding the cups and plates places them down on the table.

With warmth and light,

William Dolde

September & October Newsletter

Printed copies are available, Monday, October 6, along with an article by Dr. Susan Johnson, "The Importance of Sleep."

Recap of Parent Meeting from Sunday, October 5

We had a helpful discussion about Kim John Payne, Emmi Pikler, and conflict.  At home and school, we gave examples and talked about how we might support our children.  I think I said then and want to say again--as parents and teachers we are going to be confronted with situations for which a response is not always obvious and just have to be willing to blunder and accept our mistakes.  As one parent said, giving ourselves the permission to try again can really help.  This also lets our children see that mistakes are OK and that we can try things again to make things right.

       We looked at a few pages about the Shame, Blame, and Put-down diet written by Kim Payne and talked about how to translate this work for young children.  With older children, a teacher or parent would notice the teasing behavior--"It makes things worse when you roll your eyes"--attempt to discover what the core issue is--"What is bothering you?"--and ask the child to do it over--"Let's find away to respond without rolling your eyes."  While this can be helpful with older children (research finds that parents and teachers observe only 2 out of 10 acts of teasing or put-downs so it is essential to intervene when we do notice), we as parents of young children agreed that this amount of noticing and talking might make potentially negative behavior (eye-rolling, name-calling, sticking a tongue out at another child) more potent and more frequent just by our calling attention to it.   When we use statements that say what not to do ("Don't stick out your tongue.  Don't hit.  Don't call her dummy.") with young children, they sometimes to often hear and/or think "Stick out your tongue.  Hit.  Call her dummy."  Similarly, with our young children, attempting to discover what's wrong with a question, "What's the matter?" often receives a blank stare or "I don't know."  

        We worked together to notice how as parents or teachers we would combine the three steps--notice, discover, do-over--into one, sometimes with, sometimes without words.  We can emphasize the do-over.  The "Let's try this again" can be extremely helpful for young children in a group situation.  Sometimes we can use imagination to help:  two children are excluding a third because there really is not enough room in the tower, so the teacher starts planting a garden around the tower and asks for help finding seeds to plant.  Sometimes our physical presence is enough.  Sometimes we can state, "This is a challenge" while stating or silently recognizing the benefits of trying to solve this problem.  "This is a challenge.  I wonder if there is a way for seven children to fit in the boat."

Many of the examples from home involved children of different ages, where some of the solutions from school would not work.  We talked about noticing (without necessarily speaking, though speaking would be OK too) that there are many modalities in the interactions between siblings and the potential power of holding onto the image of cooperation and joy that we sometimes observe.  We might speak about this positive archetype; our nonverbal attitude may be enough.   We also talked about--without rewarding a child for hitting a sibling--finding an acceptable outlet for negative behavior.  Kim Payne prescribes wrestling for some families.  I have wrestled with children some years in the nursery class.

It is also true that home and school can be different.  Teasing is a subtle issue.  Sometimes when a teacher or adult tries to disapprove of teasing, we may feel our awkward words do not necessarily reach the potential bully.  They may, however, reach the ears of other children watching the scene and help those children over time change the dynamics.  As the quote from Jack Petrash from last week reminds us, sometimes we can help one child the most, sometimes the group. 

         With older children, the most change in persistent unfair relationships often come when another child--not in the midst of the fray--can put things in perspective.  In the nursery, I already see this activity happening, and without paralyzing a child with praise, I notice or appreciate, "Thank you for bringing that board over to make the house bigger.  It helps all the children fit now."  

         We ended our parent meeting agreeing that as adults we can do a lot by tending to the adult relationships in our community.  The first two pages of the Blame, Shame, and Put-Down Diet--the part we did not read in class--give individuals, couples, or groups of adults a path to follow as we endeavor to model for our children.  Even with older children who would benefit from a more formal meeting structure like the one Kim Payne outlines, parents and teachers would start the process with adults first to become the change they want to see.

Puppet Shows by teacher and children

       I have been presenting a puppet show about a baker who prepares the dough and takes a rest.  While she rests, the dough rises over the bowl and out the chimney, stating, "I want to see the world" and singing, "I rise.  I rise.  Higher and high.  I rise, I rise, to see the sky."  The baker wakes to see the dough on the roof.  When she learns that the dough wants to see the world, she tells the dough to come down; she will help it see the world by making it into rolls.  She makes and sings, "Sunday bread, Sunday bread, made with nuts and raisins red" and takes her rolls into the town.  Children buy them to take home.  When her basket is empty, the baker says, "Now you see my dough, you have gone off to see the world."

   I present this show using an apron with extra pockets sewn on.  My head becomes the roof of the house.  Over the years, I have found that children tend respond well to it.  I like that it helps give an imaginative picture to our work in the classroom of baking bread.  On Tuesdays, Kim takes groups of children to share rolls with the administrators, singing "Sunday bread."  We will see it a few more times before I present a table puppet show about "The Turnip," in which the farmers and animals need the help of little mouse to pull the turnip from the ground.  After Thanksgiving, I will present a puppet show of "The Elves and the Shoemaker."

Some children have started presenting their own puppet shows during play time.  Some like to present them just to themselves.  Others like to set up chairs, distribute tickets, and call for a large audience (with mixed success at convincing other children who might be taking naps in boats or preparing to hunt dragons to leave off their games to watch a show).   After starting the year with a show about "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod" in their wooden shoe, I have made two wooden shoes available for the children to use in their shows.  They also like to try the shoes on their feet--sometimes on my feet.

There have been big pretend birthday celebrations (as with many play scenarios, the lengthy preparation is the most important part), slides and playgrounds built on the loft, workshops built in all parts of the room, and more buses, trains, cars, sleighs, and boats built throughout the room.

We have been going outside for an hour and a half to longer.  Many of our children don their rain garb so capably that I have been surprised to see some of us ready to go outside long before the elementary school has finished with recess.  At present, this has created lovely moments in which some second or third graders greet us with warmth and joy.  In addition to visiting the teepee and snack shelter at the ropes course, we have also been visiting a clearing along the upper loop in which there is a big rock with a fort built onto it and fallen trees to transform into seesaws or jumping places.  Thank you for keeping your child's supply of extra clothes and rain clothes stocked at school.

Bonnie Freundlich will visit us on Tuesdays to lead the children in a Eurythmy circle.  She intends to come to one of our parent meetings later in the year to share more information about Eurythmy to parents.

With warmth and light,

William Dolde