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
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