Spring Festival Description

Dear Families,

Your children, Kim, and I experienced Mother Wind, Sister Rain, Brother Wind, and Father Sun today. Unlike the parent & child festival, in which parents and faculty volunteered to portray the characters, today's characters lived in the children's imaginations. As we took our usual walk, we came upon a basket inside the teepee, with a glass bowl of seeds and many fiber planting pots filled with organic potting soil. Some children helped William plant the seeds as we sang "Mother Earth, Mother Earth, Take our Seed and Give it Birth." William let children know that, yes, Mother Earth wanted each child to take one home--and Kim would make sure the child took home a pot at the end of the morning.

As we continued our walk, William came across a watering can left by Sister Rain. William and interested children watered the seeds while we sang, "Sister Rain, Sister Rain, Shed thy tears to swell the grain."

After finishing our walk, and before we returned to our classroom, we observed Brother Wind make a surprise appearance. From a safe distance some children and I saw the heavy branch that had been hanging, broken, above the grass field finally plummet to the earth. I went and removed the orange rope and metal posts.

Inside, children discovered the loft decorated with a green silk along with a Maypole that Brother Wind left for us.

Father Sun left us Maycrowns hanging on the wreathe above the snack table. The children and teachers will decorate these crowns for children to take before Mayday.

The children and Kim danced two songs around the Maypole while I held the pole and sang. We will continue dancing the Maypole for four weeks or so after Spring Break.

We concluded the morning with an apron puppet show of a girl planting a seed in a garden by the forest. She sings for Mother Earth, Sister Rain, Father Sun, and Brother Wind to help nurture the seed. A flower grows and a butterfly visits the flower when summer comes.

The seeds in your child's pots are for a sort of cosmos particularly attractive to butterflies. I forget their exact name but call them Butterfly cosmos.

I will bring the Maypole to Maxwelton Beach when we gather over spring break (more details and reminders to come). It will be great to have some parents join us in the dances, and it would help me introduce slightly more complex Maypole dances to the children with parents acting as models. I save weaving and webs and complex dances for much older children.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

Strunk and White, Eurythmy Performance, Conferences

Dear Families,

An enthusiastic group of parents, including a nursery parent, were quite responsive and offered great insights and experiences during yesterday's Strunk and White Speak to Children talk. From the positive response I have received, I intend to offer this talk again in the fall--perhaps with a different title so more parents will be inspired to attend (we discussed that one of my gifts was decidedly not coming up with catchy titles). I hope to make more of these talks next year of interest to nursery and kindergarten parents: some titles for next school year may include, "An Apology for Self-Esteem," "Making Choices about Choices," "Here, Eat a Carrot Instead: Apparently Crazy Discipline Ideas that Actually Work," and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?: Coming Up with Imaginative Pictures to Guide Children's Behavior."

During Sunday's talk, I spoke about the articles describing the research on the inverse power of praise--that too much global praise (good job, good girl, great job, you're so smart) can make a child risk averse and less likely to prosper academically, emotionally, and socially. I have published links to these articles before, but I offer them again here to make them easy to find.

This article from New York Magazine offers a parent's perspective on the research.


This article from Scientific American Mind is by Professor Carol Dweck (the researcher mentioned in the previous article) and is a bit more formal in nature.

This Wednesday at 10am, our nursery class will join the rest of the school to watch a Eurythmy performance at Thomas Berry Hall. The children seem ready for a longer walk to the hall, and Kim and I have plans to arrive early, let children use the bathrooms near the Sanctuary, and to provide fruit, nuts, and bread outside before the performance. We will return and eat the soup waiting for us (unless Goldilocks eats it all). On this day it will be especially important for children to arrive by 9am and to feel in good health for two longer walks.

Thank you for signing up for conferences on-line. I will print out the sign-up form as it stands now and post it outside the classroom.

There have been creative play themes and new play groups emerging in the classroom. An elaborate house was built by a number of children; a boy and girl who I had not observed playing together before pretended to sleep inside while 5 Santa Clauses (with perhaps some elves) brought toys to their roof and slid the toys down an ornate series of chimneys. Outside some beavers have begun chewing up furniture to fashion beaver furniture (which may or may not be for sale at next year's auction).

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

March Newsletter

Enrollment for Next Year

Please read the letter about enrolling for next year from Maureen Marklin.  It is in your folder in the upstairs lobby.  Please return the form with your best estimate of your intentions for your child next year.  As a member of a committee mandated to find the best ways to use the skills of our faculty members next year, I know our planning for next year will be much more effective if we have a sense of what our enrollment looks like for next year.

        Because the age groupings of nursery and kindergarten have varied to balance the size of the early childhood classes, confusion about what to indicate on your intention for your child's enrollment for next year may arise.  If your child will turn 5 in 2009, it is safe to assume your child will be in kindergarten next year--and you can indicate 3 day or 5 day (again, these are your estimates, not binding contracts) and whether you want to use our extended care program.  If we follow this year's model, children turning 4 before June 1, 2009 will go on to kindergarten (with the option of 3 or 5 day with extended care), and younger children will stay in the 3 day/half day nursery next year.  There is always possibility for change to meet the needs of an individual child or the needs of the early childhood or school as a whole.  If you are not sure if your child will be in nursery or kindergarten next year, please still turn in a form with your best estimate.  If you have a young child but wish your child could attend 5 days next year, please let us know, too.  We may not be able to offer a 5 day nursery of full day care for nursery children next year, but if we know early that there is strong interest and commitment, it provides more possibility for us to group our classes in a creative way to meet the needs of our families.  Also let me know if you have feelings that your child would do better as one of the older children in a nursery class or if she or he would feel at sea without some of the older playmates she or he as bonded with this year.

If confusion lingers, please email or call me (341-5686) to set up an in-person or phone conference to talk about next year.  My afternoon and evening schedule is filled with meetings and commitments this week, but I'd be willing to talk on the weekend or next Monday afternoon after 1:45.  I will also be glad to respond to individual questions via email.

Spring Conferences and Spring Break

School is closed from Monday, April 6, through Friday, April 17.  I will be offering conferences on Saturday, April 4 and Monday, April 6 in the early morning and early afternoon.  I will post an on-line sign-up for these conferences soon (this is an experiment; my experience with hard copies of conference sign-ups is that sometimes teacher and parent don't remember when a conference is, and the only record of that information is posted on a door in a locked building; a google document, provided everything works, would allow you to sign up for and cancel an appointment from any location).  I will also post a list outside the Butterfly Classroom in a few weeks once we try the on-line experiment.

        Traditionally Early Childhood families have one conference a year.  If a family wishes to have a second conference, please allow new families to sign up first.

         On Friday April 17, I invite nursery families to join my family at Maxwelton beach from 4 to 6pm for play and informal conversation.  It should be low tide.  Plan to bring a picnic dinner for your family (because I expect families might be traveling, I am refraining from suggesting a pot-luck in case attendance is low and we have 5 arugula salads--though I love arugula).

Spring Ahead

Spring ahead starts next week.  I am prepared to be flexible if some children arrive a bit late next week.  If you arrive after 9am and we have left the playground, know that we walk to the teepee until about 9:30am and then head past the middle school toward the 10 acres.   If many families arrive after 9am, I will delay the walk as we gently transition.

Upcoming Parent Meetings, Time Change

On Tuesday, March 24, we will meet with the kindergartens from 5 to 6:30pm.  We will have some pictures of curriculum throughout the elementary years.  Our meeting will end at 6:30pm, not at 8pm as scheduled at the beginning of the year.  There will be a separate meeting from 6:45 to 8pm for parents of children enrolling in first grade next year.

We will have a nursery specific meeting on Sunday, April 26, from 3 to 4:30pm.

Parent & Child Spring Festival and Grandparent and Special Friend's Day

Some of you may have or will receive invitations to parent & child families for a Spring Festival on Thursday, March 12 from 9:30 to 10:30am.  While your child and you are welcome to attend as alumni or guests of the Dewdrop and Rosebud program, do know that I am planning a spring experience with gifts from Mother Earth, Father Sun, Sister Rain, and Brother Wind for our nursery children during nursery class time on Tuesday, March 31 (I would prefer to do it on Wednesday, April 1, but fear that a child or two might think the gifts from Mother Earth are an April Fool's joke).  This experience will be a surprise for our nursery children.

       If your child's grandparent or special friend will visit school next Friday, March 13, please rsvp to Christyn Johnson at school or whippet2me@aol.com.

Simplicity Parenting Lecture Follow-up

Our Kathrine Dickerson Memorial Library has a good audio copy (or copies) of Kim Payne's lecture on Simplicity Parenting.  I recommend it to parents or friends who were unable to attend his lecture last month.  Even parents who did attend might find new information; on the CD, for example, he talks about simplifying the food we serve children (which he did not have time for during the lecture on Whidbey).

        I want to share some thoughts about a polarity I observe in Kim's lectures.  He exhorts us to train our child to avoid interrupting adult conversations.  At the same time, he cautions us to simplify the information we give our child--not just freeing them from television and news programs, but also from our adult conversations.  As he says numerous times, if we are complaining about a president or CEO at the dinner table, we should not be surprised if our child starts using rude words about our 2nd grade teacher.  This is where I find dissonance with Kim's lectures (I think he would agree).  In his often humorous examples of adult conversation in his lectures, it may seem he gives adults carte blanche to talk about war casualties, political disgust, what jerks bad drivers are, and the like while training their children not to interrupt.  This is not so.  While it is important to guide our children toward being polite, the best way we can do this is by tempering our own speech and simplifying the child's exposure to adult information.  In other lectures, Kim talks about our culture's addiction to criticism.  In the put-down diet (which we discussed in the fall), he asks teachers and parent to set the example for our children by noticing and then removing criticism and put-downs from our speech (and even thoughts).  I hope this is helpful; in some conversations I have had with parents after Kim's lectures, they have observed the difficulty in practice of training children not to interrupt--adults interrupt each other; sometimes one adult seems to talk for a long time and could benefit from being interrupted; adults interrupt children; so much of what adults could talk about is best said away from the presence of children.  As the book Whole Child/Whole Parent suggests, being a parent is our opportunity to develop on a social and spiritual path.  Finding this almost impossible balance of speech and silence with and in the presence of our children is one of the greatest tasks and opportunities on our path.

Person:  What is it like to live in the water?

Fish:  What water?

    Screen medias (including the blog I cajole you to read) have become so pervasive that it may be becoming harder and harder to free our children from their presence and influence.  Kim had strong words about the need to free out children from tv, dvds, computers, and the like in their early years:  when asked how much was OK, he responded by saying it depended on how much you want to poison your child; he'd prefer to poison his child not at all.   Here is an article from 1999 by Dr. Susan Johnson about the influence of screen time on children.  While there are more recent research articles about the deleterious effects of screen time, and while Dr. Johnson's article can seem quaint and dated because the technology for delivering media has evolved so rapidly, I like to offer her article because she writes from 3 perspective:

1)  As a mom whose own child watched TV until she (the mom) observed negative effects.

2)  As a pediatrician who has done lots of research and helped lots of children.

3)  As a pediatrician who has taken Waldorf teacher training and can speak as a parent, doctor, and educator.

New Rhythm, Ellersiek Games, Three Bears, Repetition

  Thank you for helping the class with our new spring rhythm with the outdoor start.  Because our children are spending less time getting dressed and going to the bathroom during the morning (with the number of accidents less than before the new rhythm), I have more time to offer both a circle (or have Bonnie guide a Eurythmy circle) and a puppet show each day rather than alternating.  While this is not necessarily a good thing (early childhood educators have to be careful to avoid making a child's morning too complex and stimulating), I feel relieved that I can share both some of my Ellersiek games (a long verse about a walk into the woods to hear a bird symphony) and my apron puppet show of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" without compromising.  After spring break, I will be able to let children dance around the Maypole and share a fairy tale each day.  

Repetition helps development tremendously, and it can be hard for children, parents, and teachers.  In my teacher training I learned it is best to tell the same fairy tale (4 or 5 times a week) for a month; in practice, I see many Waldorf kindergartens and nurseries sticking to one tale for less long.  My goal is not to criticize those programs but to notice how difficult it can be to stay on the same verse or song or story for a month.  At the same time, the most healing comes to the child who might resist and always seek new stimulation when the teacher stays strong and stays with the same story.  I am very interested to hear feedback from parents if their child complains about a bird symphony, Maypole dance, or three bear story staying around too long--with our new rhythm I am able to share these more frequently with children.  I probably won't shift my curriculum, but it will help me support your child.

Digging, Birth Centers, Freighters, Pirate Ships, Houses

As I wrote in the last entry, new constellations of children are forming in their games.  I do sometimes hear "No one will play with me," and just as often I will hear another child say, "Oh, I'll play with you," only to hear the first child say, "No, I wanted to play with . . . ."  I do my best to guide children in these situations without forcing a child merrily playing, say, in a freight ship with smoke stacks and cargo who would be willing, with my help perhaps, to welcome many more children onto the ship to switch to a different game because another classmate remembers that game from a few weeks ago.  I am constantly balancing the needs of the individual and the class; sometimes a child who is frustrated because one particular child won't play in one particular way with her or him receives the most benefit from being frustrated rather than having the other child always yield to accommodate her or his whim.

With our outdoor start, a group of five to eight girls and boys have been digging in trenches, muck, and water.  Gross motor work tends to be an excellent way to welcome children to the day and each other.  Disagreements arise over whether the project will be a bridge or a swamp or a river, but children tend to work them out.  Other children have begun exploring the berry patch near our playground all the more; it offers many passages and sheltered spaces to explore and imagine in, and our outdoor start has brought some of this exploratory play back.  

Without telling the children (and please don't tell them), I have shortened the distance of our morning walk while expanding our time in each location that we play in in the woods.  At the teepee, children play child-initiated singing games with Kim, work ardently as beavers or other digging creatures (a reason for mud and dirt on children's faces), practice climbing and tumbling and balancing with me, build a pretend bonfire to heat the teepee, and pretend to be chipmunk or bear families.

We continue to a jumping tree near the middle school and ten acres.  Yesterday we observed a middle school science lesson in which students were observing an electric motorcycle one of the parents drove in as part of their unit on electricity.  A couple of our children then created a scenario in which I was both a mother and a gas station attendant (the electric part of the motorcycle didn't register necessarily with our children) and children were taking rides to sleep-overs.  Other children were crossing bridges (tree limbs) over a river.  Others were pretending to jump in the river to swim.  Because we are close to school, Kim is able to take a child who needs to use the bathroom back to the building more readily than when we are farther afield.  Children have also found a latrine in the forest near the middle school (I have yet to find out from a colleague the history of this latrine's use), and insofar as construction, septic systems, and drain fields are a big part of island life, this sort of discovery merges well into the children's constructive play.

Inside quests for jewels from a dragon still appear from time to time.  These tend to be purposeful quests with maps, carefully hidden jewels (never found), and lots of dialogue and planning.  Because there seems so much purpose and conversation in these scenarios, I do not find myself alarmed if the questers are also arming themselves with various weapons should they encounter a dragon.  As always, I am redirecting or stopping any weapon play directed at another child, or trying to transform it into a dance as we observed at the Michaelmas festival.  Recently, the loft has either been a freight ship or pirate ship (or both at the same time to different children, with girls, interestingly enough, being most insistent that they are the bad pirates); again, there is lots of planning about what will go where on the ship, and even the bad pirates show lots of good qualities and cooperation.  A doctor's office on the couch from last week has come back as a birth center in which a couple of moms to be (girls with baby dolls stuffed in their shirts or dresses) are tended to by doctors and/or midwifes and/or people distributing Halloween candy.  Some children at some times draw lots of pictures for themselves or others.  Many children help make the bread and soup, and some are fond of helping with ironing and washing.   I like to have drawing and work available because not every child in the nursery class finds benefits from playing in a large group all the time; the child learns that it is OK to take breaks from the group play.

Bang! Bang!  You're Dead

Some parents have asked questions about gun play at school and home.  Here is an article I received about children's interest in gun play from Mothering Magazine.

The article can help us as parents frame and clarify our responses to our child's play.  I have many things I like about the article.  I also find its evidence inconsistent, and it seems to promote a lot more talking and explaining than is necessarily good for children before the age of 7.  Without writing a full critique, here is a list of some of my thoughts; I will be glad to share more and hear your thoughts and wishes during our April meeting.

1.  One can make all sorts of rules about gun play, but so much talking is also paralyzing and awakening for the young child.  What my evaluator Annie Gross said when I asked her what to advise if a child seems stuck in gun play is that what young children really need is to be in the presence of lawful, physical work (and the chance to help themselves):  digging in a big area (not just a small sandbox), watching real bonfires at home, splitting wood, pruning, cutting, moving heavy things, spinning wool, ironing, cooking, and more.

2.  It is our job as parents and teachers to help a child who is stuck in play, whether it is gun play or always wanting to be the Little Mermaid.

3.  Television and video game depictions of guns have no place in a child's life before the age of 12 or so (right after the age at which Eugene Schwartz recommends introducing the Harry Potter books).  In a Waldorf curriculum, a child will have experienced the lawful hunters of Native American tales, the vigor of Hebrew tales, the violence and trickery of Norse and Celtic tales, the archetypes of conflict, death, and resurrection in tales of Greece and India.  Then a child is more prepared to respond in a healthy way should these media images appear.

4.  Narrative versions of the lawful hunter, whether with gun or bow and arrow, can be very appropriate for the 6 or 7 year older child.  The Grimm's story of the 4 Skillful Brothers or How Six Men Got on the World come to mind; tales from Native American traditions in second grade also come to mind.

5.  Traditional childhood games of cops and robbers and the like work best after the child reaches Piaget's stage of "Games with Rules" at about age 7 or so (this is often also the time when it is best to introduce board and card games; open-ended imaginative play should rule the day before this).  A lot of learning takes place at a home play date when a group of children decide how many times you have to be shot to be dead, how you come back to life, what are rules for determining if you are hit or not, and the like.  This tends to require too much talking and planning for children before the age of 7.

6.  To just forbid gun play outright before age 7 can tend to make children sneaky.

7.  In order to promote social inclusion, once children are really ready for gun play, it is best that these games happen at home so that other children are not inadvertently drawn into or "put-down" by being shot in a game they are not playing.  Recess has too many children and too few adults for gun games to have a healthy effect at school.

8.  If a child pretends to shoot another child or adult who is not playing with that child, we as adults must respond just as we must respond if a child insults or teases another child.  The way to respond will not always be clear.  Sometimes the response needs to be quite strong.

9.  Wrestling with other children and with parents is healthy and helps develop a child's senses of balance and touch.  It is a shame if gun play interferes with this process.  Kim Payne often prescribes wrestling with mom or dad for children; if your child seems stuck, I recommend giving this prescription yourself.

10.  With older children at home, it is a shame if gun play and technology deprive children of chances to tackle, wrestle, climb, jump and do other daring things that help them meet each other and the world with force.  Children seek rites of passage and genuine encounters.  While one could argue that tackle football with helmets and pads is dangerous (I played football and learned to use my helmet and pads offensively; studies are showing long term damage to professional football players from hard impacts), the too often outlawed childhood game of tackle football without pads--or ideally, the chaotic game of tackling the child or parent with the ball who then tosses it up for the next brave soul to catch--more like rugby, allows a genuine, forceful encounter, and allows for bonding through physical touch.

11.  It is quite conceivable that a father or mother would use hunting as lawful, meaning work and may include a young child in this work.  One could argue that in an area with, say, a surplus deer population, hunting and eating venison is a way to feed a family without making a large impact on the environment.  My point here is not to open a debate about farming practices, hunting, and the like, but to help us frame a way of inquiry.  The soldier is a worthy and lawful archetype, one the child will meet in first grade fairy tales and the tales from Norse, Celtic, Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and World histories in ages to come and is one that can live in us even if we choose a path of nonviolence following Gandhi or the like.

12.  To force a child to be peaceful does not create peace.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde

new play scenarios, snacks

Dear Nursery Families,

      Thank you for your flexibility and support as we welcome Spring with our outdoor start.  While I will write more in depth about the children's day in an upcoming newsletter, I wanted to mention some of what I have observed with the children.  I think for our children this school year, this new rhythm will work well--even if we have a few sad mornings as your child misses the old, indoor starts if it is bitterly cold and rainy outside.

      Our schedule now has more flexibility:  I no longer have to try to get this or that done before the elementary children come out to recess at 10:45.  While our Butterfly Childrenas a group demonstrated excellent resourcefulness and responsibility while getting ready for outside in the middle of the day, it is nice to have the playground and berry patch all to ourselves.  When we were getting ready for outside while the elementary school was outside and Kim was taking children to the bathroom, some of our older nursery children resisted getting dressed themselves.  In a sense, they got an unintended reward for delaying--while Kim was in the bathroom and I was monitoring children outside, they might get to play inside without as much form as I would like.  The new method, while it might frustrate some children, builds a much better habit life with clearer natural consequences.  The sooner children get undressed, the sooner they play inside.  If a child feels dreamy or sleepy or wants to take her or his time getting undressed, it does not detract from the experience of other children who are merrily playing inside.

       Perhaps because of the new schedule, or perhaps because it is time, girls and boys and younger and older children have been playing together much more frequently in the past week; travel themes, restaurants, and construction continue to be frequent scenes.  One day two older girls were able to involve many children in the classroom in establishing a doctor's office with patients, medicines, soft places to recline; this existed side by side and in harmony with a group of boys searching for gems and jewels in an imagined dragon's lair. 

      Many children helped me prepare the bread on Monday to eat on Tuesday.  Many children helped me peel and chop vegetables on Tuesday to eat in our soup on Wednesday.  It would be wonderful to have more soup vegetables by Tuesday morning; many children enjoy helping, and it would be nice to have more carrots or beets or turnips to peel or celery to chop.  Some children enjoy bringing something every day.  If this does not describe your family and you find it hard to remember what to bring when, you might consider bringing an apple (or other fruit or crunchy vegetable) and soup vegetables on Monday.  Kim and I will gladly store the soup vegetable until Tuesday.  And if you forget on Monday, you have another chance for soup vegetables on Tuesday.

       Thank you for your support of the class.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde