Nature's First Green...

There is a poem by Robert Frost I dearly love, it goes like this:

Nature's first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf; 
So Eden sank to grief.
So dawn goes down today; 
Nothing gold can stay.

To me it can be applied to the innocence and wonder in children. They are captivated for a moment by things adults so often miss. That tiny clover among the dandelions, can bring them to a halt.  Right in their tracks,  bent double,  completely unaware of the world around them.

A leaf twirling over head as it lets go of the tree branch and falls

to its final rest, is an invitation to lift their face skyward and join the leaf in a spinning, spiraling, dance of life.

Do I embrace life with that same joy and wonder?
Do I find pleasure and enjoyment in the simple?
More importantly, do I allow them, to be in that moment where nature's first green is gold? 

After all it is fleeting and soon they will become school-agers, who become teenagers, and eventually adults caught up in a busy, bustling, self important world longing for a golden moment of childhood.

We must allow the children around us to embrace the golden moments in life. To paint on their hands and thrive in the sensory experience of cool, thick, wet paint oozing between their fingers. To giggle as the horsehair brush tickles their palm, to feel the warm sun on their skin, and feel secure that the adult watching them, is as pleased and enthralled by their discovery as they are. To take golden moments and turn them into memories to pull out of the mind's treasure box and brighten their adult days.

I urge you to memorize this poem. Think on the moments in your childhood, where the memories are still strong and supply you great joy.

Then when you see a child, making what looks like a mess to you, discover the hidden golden moment. Help them capture it by standing back and letting it happen; or join them and for the moment become a child again, free from the bondage of adult things.

Architecture Born From Play

Play is key to the development of children.  It is not idle time doing nothing.  It is key to children's growth and development.  It is instrumental in their physical and cognitive development, helps inspire creativity, dexterity and flexibility.  It is the foundation for all higher level learning. 

I have a group of children who love to build as a part of their play.  It doesn't matter what I give them they find a way to build with it.  Boxes and blocks become towers. Pegs and peg boards turn into fences for the animals.  Dolls get balanced across table to make bridges.  Outside the tires, stumps, wood cookies and buckets are mixed with ramps to build all kinds of contraptions.

So the other day I was curious as to what would happen if I put out a few new materials.  I rounded up shovels, tree branches, from the wooded area by our school, and twine.  I added strips of fabric and then gave a gentle nudge as I started to dig a hole in the ground.  Soon I was surrounded by a flurry of activity, as the children took over.
 
Once one pole was in place the ideas took off.  Soon others were carting tree branches over to the construction site.  Another child went off to get a bucket because, "We need concrete to set the poles and I need to mix it in a bucket." He returned with a bucket of damp soil he placed around poles as they were set into place.

With direction from the kids I helped balance the poles and support the structure as they added to it.  Once it was up they stood back and looked at it.  They than began to go in and out of it.  They circled it and crawled through the poles.  This went on for about 30 minutes.  
I stayed near by to be sure the building was solid and the children were safe if a collapse was going to happen.  I then used the twine to anchor the branches together.  I grabbed a roll of tulle to help in this process and make our structure a little bit more visible since it was in an area they usually run through freely.


I then stepped back and watched.  A few children had been curious about the twine and tulle.  Soon they grabbed the fabric scraps and began to enclose their building.  Some called it a house, others thought it was a cage and some insisted it was a fort.  There were a few who decided it was a Tee Pee. They worked all morning long playing and using their imagination. 


Play is the building blocks for skills needed later in life.  Yet play is becoming more and more limited and its value is becoming lost.  This whole process came about through giving the children a simple idea and then letting them be.  They learned so much more by doing this than they ever would have learned sitting still completing a worksheet or following my lesson plan.  I was just a guide to get them going and then let them teach me what they could do and discover on their own.

Some articles to read:
The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds
The Importance of Play in Children's Development 
Play and Children's Learning 
Back-to-Basics: Play in Early Childhood

 

Embracing Their Interests

One child went to the sandbox today. He started mounding dirt with a shovel. Once he had made a nice peaked mound he set his shovel aside.  Then with one finger he poked a hole in the top of the mound. Another child nearby was closely observing the child's actions. 

"You just wrecked your castle," the child said.
"No, I made a volcano."
"Hmm, like around the dinosaurs, with hot lava, bubbling?"
"Yeah."

Quietly they worked side by side. The sandbox went from a flat desert, to a very mountainous area full of volcanos. Their intensity as they worked, drew others first to just watch and then to join in.

The conversations were rich with description: "mine is big, look at the hole in the top, you mean the crater where the lava comes out." 

The cooperation was great as they shared space, shovels and ideas. They worked as individuals and as teams. Then I had an Aah moment. 

I went in and brought out red food coloring, vinegar and baking soda.  We filled a nearby pan with baking soda that they passed from volcano to volcano, waiting patiently and taking turns, next I poured a little vinegar with red food coloring added, on the first volcano. "Wow, it exploded like a real volcano!"

We then passed the vinegar from child to child as they continued to set off a chemical reaction in their own volcanos. The next thing we knew over an hour had passed and it was lunch time.

Clean up was a breeze and everyone agreed they want to do it again next week. This has fit in nicely with our study on the solar eclipse and solar flares, and on rocks and the different types of rocks and the way they are formed. I am so glad I let them lead the learning and happy for the memories we created together today.