Wonder love

How to Teach Reading and Writing (and a little math and science, too)

Stella loves to lay in the hammock. I'd say it is her favorite summer pastime this year. I spent about an hour laying in it with her one morning this week, and I taught her to read and write. Here's how:

1. As we were swinging gently back and forth, I looked up into the tree and saw that a spider had made a web and the sun was catching it just so we could see every line. Having finished reading Charlotte's Web the night before, I asked Stella if she imagined that Charlotte's webs looked that way? Could she see the orb lines and the radial lines? 
2. I reached for the drawing paper and pens that were available in our little outdoor studio space and invited Stella to draw the web she saw. This is a difficult task, but she gave it a try. 
3. When she finished, she wanted to write, "From Stella" on the bottom of the paper. She asked me how to write "From". So I told her the letters and she wrote them down.
4. Then she wanted to write "I love you". So we started with "I". She wanted more letters so I explained to her that was the whole word. 
5. She asked if she could write a heart and I said yes but that wouldn't be the word. She would need letters to make the word "love". So she asked for the letters.
6. This time, I made the sound /l/ because I knew it was a sound she had in her name. I told her it was the sound in Ste -- ll --and she blurted out happily, "l"! And then she was tired out, so she decided to stop the writing.
7. We laid back in the hammock for a little more snuggling and swinging. A squirrel hopped along the top of the fence but got startled when it saw us and ran away.
8. We checked on the web again and Stella noticed a tiny moth flying around it. She wondered if it would get caught and the spider would eat it. We considered the patience it takes to be a spider. 
9. I looked up on the tree and noticed a bit of sap running from a knot hole. I remembered that Stella had asked about making syrup very recently, and took a moment to make the connection for her.
10. She hopped up and cleaned the raspberry bushes of berries, then hopped back in.
11. We noticed that the spider's web had broken. And we took a little more time to consider the patience and feelings of spiders. Stella spent a few moments trying to talk to the spider in spider language, which I, like Fern's mother, could not understand.
12. Stella decided to add the spider to her drawing. She asked me how many legs it had and I told her. Stella's spider got 8 legs counted carefully -- on each side of the spider's body.
13. We noticed a second spider building a web behind the first, and we were reminded of Charlotte's babies.

Okay, so Stella doesn't yet read and write independently. But an hour spent like this, in the context of good books and materials at hand and making conversation in the wide world -- an hour spent snuggling and connecting and considering the feelings of spiders and squirrels -- an hour spent noticing and wondering and making meaningful marks on the page -- this is how she will learn. Experience offers her a chance to find her place in the family of things. She, like all human beings, wants a way to participate.

And it is oh, so much more fun than flashcards.

Get away

Oh! It's just the thing to do sometimes... the pictures can tell the story.

 

For the birds

The view outside one of our biggest windows this time of year is terribly dreary. We decided to cheer it up by hanging some feeders it in and hoping for bird friends to join us.

 

 

We added a collection of books and characters to inspire imagining about the lives of the birds, and to encourage a playful curiosity about their world.

 

We had to wait for the birds. But Stella came right away.

Exploring everything.

Inspired.

For days now, she's carried around her "bird journal". Practicing birds. Learning to see.

1. 2. 

3. 4.

5.

Ah, the power of imagination, inspiration and one tiny human, driven to make meaning of her relationship with the world. Reframing what we could see through the window was so simple, really. And the drive so strong.

Home again

Spending the week coming home. It's been hard to leave the beach this year. Missing the way the beach brought us together as we've gone our scattered ways every day this jet lagged week.

 

Missing the endless explore time.

The collections.

The sweet togetherness.

The time to wander.

To run.

 

To get to know the tides.

How blessed we are to have a place like this to go to. But I'm wondering today about what lessons our days at the beach have to teach us about how we want to spend our time. It reminds me of Mary Oliver's haunting question: What will you do with your one wild and precious life?   What will our children imagine for their own? 

We're headed into the busy season already. How will we preserve this time of wonder?

 

A little dreaming

This is what the Opal School playground looks like:

And though they never complain, I always have thought that if you were to ask them, the children just might have some ideas for improvements. No surprise then, that when the Portland Children's Museum gave the hint this spring that it might like to have a gift (an annual gift from the 5th grade graduates to the institution that gave them such a special elementary education) of a design for a new playground, the children jumped at the chance!

After interviewing all the children in the school, researching playground safety and regulations, seeking inspiration from books and other resources, working with a landscape architect, and dreaming a whole lot, here are some ideas the 5th graders came up with and built to scale:

 

This magnificent design and the story of it's creation will be presented to the Opal School Summer Symposium-goers next Saturday. 

     

Beach Buddies

Oh, what a month it has been. Cross country travel two times. Big presentations to wonderful, committed people. Lots of new friends. One sweet day with mom, 3000 miles from here. One quick ferry ride to Peaks Island and back. Home again for a birthday. Sophie on stage. Soccer. Playdates. Homework. New garden beds. Housework. The beginning of the end of the school year. The end of preparing next year's big rocks: calendar, staff, budget, new families. Opal School's summer symposium looming. Documentation. New exhibits at the Portland Children's Museum. And all the new ideas that keep coming. All the life that keeps wanting to be lived.

Right smack in the middle of it all, a weekend at Camp Westwind with the Opal School community. The world stopped and the sun shined and the whales said, "Breathe." 

It was a good reminder.

   

Staying in

Imagine my delight, on the day after writing that last post, to pick up the new issue of Brain, Child magazine and to find this article as its feature. I have a whole lot to say about it... and look forward to the time (I know I'll find the time!) I'll need to do it justice... but in the meantime... here's a little photo response:

No, children do not need to go into nature to develop or nurture their sense of wonder.

But it helps.

Getting Out

This week I hosted a room full of visitors to Opal School as part of our year-long professional development series. Our focus this time was on supporting the social and emotional intelligences of children.  We talked together about strategies for creating learning communities, about the interconnectedness of the social/emotional and cognitive processes in our brain, about creating learning environments where boys can thrive, and about the importance of being in nature. 

Playing in nature...

 

Bringing school to nature...

Bringing nature to school...

Nature smoothes those connections between emotion and cognition. Time in nature and with nature invites a sense of wonder into a partnership with learning that grows a tree with fruit so sweet, the appetite for knowing and understanding becomes insatiable. 

What if school was a place where we banked on the pleasurable emotions of learning? Where we intentionally supported curiosity and meaning making because we knew that once we human beings get a taste of deep understanding, we want more? Where we weren't surprised to hear 6 year olds say things like, "When things get harder, they're more fun!" as an Opal School student explained to his teacher earlier this week? 

But if school isn't that kind of place for your child these days, and you haven't yet convinced the school board that it should be-- it's a lucky thing for all of us that nurturing a relationship to nature in our own children is such and easy thing to do! 

I found out yesterday that this month is "Children and Nature Awareness Month"-- sponsored by the Children and Nature Network. I found this out because of a post written at Rhythm of the Home.There is lots of inspiration there for getting outside with your child-- and, in honor of Awareness Month (and of the children themselves, of course) a challenge to do so has been proposed!

Reading this post with my mama hat on, my heart sank a little. I looked at the cold rain outside and thought about the tiny windows of time I have this month to be with my own children because I'm out and about trying to advocate for everybody's children... 

And then on our way to the car, Stella slowed us all down just long enough to hug the tulips, reminding me that we have all the time we need.

 

Magic

It is days like this that make me believe in magic...

     

Creativity

It's been a while, I know, I know. In the small amounts of time I've had to be with my own thoughts in the last month or so... I guess I just wanted them to stay that way. But here we are now. It's spring break again, and a year since I began writing this blog. How can a year be so fast and so slow all at once?

There was a moment today when I was feeling kind of low. My girls seemed at loose ends as well, and it occurred to me that what we needed was a little inspiration. What could we create today?  I looked up and noticed Max, deep into drawing the wild world of stories that swirl in his mind, fully occupied and content. I mentioned that Max had the right idea... doing something creative. Sophie was a little offended by this attention to her brother, which she let me know with some snitty comment (which I successfully ignored). 

But it wasn't a moment later when she had dug some half-finished craft kit out of the studio and sat down to see what more she could make of it. Not much, I'm afraid. The convenience of pre-packaged inspiration is tempting, but never quite as yummy as homemade. 

And then the camera caught her eye.

At that very moment, Stella was exercising her own creative spirit, inventing new ways to get into cupboards, refusing to take, "No you can not have any more packages of Annie's fruit snacks today" for an answer.

And the first photo was taken.

A new bread recipe was my inspiration. And I needed just a few minutes to throw it all together and set it to rise. Just enough time for Sophie to get in a little more work with the camera. This time outside, following Stella, energized by her second package of fruit snacks, on her (always successful) hunt for worms.

And other backyard adventures:

Our spirits lifted, sun shining, we decided it was time for a walk to the park. Max was a little whiny about leaving his drawing, and especially about the walk being slowed by Sophie's picture taking of all the flowers...

 

When Max asked for my phone at the park, my heart sank a little. He couldn't possibly think I'd let him play a game on my phone? But I needn't have worried. He wanted the stop watch... so Sophie could time him on a course he created for himself to run. And that idea inspired us all. And we all spent the rest of the time we had, waiting for the bread to rise, running and timing ourselves and laughing at how fast and slow we can be.    

I'm going to try and remember this on those low, slow days to come. Generate your own inspiration. Don't take no if you can possibly find another way. Share. Laugh. Eat bread hot out of the oven.