Empowering Young Children: a show for the parents

At my kindy, we use the children action song "there was a princess long ago" very often. It is a song about the story of the Sleeping Beauty. Today, the children put on a show of the song independently, organizing the cast, costume, props and tickets all by themselves. What's the teachers' role then? Empowering the children by encouragement...

The story began when a girl made a princess crown with a student teacher. As the student teacher did not know the song, the girl decided to show her how the song went. She asked me whether she was allowed to perform the song at my lunch mat-time. I said yes, naturally, to let children take the lead in programming. And then, I checked on her whether she had found a prince. With that prompt, the girl stepped up as the "producer" of the show and asked around for a prince. While her friends all wanted to be a princess, my producer decided to have a few princesses on her show. She showed them how to make a crown and demanded that her twin brother to be the prince.

Interestingly, my producer noticed that her cast would not have enough time to finish their crown before lunch time and persuaded me to postpone the lunch mat-time. Instead, I suggested to do the show at home mat-time, so they were able to get more organized, such as finding some costumes and having a little practice.

My producer happily agreed. After lunch, as expected, my producer remembered her responsibility. She searched the costume boxes for dresses for all the princesses. And then, she called her cast to get together and have a rehearsal. I watched as she instructed her friends to line up chairs for the audience. When she was arguing with the ticket sellers about who could come to the show, I did not intervene and simply asked them to talk with and listen to each other. Also, I encouraged her to think what she wanted to do, when more children wanted to join in the show. I can tell my producer was ready for the challenge, as she was able to draw on previous experiences observing the teachers organizing a show.

Eventually at home mat-time, I announced, "ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to our princess show!" After that, I introduced my little producer and asked her to name her cast and start the show. The performance amazed the parents who were present at the mat-time. My producer and her cast felt proud and so did their mother. What's my role again? Trusted the children, asked questions, offered advice, gave supervision, and celebrated the success with the children. Back off! Teachers do not need to be always hands on.

Valuing children's art

Ann Pelo advises early childhood teachers, "honour the courage and boldness of creating!"

Something to ponder: " It is no small thing to put a strong black line on a waiting piece of paper, or to make the first stroke of color across a canvas, to press a thumb into a smooth slab of clay or put the first crimp in a length of wire. It takes courage and daring and humility, and deserves our regard," as said by Ann Pelo.

I asked, "Your picture looks amazing, can I put it on the wall, so everyone can see it?" The child says, "No! I want to take it home. You can make a copy." So, I let her use the printer.

Organizing a supportive environment means a quiet space, a chair to sit on...

Christmas Preparation with Young Children

Christmas is around the corner. As usual, the kindy is busy preparing for the festival. We are making gifts to families so children learn to show gratitude during the festive season of kindness. We are learning Christmas songs for a family concert.

However, this year, we have decided to do things differently because of the better awareness of the diversity of cultures of the kindy community. We have Muslims who requested that their daughters be excused from musical activities. Another family specially asked us not to involve her girl in any spirtiual events. As we know that some kindy families do not celebrate Christmas, so we tell children we are making a special gift to bring home for the end of year celebration. We avoid making festive food, nor making Christmas decorations. To tie in with the green culture of the kindy, we let children paint jars with glass paint, which could be used as a decorative jar or for holding a tealight candle.

Before we started practicing for the christmas concert, we sent a letter to families, talking about the upcoming concert and asking them whether their child will participate or not. As such, parents can opt out according to their values.

I don't think we are too PC. it's a natural development out of respect for everyone and all cultures. Most families of non European cultures embrace the Christmas celebration, and they happily let their children get involved in the experiences. Just a bit of extra thoughts and paper work, and everyone feels comfortable!

Superheroes and ICT

A couple of weeks ago, the superhero play at kindy has moved to an interesting direction. The children have gone beyond capes and masks. It's no longer about dressing up and running around. As the kindy has a culture of using the medium of art as the tool of exploration, we put out pens and paint, and also pictures and magazines of superheroes for children to represent their understanding of the superheroes.

When we looked up pictures of superheroes on the internet, the teachers noted that a few children have a lot of knowledge and interest in the ninjas of Lego's Ninjago. While the teachers are not familiar with this set of Lego toys or characters, so alongside with the children, the teachers have been actively researching on Ninjago on the computer. Through research, the teachers are able to draw the children's attention to the positive attributes of the Lego ninja. Instead of talking about fighting and battle, they discussed about what each character likes to do, what their weapons are and their means of transportation. The children filled each other up with the story plot, and their narrative is sophisticated and full of details. Thanks to Lego!

While we think we know something about the classic superheroes like Batman and Spiderman, we won't do any research about them when planning the learning experiences. Whereas we know nothing about the Lego ninja, so we are keen to read more about them from the internet. In the end, the children's learning is enriched with greater understanding of the lego ninjas. Their drawing is more complex; and the ninja heroes are depicted in action, and sometimes with their plane or motorbike at the background...

We love to see children moved beyond dressing up and chasing each other, and we let them play games on the computer as well. The more experienced children help the less experienced ones use the touch pad to scroll the screen; click and select and so on. A lot of peer tutoring is happening.

How amazing is ICT in supporting teaching and learning! I've been thinking if we did research about Spiderman and Batman, would the children's play be more complex? Recalling a child who used to dress up as a Spiderman and jump, crouch and climb around kindy, if I had used internet to research about Spiderman with the children, they might focus their attention on the languages of body movements and drama, which is a valuable means of communication in the early years.

However, for a much younger age group - infants, what does technological literacy mean? Check out what Anita of Victoria University, New Zealand has found out.

Blogging with Children 2

There are many reasons to get children involved in blogging. In the last post, I talked about it as a strategy to get families interested about the blog. All parents love to look at the photos and hear the voice of their child. When I bog with the children, I let them choose the photos and record what they say in their own words. Families will feel more connected to the teaching and learning happened at the kindergarten.

Equally important, children are contributing to their own assessment through blogging. I view children as competent learner, and they have opinions and views of their own. When they revisit their earlier work and related photos, they are able to make their own judgement about their achievements; and they are trusted with the decision of choosing what is recorded on the blog. It's also a way to gather data about children's learning from their perspective, which effectively helps the teachers develop relevant programme for individual children.

Moreover, blogging with young children empower them to be a competent and confident communicator. There are really a hundred languages to communicate; and in the digital age, which definitely include the web tools. To grow up as a responsible digital citizen, children need to have the opportunity to use the computer and internet responsibly at a young age.  Computer is not just for gaming and watching You Tube.

Just like today, I talked about the kindergarten gala and looked at the photos I have taken. With the photos, a child recreated what she was most excited about through the language of art/drawing. Her perspective of the BIG fire truck is vividly expressed through the dominating color of red, big ladder and many wheels it has. When she was choosing the photos of her drawing for posting on the blog, she noticed the missing siren, and then she added that bit on her drawing. So, the child was shifting her perspective from the artist of the drawing to the perspective of a viewer, and she made modification and improvement on her own. So, blogging is a tool for self-review or assessment for young children.

 Interested now? You may want to read more about early childhood and blogging in New Zealand.

Blogging with young children

My interest in blogging started when I set up a blog for my kindergarten earlier this year. From an ICT symposium facilitated by the Core Education,  I learnt that using ICT in the early childhood programme is the way to recognize and acknowledge the ICT experiences children are having at home. With an aim to 'make learning visible to our families ', the kindergarten decided to have its own blog. We are aware that some other kindergartens have great sucess in communicating learning with parents and their extended families overseas through blogging,  and similarly my kindergarten community reflects a diversity of cultures, probably the blog will become an effective forum for the teachers to share the learning happening at kindy; and equally important, families will be able to give us feedback, share their views, add a different perspectives, and enrich the teaching and learning experiences.

The path to launch the blog has not been smooth. We organized a parents' evening to explain the reasons to have a blog and how to read and make comments. Despite the turnout rate was low, the parents who participated gave use huge support, so we determined to go ahead. As parents are a bit concerned about opening up the blog, we agreed to have a closed blog, and the kindergarten will invite only families to our blog. As we have chosen to use Blogger, which requires a Gmail account to read the blog; the response from the parents has been disappointing. Even though it's free to open a Gmail account, few parents took the time to do it. We've launched our blog for over 10 months, and only 15% of our families are reading and commenting on our blog. Are the families really so busy that they don't bother to acquire a Gmail? So, recently, we relaunch the blog and switch to WordPress. See how it will go!

Another strategy I suggested is to put the child's voice on the blog. I will regularly compose a post with the children and then send a personal invitation to their parent to go to the blog. Hopefully, the parents will develop a habit of reading the blog. I'll talk about the value of blogging with children next time.

Programme Planning in partnership with Parents

In New Zealand, the Early Childhood Curriculum Document highlights the strong partnership with families. My kindergarten has always had a strong commitment to work closely with the parents. We regularly communicate about individual children's learning through learning stories and group's learning through wall display and blogging. 

When parents are aware of the current interests or learning experiences at kindy, they are able to give us feedback and ideas to further enhance learning happening at kindy. We believe in teachers and parents working together to extend the learning opportunities for children. When home and centre are in sync, the teachers are able to develop better plans to build complexity into children's learning experience.

All along the team knows we have been doing okay with planning for the dominant group. But we're not so sure about small groups. It seems all our energy are invested in planning and documentation for the dominant group, whereas the interests of the small groups are insufficiently supported. Just like currently a large number of children are making weapons and the play theme is about the superhero; and the learning experiences and outcomes are acknowledged, documented and communicated with parents. But superhero play does not appeal to everyone, and a few children are simply not interested in it. For example, while most children make weapons with ice pop sticks, a couple of children spent long periods of time to create 3D objects in intricate designs.

From Ann Pelo's workshop, we learn that Ann has supported and documented the interest of a group of five girls in learning cartwheel over a year. It was amazing and inspiring. The team thinks we should challenge ourself to devote time and efforts to extend the interests of small groups. Most important of all, we want to have parents'  input, so we decided to start a folder to document the experiences and interests of small groups. The folder will be updated weekly and displayed near the entrance where parents could have a quick look when dropping off or picking up their child. 

On the cover of the folder, we write: this folder encompasses how we at kindy are learning together. It's a collection of events, moments and thinking that is shaping our current quests with our learning community. 

Better Planning to Extend Children's Interests

Yesterday we had a planning meeting, in which the team as a whole agreed that we could have done better to extend children's interest. The major thing we picked up was the lack of opportunity to revisit learning experiences. We tend to follow the children current interest and accordingly provide resources and plan for the environment to support the dominating interest at the moment. When we noted that majority of the children are doing superhero play, we organize dress-up; make props; bring in comics books; provide blank ComicLife template for children to create their story; purchase Lego Knights, Mobilo for construction and so on. Initially, the children were kept busy, and we did witness the developing of construction and drawing skills.

Lately, however, the children seem to regress back to boisterous play.  Is that because we have not addressed the underlying ideas that they are exploring, such as the good vs the bad; the power/ control issue; the emotion of fear and so on. We recall that Ann Pelo talked about what's most worthwhile to work on is the ideas behind the play. Perhaps, we should slow down and encourage children to revisit their previous learning experiences, and then they will be able to consolidate their learning.

So, today I used iMovie to collate photos and short videos that I have taken, and I plan to show it to the children on the next kindy day. When reviewing the movie, I noted that a small core group of children are really driving the superhero play. The children shown are wearing their favorite hero's costume; sawing wood and hammering to make swords; climbing up high and then making a leap of faith; designing complicated Transformers; acting out battle scenes with Lego Knights and so on. The movie makes the learning involved visible, such as extending imagination; developing physical strengths, enhancing creativity; and promoting verbal communication skills.

I also add a few photos here and there of real heroes in the community, such as policeman and firemen; parent helpers; and a girl who helped watering the kindy garden. My intention is to prompt the children to think what are the significant qualities of a hero; and what heroes do.

Hope the children will enjoy the movie! I certainly do.