Teaching and learning from preschoolers
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Much, if not most, of what you experience today will be forgotten by tomorrow. It's why we write things down. We know that if we don't, we'll "forget." It's why we keep calendars, maintain "to do" lists, and write diaries. We think of these things as memory prompts, but they can also be thought of as ways of extending our minds beyond our bodies. We've not evolved to remember everything on our…
There are three broad categories of things about which we adults know more than the young children in our care: safety, schedules, and courtesy. The rest is trivia. Yes, I may know more about Elizabethan novels than the typical five-year-old, but they know more about, say, Kpop Demon Hunters , so that's a wash. Safety is obvious. Indeed, it's our number one job. None of us will last long in this…
We converted an old, worn out sensory table into a worm bin that lived adjacent to our playground garden. I began by drilling holes in the bottom so it could drain, then filled it with soil, from a previous garden that had been left to fend for itself for years, maybe decades. A variety of weeds had taken root, native plants hearty enough to survive in our urban setting. The children had already…
I looked up to see a familiar face. For a moment, however, I couldn't place it, but then recognized my friend who I'd not seen since he was five-years-old. "I recognize you!" I blurted before his name came back to me. He was standing with his mom, pressed into her legs shyly, a posture I didn't recall from a couple years ago when we had seen one another almost every day. But, of course, he would…
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is commonly misunderstood as the "pleasure chemical." In modern slang, we talk of "dopamine hits" to describe what people are doing when they, say, spend hours scrolling their social media feeds or waste a day playing video games. Dopamine is involved in those activities, of course, but not the way many people think. It doesn't serve as a reward, but rather as a…
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "Action is character." As has often been the case, this artists was just asserting something that modern scientists are now confirming: not only do our actions reveal who we are, they also become who we are. In other words, neuroscience and sociological research are finding that when we act kindly (even if we don't feel kind), when we act courageously (even if we don't…
Cry contagion , or contagious crying , amongst human infants is a well documented phenomenon, one that anyone who has worked with groups of young people has learned about first hand. One infant's crying triggers nearby infants, especially during their first year of life. This response tends to be much weaker when babies hear recordings of their own crying or other loud sounds. It seems to be…
For a time, the children gathered together around the workbench where they made things with junk using glue guns. Others chose to create using construction paper, tape, and staplers. They talked quietly amongst themselves as they worked, sharing tools and ideas as they went. After a while, in ones and twos, they declared their projects complete and began to move away into the rest of the…
The old world is dying. The new one is slow in appearing. In this light and shadow, monsters arise. ~Fiamma Montezemolo May you live in interesting times. It's an Ancient Chinese curse. Likewise it's a blessing, in the same sense that "May all your dreams come true" can go either way. As adults, we look around and see monsters: bigotry, technology, billionaires, corruption, war, alienation, mental…
When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I hoped I'd done enough to deal with an ant invasion into our home. I'd anticipated it. We live within the jurisdiction of a home owners association and periodically, when ant populations begin to surge, they lay down insecticide. Whenever they do this, within 30 minutes, the ants come inside. Of course, they're escaping the tragedy and my home, being…
