Learning through play

The other day I sat and watched for about 45 minutes while my 6 year old son took apart a pen, and then put it back together. His intense interest is what drew me to watch closely as he repeated this action. He sat and looked at all of the pieces closely and reassembled, then disassembled again. He then put the pen together without the spring, and tried to work it like that. It didn't work well, so he put it together with all of the pieces again. Eventually he discovered that by using the tip section of the pen, the spring, and the ink barrel, he could shoot the ink barrel across the room. He excitedly ran to tell his brothers about his discovery, and once they were all armed with pens - a new game began altogether.
All of this time he spent I would call play. In addition, none of the time was "structured play." nobody told him to try to figure out the pen, and nobody tried to lead him to his very awesome final discovery. However, he learned about the working parts of a pen (a simple machine), he learned about springs, and he learned about force applied and movement created. He was highly interested in this activity, and he was rewarded - not by stickers or grades - but by discovery.
Another recent incidence of learning through play involved my 12 year old son. We were at Morton Arboretum (a wonderful place for children http://www.mortonarb.org/) There is a river in the childrens garden with stoneds that children can use to change and block the flow of water. My son was trying to build a dam in front of a waterfall - which caused water to spray into the air like a fountain. He found this to be very exciting, and repeated his experament on another waterfall with the same result. He pointed out what he had done to anyone walking past. again - he learned about properties of water and probably some physics while playing.
So - what does it mean when we say that children learn through play? It means that if they are trusted and allowed to explore and play - they will learn. It can't be avoided. From the outside it may look like a waste of time - ar at times even dangerous - but children are wired to learn, so no matter what their experiences are - they are learning from those experiences.
I wonder how it would be if schools were like children's museums, and children were allowed to play and explore at their own pace. I imagine we would create a much more intelligent, interested, thoughtful group of students.

http://daycare.suite101.com/article.cfm/cognitive_learning_through_play

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/PUBS/columncc/cc010309.html

http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=591

Careful what you say

There is not much I remember about kindergarten. I do not remember my teacher’s name. I do not remember the other children. I do not remember the classroom. I do not remember the activities or lessons of that first year in school. Within all of this haze, I have one very clear memory. It is a memory that seems trivial, and one that I am sure my teacher from that time has no reason to recollect. It is, however, something that has stuck with me for over 30 years.
We were, apparently, learning our addresses in class. Each student had been given a picture of a house, and we were instructed to write our house number by the door, and to color the house on the picture to look like the house that we lived in. I carefully wrote the numbers 1-9-6 next to the door on the picture, and triumphantly brought my paper to my teacher. She looked at the paper discerningly, and told me that I wasn’t yet finished. I was confused, so she told me that I needed to color the picture of the house. My answer to this was simple, “I live in a white house.”
I assume that my teacher had no other activities planned for the next fifteen minutes or so, because she told me to take the picture back to my seat and to “just color the house a different color.” I was dejected and confused, but I did what I was told. I sat, fighting back tears, and colored my house pink. But, in my five year old mind, and to this day, this was not a picture of my house.
As I said before, this memory has never left me. It has, however, been a lesson to me about how not to trivialize children’s ideas and feelings. Children feel deeply, and their ideas are strong – but it is easy, as an adult, to consider this unimportant.
I believe that, in order for children to become successful adults, they need to feel that they are worthy and capable. Self-esteem is more important to success than reading, writing or math. If a child feels they can learn and succeed, then they will. If they are made to feel that they are trivial and without ability – they will have very little chance of learning.
I work with preschool age children. The part of my job I view as being most important is listening to what the children have to say, enjoying their original thoughts and ideas, and praising the effort that they put forth. I do not want to cause any child in my care to hold onto a memory of being told that something they took pride in was not good enough.

http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/showarticle/2425 - 52k

http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/28/magazine/how-to-foster-self-esteem.html - 42k

The problem with standardized tests

No matter what the purpose of the standardized test, the result seems to be teaching in a way that is unnatural and not condusive to the way that children learn. The website fairtest.org explains why this happens. The pressure to do well on standardized tests academizes childhood, from a very young age. As a result, the method that young children use to learn, play, is removed from their lives. Our attempt to ensure that children get the best score they can get is stealing their childhood.
I think that most teachers and parents who trust themselves and their children know whether or not the children are learning even without the standardized tests. why can't we trust the experts on children to say what the children are learning and to recognize when their are problems.
I guess everyone wants documentation, not just the assurance of a parent or teacher. One way of doing this is through portfolios. The website found at http://www.pgcps.org/~elc/portfolio.html explains how to begin using portfolios for assessment. By collecting samples of similar types of work throughout the school year, it is easy to demonstrate by comparison what skills have improved in individual children.

Morals as a part of schooling

An article found at (http://www.freeinquiry.com/teaching-morals.html), entitled TEACHING MORALS AND VALUES IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: A HUMANIST PERSPECTIVE, discusses why morals should be taught in the public schools. While the article blatently states that teaching morals and religion are two different things, and that moral education is a matter of humanism, it still made me wonder how comfortable I would feel leaving the moral education of my children up to teachers whom I do not know personally, and whose values may be very different from my own.
I think that it is a commonly agreed upon lesson that it is "not o.k." for one person to hurt another person. In the preschool where I work, we tell the kids that it is not O.K. to hit, kick, bite or use hurtful words with the other children. Still, I also know that some of the teachers at my school "whoop" their own children as a form of discipline. While this is culturally acceptable for them, I wonder how much validity there is when one of those same teachers tells a child that it is not O.K. to hurt another child.
My point is, I think that adding moral education into schooling might be a trickier issue than it seems to be on the surface. We live in a society where different cultural and ethical practices are accepted. We live in a society where we are expected to be accepting of the practices of other cultures. But I don't think that that should extend to teaching children. I think that teaching of morals should still be the responsibility and right of the family. I can't quite wrap my mind around the idea of allowing the schools to decide what value systems should be taught to my children.
I have four sons. One thing that I know that I want them to be in adulthood is responsible fathers and husbands. This is a value that I make a conscious effort to instill into them. We live in a society where fatherhood and husbandhood are not always seen as priorities. We also live in a society where views on marriage differ widely. my views may not be the sme as the views of another. Is it O.K. to divorce when a couple no longer gets along? Is it O.K. for unwed couples to live together and have children? Is it O.K. to have same sex marriages? Is it O.K. for same sex couples to raise children? Is it O.K. to commit adultry? Is it O,K. for fathers to leave the financial and emotional burden of children to the mothers alone? Is it O.K. for women to decide to have children without the fathers consent? The questions, and combinations of answers to those questions go on and on. The biggest question for me, though, is: "Is it O.K. for school teachers to instill their opinions on this matter into my children?"
I realize that proponents of moral education in public schools are assuming a universal moral code that all humans should follow, but I don't think that all humans are yet to agree on what that moral code is or should be. We are yet to come to a consensus in our country, and are very far from coming to a consensus internationally. Until such a consensus exists, I feel that moral education does not have a place in public schools.

The website An Overview of Moral Development and Moral Education, located at (www.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/overview.html) discusses an assumed universal moral code that they say should be taught in school. I still contend that no universal moral code currently exists.

Nature Deficit Disorder

I spent the weekend at my brothers house in Iowa City. My nephew James, who is in sixth grade, is very ecited because he will soon participate in outdoor education, an annual event at his school. The students spend the week at a summer camp for kids, and sll of their activities and lessons revolve around nature education. The sixth graders then spend one night in the cabins at the camp. I think that it is so wonderful that my nephews school values nature education, and so sad that our Illinois schools do not. Children in our schools are lucky if they even get recess, especially in sixth grade.
This made me think of a really important book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. In the book, Louv proclaims that between our digital age and fear, we have pulled our children away from the natural world, which will create disasterous and long lasting consequences. We can spend an entire semester teaching kids about the Amazon Rainforest, but without any real connection to nature, it is unlikely that today's students will actually care. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_deficit_disorder)
So, what can be done? It's simple. Take kids outside. Let them look under logs and find bugs. Encourage them to pick up worms. Let them get muddy. Let them jump in puddles and play in the rain. Turn off the tvs, computers and ipods. Dig in the dirt. Plant flowers. Let them climb trees. Catch fireflies. Take them to the woods, and let them run, climb, jump and explore. Why are teachers and parents so afraid of these things? If a child falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, isn't that a part of growing up? Is it better never to have climbed a tree at all?
A wonderful blog about helping children develop a bond with nature can be found at http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/tag/nature-defecit-disorder/. The importance of environmental education cannot be stressed enough. The future of our planet and of the human race depends on it.