Cultivating Community...via Craft Night!

K "washes" the tomatoes we harvested in her new play kitchen

With less than one month left in Hawaii, I have the curriculum for the farm preschool cooperative pretty much nailed down. The basic design for the school is drawn up, and the materials needed to fill the school walls are mostly pinned and bookmarked. So what am I doing between now and May 30th, our departure date? Well, that’s a good question. I have been spending so much time working on the curriculum and so thoroughly enjoying myself that it has left me contemplating the possibility of a return to school yet again to further my own education in a doctoral program for curriculum design and instruction. I’ll save that story, however, for another time. Anyway, now that the farm preschool curriculum is in solid working order, I am using my remaining time here in two ways. When I am not hanging with little K, I am kicking my craftiness up a few notches and putting together as many resources for the school as I can. As for my work with K, I am planning on diving right into the curriculum with her so that we can both experience it in action and so all you lovely readers at home can get a better idea of how an emergent curriculum works within our three focus areas (Social & Personal Responsibility, Agriculture & Sustainability, and Creativity & the Arts). I have a feeling this is going to be a busy and exciting month!

Things are really coming together for the farm preschool cooperative project in a way that I could only have hoped for. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to organize a craft day where all the families who are planning to join the preschool cooperative could gather and work on projects ranging from erecting the physical structure of the school to sewing more felt food and painting rock people, among other things. Last Friday night, a mini-version of this idea materialized unexpectedly when Heather, K’s mom, and I decided to spend our evening drinking wine out on the balcony overlooking ocean and sewing felt finger puppets based on a cute project I found on Pinterest. Before we knew it, over half the members of our farm community had gathered with us and we ended up stitching ten adorable little puppets shaped like owls, lions, bears, cats, and one not so cute looking elephant, whose eyes I just couldn’t keep from looking villainous. Craft night was such a success that we’re going to do it again tonight!

our inspiration from this seller on Etsy

Although it would certainly be easier to place an order with amazon along with all the books I’ve bookmarked to fill the library, it is important both in the Reggio Approach and our Reggio-Inspired curriculum that we instead take the time to engage in these group resource development activities. There is a heavy emphasis on cultivating self-sufficiency skills and community connections in the farm preschool cooperative, the later being of particular importance in the Reggio Approach as well. What better way, I thought, to start this preschool than by living and breathing the program’s philosophy into its very creation. When K and her friends walk into the finished school for the very first time, they will be introduced to each material and feel an immediate connection because these toys and this place was built specifically for them by people they know and love deeply. Right from the outset this means a greater respect for their communal belongings, an understanding of what is possible with a little creativity and resourcefulness, and an immediate sense of appreciation, love, and support. In my opinion, there is no better way to start school.

Not only was our craft night important for the kiddos and their future school, but it was important for us too, the adult members of the farm community. While our hands were occupied with felt, needles, and thread, we had the chance to share in one another's company and wind down from the week with the cool evening breeze and the sun setting over the Pacific ocean in the background. We enjoyed our drinks, a mouth-watering snack of cheesy baked artichoke bread that Jodi brought, and chatted about anything and everything. Even the guys on the farm got in on the crafting, impressing the pants off the rest of us who doubted they could even be baited to join. So what does our gathering have to do with the school, other than making resources for it? It sets the norm for the kids. K eagerly joined in, working on her own beginner sewing skills, soaking in the positive and enjoyable community experience until she was too tired to keep her eyes open.

Our DIY version of the puppets I pinned from Etsy

From experiences like these, K will always know what is possible when friends come together to work toward a common goal, but most importantly, she had so much fun crafting and so did we. Activities like this help set the foundation for a lifetime of deep and meaningful community connections, hard but enjoyable work, and a some creative resourcefulness. By joining in on our craft night, K is able to see what she will be capable of when she get’s bigger, that her needs can be met by her own hand, not just by her wallet. It was Friday night and the school hasn’t even opened yet, but already K is beginning to feel the benefits of the curriculum we have designed for it. This is quite possibly one of my favorite aspects of Reggio-Inspired education, it is firmly understood that learning happens all the time, and that potential to build knowledge and skill is present in every single moment of every single day. Learning doesn’t stop when one leaves school walls, and it doesn’t start upon return in the morning. Learning happens all the time across a multitude of settings and the purpose of school is to cross these disciplines, these contexts, and support learning as it unfolds naturally, helping each student to make the most of his and her unique life experience.

click here for more info

The Reggio Approach, I think more than most other educational approaches, understands the importance of cultivating a sense of community belonging for children and their parents. Parent involvement, as Louise Boyd Cadwell points out in the prologue (page 6) of her book Bringing Reggio Emilia Home, “is considered essential,” and that in this approach, “parents play an active part in their children’s learning experience and help ensure the welfare of all children in the school.” I love this idea of involving parents as partners in their children’s education, it just makes sense. Whether schools admit it or not, parents are doing at least as much educating (for better or worse) than teachers are and therefore when the two parties are on the same page, understanding, collaborating and supporting one another, the educational experience can be so much richer and more powerful for the kids. In addition, when parents work together, be it in the classroom like they will in the farm preschool cooperative or joining in on community socials and resource development days, kids internalize these values and they become the norm they reference their later experiences against.

our inspiration for this evening's craft night!

By showing kids how to be part of a community, we are helping them learn to cultivate and appreciate this when they inevitably grow up and develop new communities of their own. It’s easy to do this here on the farm, probably easier than in other places, because there are four families living on this land and the Big Island of Hawaii, particularly the South Kona area where we are, is a very community oriented place. I grew up in a similar community-oriented place in Southern Vermont and after having lived in other places, I am grateful for having the experience to reference because when I lacked that connection I knew exactly what it was that I was missing and how to go about finding and creating it for myself. If you ask me, rebuilding the community connections that somehow got lost and minimized over the past few decades is one of the most important ways we can help prepare this next generation of young people for the future. The barriers that separate us from one another are a major hindrance of progress and it’s high time we begin breaking them down and work together to make our communities, our states, our country, and our world a better place. Our children’s schools present the perfect opportunity to show kids the power of a supportive, inclusive, and caring community. 

Welcome to My Classroom: A Day with K

A bit of the main garden with the playground hidden behind the mango trees

I got to spend the day with a healthy K for the first time in a while. Last week she was sick and we mostly read stories together and napped. Now that she is going to preschool three days a week, the majority of my work on the farm has centered around developing the preschool cooperative. Today, however, K and I spent a solid chunk of time together and most of it was out and about on the farm doing various chores and exploring the landscape. It occurred to me how unfair it is that not all kids have the freedom to self-direct their play in the way that K and I do, since the Reggio Approach is still so new to American education. We are lucky that K’s mom is familiar with and supports the approach’s idea of an emergent curriculum, where knowledge is acquired through interest-led interactions with the environment. We are also lucky that K lives in such a rich and enticing natural environment. The farm has added volumes to our curriculum, making it easy for me weave all sorts of academics into our play because the environment is so naturally stimulating and engaging.

Many critics of the Reggio Approach argue that left to their own direction, kids would never choose to pursue academic endeavors. While this might be initially true for older students who have never had the opportunity to direct their own learning, I can confidently say from experience that this is not the case for students whose education has supported their intellectual curiosities from the very beginning. Because I trust K to show me what she needs and wants to learn, and I trust my own ability to build a flexible and quality curriculum around my observations of her, I know she is always interested and motivated to learn. It is a different kind of teaching in the Reggio Approach and it takes some getting used to for sure, especially considering most of us grew up with traditional education programs. The benefits, however, for both K and I are well-worth the effort it took to transform my approach. Through an emergent curriculum we collaborate on projects more-or-less as equals, though we play our respective roles as teacher and student. We both spend our days learning, having fun together, building our relationship, and challenging one another to grow and roll with the continual ebb and flow of life. 

K and I love to observe the chickens pecking for bugs beneath the mango trees in their pen. We often bring them kale from the garden, peek in on them as they snuggle in to lay, and collect their delicious, fresh eggs, one of K's and my foods.

When I met up with K this morning, she was finishing up her breakfast, quickly stuffing the last few bites of omelette into her mouth when she saw me so that we could get to work. I asked her to please slow down so she didn’t choke on her food and reminded her that we had to wash hands and wipe down the table before moving on to drawing, which is how she decided she wanted to start the day. After taking care of our responsibilities we started to draw with colored pencils. K is all about mastering her fine motor skills and is drawn to just about any task that allows her to work on them, so drawing is a particularly appealing activity. I love creating art with K because when she is so focused on a task that we are able to carry on very natural and genuine conversations as we work on our projects alongside one another, sometimes collaborating, sometimes working individually. I was drawing a pattern with triangles and K asked how to draw one. I paused to show her, hand over-hand. She was more interested in circles and asked to draw those, so we practiced that shape as well. I told her that when I want to do something well, I practice it over and over again so that I can get better and make my shapes look more how I want them to. Then I drew five small circles in a row as she watched intently.

We worked on our art for nearly 30 minutes, K making circles and various lines while I worked on my triangle pattern. She had a color that I wanted to use and so we got in some sharing practice. She didn’t want to give me the red pencil so I politely asked if I could use it when she was all done, explaining that I could keep using the orange and yellow pencils until she was finished using the red. She agreed and after a few minutes she said “here you go” and handed me the pencil. I thanked her and started drawing my triangles and after watching me for a few moments she asked for the pencil back. I told her I needed to draw and color in a few more triangles and then I would return it to her. She continued using the orange, patiently waiting until I was done with the red. Among her scribbles, K noticed a pattern and pointed to her page saying, “mountain” to show me what she had drawn. “You did draw a mountain,” I remarked pointing at her drawing, “I see it right there.” K smiled. I smiled back. Then she asked to listen to “Apples and Banono’s” her current favorite (K prefers the Keith Urban version of this classic Raffi song). We danced around and did some yoga for the rest of the hour, read a few stories and then headed out to the garden.

By 9:15am, we had already worked art, literacy, music, and creative movement into our daily curriculum. We worked on fine motor skills, practiced personal responsibility, patience, and sharing, we got in a little exercise, and we worked on conversational skills, yet we were relaxed, had a great time and allowed our natural motivation and interest tell us when it was time to move onto the next activity. Sure my studies in education and human development have helped me understand children’s attention span for activities at different ages, but more importantly my ability to tune into and participate in K’s educational experience and learning style is what I rely on when we work together. I make our activities as interesting and enjoyable as possible to get the maximum educational benefit from each, but when K loses motivation to continue I follow her lead and we move onto the next activity that draws her in. It is a waste of both our time and energy for me to stick to a prescribed schedule because when she isn’t engaged, she isn’t learning anything except that my agenda is more important than hers and I do not respect her enough to think her capable of playing a role in her own learning process. That is not a message I want K, or any of my students to internalize.

I want K to trust her own instincts, listen to her physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs. I want her to see how satisfying and meaningful learning can be and much fun she can have practicing her favorite skills and seeking out the answers to her many questions. So when K asked to take our adventures outdoors, I grabbed my water bottle and invited her to pick out a pair of shoes and hat. We started by heading up to the cherry tree to pick ourselves a delicious and healthy snack. We worked on our colors, identifying the darkest red ones because those are the ripest and most delicious. I explained that the darkest ones are the ones that have soaked in the most sun and are therefore the sweetest. “I got one!” K said when she found a dark cherry, holding it up to show me. Instead of telling her “good job,” I said with enthusiasm, “that one is dark, I found a dark one too,” I showed her mine and we both popped the sweet fruit into our mouths. Since I am partial to a Reggio-Inspired teaching style, my objective is not to evaluate her activities or judge her success, but rather to share and participate in her learning process, expose her to new experiences, and invite her to explore alternative possibilities and multiple perspectives.

Once K and I had our fill of cherries, I suggested we check on the tomatoes, since I harvested pounds of them over the weekend and knew there were a ton more that had since ripened. K loves the garden because it means she gets to work her fine motor skills in relation to food, two of her most favorite things right now. K loves to taste the garden, asking first for the name of each plant and then asking for a taste. I love walking through the garden with her because all that naming builds her vocabulary and all that tasting helps enrich her culinary experiences while adding depth to her knowledge and understanding of plant biology and agricultural sciences. Both the naming and the eating help her develop a pleasurable association with healthy food, a deeper connection with the natural world and the possibilities associated with a more self-sufficient lifestyle. Again we had the chance to practice selecting the best fruit for harvest and while just a few weeks ago K was regularly pulling the green “baby” tomatoes and tossing them on the ground, today she identified the reddest ones, pointing and checking to make sure it was a quality selection with a “see me pick it?” This is huge for K, who until very recently, loved to test her boundaries in the garden. She has learned that not all the food is for picking and that there are specific windows for optimal harvesting. I shared with her how impressed I was by the respect and responsibility she showed for the plants in the garden. She smiled.

When I reminded her that it is wasteful to eat only the insides of the tomatoes, K took care to eat the whole thing, rather than tossing it to the ground after a few nibbles. I happily offered her another tomato when she was done, which she gratefully accepted. Today K had my full trust as she perused the garden freely. She proved to me with her care and thoughtfulness, her patience, and restraint that she is ready for the responsibility of being a participatory member of the farm. She earned a notch in her gardener’s belt as we harvested tomatoes, vine-dried lima beans, and a watermelon radish the side of a soft-ball which we promptly and enthusiastically took back to my kitchen to prep and eat. I showed K the nail brush that I use scrub the root vegetables and her whole face beamed with her quiet excitement when I pulled a chair up to the sink and let her scrub to her hearts content. I narrated my actions as I carefully got out the chef’s knife and sliced up the radish, reminding her to keep her fingers safe and away from where I was cutting. K watched as the deep pink of the inner radish became more exposed with each cut. It was an enormous radish though, so I was at it for a while and she quickly lost interest. She was, however, not yet satisfied with her scrubbing work so she began to wash the few forks, spoons, and coffee cups in the sink. I really need to get on that play kitchen for K, I thought to myself as I watched her fall happily into the zone of sensory play and fine motor development.

We listened to Sam Cooke croon as we worked quietly, side-by-side, each deeply focusing on our task. I was practicing my best and safest knife skills, cognizant of how I was modeling this responsibility to K, who is always observing me (later that day I saw her replicating the “safe grip” I demonstrated as she “cut” her velcro play food). Once in awhile she asked for a slice of radish, reveling in its spicy crunch, and together we arranged a plate of the pretty pink and green veggies to offer up to our friends on the farm. K and I spent over two hours soaking up the sunshine and priceless lessons in agriculture, botany, culinary sciences, and biology. We took in a rainbow of sensory experiences, more personal and social responsibility development, and worked our fine motor skills as we twisted, picked, plucked, grabbed, and gripped the various shapes and textures across the farm. We shelled and collected an entire jar full of dried lima beans to store for soup on a rainy day in the future, fed the chickens some dried kale and admired the new baby duckling, observing how the mama protects and cares for her vulnerable little one.

When our time together came to a close, K was exhausted from all the adventures. We packed a ton of lessons in today and far more than usual, spanning a wide variety of subjects, yet we had a great time together without any conflict whatsoever. We had an amazing day together and my faith in the power of an emergent curriculum grew even stronger. Nothing about our day together was planned, except that K’s mom suggested last night that the lima beans were ready for picking. I mentioned it to K when I first arrived during breakfast but although she was interested in the idea, K elected to start our day inside. I didn’t pressure or try to persuade her, trusting that she’d let me know when she was ready to head out and tackle the job. When we stumbled upon the lima beans after feeding the chickens I asked her again if she was interested and this seeing the big green and brown pods hanging above her head was more than enough to entice her. K thoroughly enjoyed opening the crispy, dried pods and collecting the big white beans in the jar.

K and I allowed our interests and motivation to guide our curriculum in true Reggio fashion. It was a beautiful, exciting, and intellectually stimulating day. We did meaningful and enjoyable work, sometimes collaboratively and sometimes independently side-by-side. I don’t believe for one second that it is a coincidence this was one of our best days together. We were fully engaged in the process of learning and we were enjoying ourselves so much that time seemed to fly by. It is days like this that remind me why I love what I do and why I believe so passionately in the Reggio Approach as the most effective way to transform our struggling public school system. Though this approach was designed for early education, the philosophy applies beautifully to learning at any age and paves the way for self-directed, project based, and interdisciplinary learning. This is the kind of education that is meaningful, relevant, gratifying, and leaves teachers and students alike excited to get out of bed every morning and get to work. Just imagine for a moment a world in which this is the norm and perhaps you will understand my enthusiasm for the Reggio Approach.

Literature: the Backbone of Learning

As I review my curriculum outline and begin to piece together the classroom materials needed to breathe life into the farm preschool cooperative, I find myself relying more and more on children’s books to address the various fields of knowledge we have selected as the focus of this program. I love children’s literature and as a teacher I have found that it is often the most powerful tool I have to connect with students of all different learning styles with every imaginable interest. But books do more so much more than simply provide bonding opportunities, though if that was all they did I wouldn’t think them any less powerful or important. Stories allow children to enter all different worlds, to vicariously experience challenges and pleasures through characters they come to love. Stories give life to the lessons being addressed in the classroom while at the same time inspiring new ideas for where to to go next in the process of discovery. But mostly I love stories for the depth of creativity, innovation, and thought that they provoke. Many of my most memorable conversations and activities with students have come from sharing and discussing a beloved story together.

While my research children’s books to complement each component of the three core areas of the farm preschool curriculum (Social & Personal Responsibility, Agriculture & Sustainability, Creativity & the Arts), I find myself drifting back to the stories I read over and over again with my 4s class kids at Bella Mente. For a while, we used books as the backbone of our school curricula, selecting a new book every week or so, using the images and ideas in the story to shape our daily activities. Sometimes we teachers picked a book and other times we picked a book that the students were showing particular interest in, but each time it was a huge success. Because of that experience, I am able to put together a diverse and powerful library for K and her friends to learn about themselves, the world, and their places within it. Currently, K and I are using her favorite stories to build vocabulary, she being a bit too young still for the kind of curriculum projects I did with the 4-year-olds previously. K’s favorite right now is a book of silly, fantastical poems by Calef Brown called Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers. Though she has just turned two years old and is still learning to string together complete sentences, little K has memorized, in full, at least one of the 10-line poems in the collection, reciting it with pride in her linguistic accomplishment.

We started this book-based curriculum idea at Bella Mente with Carin Berger’s story, Forever Friends, a mixed-media illustrated story of friendship and the changing seasons from which emerged a lesson on the cardinal directions. We hadn’t intended on teaching this but the kids were so interested in the bird character flying south for the winter that we would have been foolish to neglect their enthusiasm to learn what we would likely have ended up teaching them eventually anyway. Our class was ready and eager to learn navigational skills then and there, thanks to this story, and so this was where we began our curriculum. Together we made compasses at the art table, hung direction signs in the classroom and practiced pointing to the west, east, south, and north walls of the room. The kids became bird watchers in the dramatic play area, listening to Stokes’ Field Guide bird sounds recording we borrowed from the library, and we used graph paper as the backdrop for our artwork, just like the artwork in the story. There was a little something for everyone in this book and the message of friendship helped reinforce the ever-important values of kindness and building lasting relationships.

While us teachers selected the first book, our lessons on paleontology and open-mindedness came from our class’s mutual love of Mercer Meyer’s fantasy story called How the Trollusk Got His Hat. So many kids had been requesting this book that we took their lead and built a curriculum around it, inviting kids at the art table to create their own fantasy creatures and making a batch of “tango playdough” to match the trollusk’s famed “tango soup.” The main character, Reggie was a paleontologist, so we set up an archeological dig in dramatic play and set out dino-bingo and non-fiction dinosaur books at the science table, which were a huge hit. Many conversations about how easy it is to misjudge a person because they look different resulted from the trollusk character’s frightful appearance, despite his kind and gentle nature. Though at first glance this is but a fun and silly story, we went on with it for weeks finding more and more to learn about together that we’d never have expected. The more we read this beloved tale, the more questions and ideas it inspired in both our students and teachers and soon another class was requesting the story for their curriculum when we finished. By the time we passed it along, our walls were adorned with imaginary letters to the trollusk and Reggie with hand-drawn stamps (the trollusk is a collector), pictures of dinosaurs to add to Reggie’s work, hand-created monsters and their descriptions, and all the kids wore giant paper hats that they learned to fold using an origami pattern.

We had so much fun exploring story after story, while seeking out others to complement the various components of our focal piece. We acted out the adventures together, made art in the style of the illustrations, and learned about the habitats and habits of the various creatures featured in each book. But it so much more than just fun and games, serious and meaningful learning was taking place every day and the students loved that the questions and ideas that they had after each reading inspired the activities and projects we would engage in as a class. Each story spoke differently to each child, stirring up a variety of emotions, questions, and thoughts. Everyone found some way to connect both with one another through their mutual interests inspired by the story, and with their own intellectual curiosities. For me, however, it was the thoughtful discussions resulting from our reading and analysis that I loved most. We asked the kids many thought-provoking questions based on each story and time and again the depth, wisdom, and maturity in their responses blew us away.

After reading Barbara Cooney's Miss Rumphius, my co-teacher, Becca, and I asked our group, “how might you make the world a better place, like Miss Rumphius did when she planted lupine flowers all over town?” Responses varied from giving lots of hugs, to drawing pictures for friends and family, to planting more flowers, to sharing toys with friends. One particularly thoughtful little guy who shared my love of literature decided he wanted to “give a flower to everyone everyone I see,” but then later on as our class had moved on from circle time and sat down to lunch, he was still thinking about the story and our question. “Miss Jo, I have another idea to make the world a better place,” my little friend shared, “I want to go to all the places in the world where people don’t have enough food and share my food with them.” A few tears well up in my eyes even now as I share his beautiful idea with you. I told him, “Caid, I hope that one day you get to do exactly that,” the pride beaming in his smile matched the pride I felt for him, as his teacher. Thanks to Caid, I fell in love with this story and share it with every child I can. K and I have already read it together a handful of times and each time we find something new and fall in love with the story all over again. 

So much wisdom can be found within the pages of just about any children’s book, and as a teacher, it’s nice to take part in the lessons and allow the story to do the teaching. I love reading stories with my kiddo friends and asking their thoughts and opinions, what they love about the book, and what interests them. I love sharing my take on the story too and through our dialogue about the book we begin to know and understand one another a little better. Our conversations about stories makes us equals, co-learners, as teachers in the Reggio Approach are intended to be, and they allow us to share in the beauty and joy of the written word and the artful illustrations and photographs that accompany each story. When I read with my students and ask them to tell me how the story inspires them, to share the thoughts and feelings the story evokes, it is as though we are just two friends deep in an authentic conversation. I listen to them, they listen to me and together we develop a deeper understanding of life. All the while these kids are practicing their critical thinking skills, building their vocabulary and ability to express themselves, they are learning new things about themselves and making connections they might have otherwise missed. There is no limit to what can be learned from a story when the power of literature is harnessed in the classroom and home. Here are a few of my favorite stories, I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

Figuring out the Floorplan

On Friday, Heather and I met to start designing the physical space of the farm preschool cooperative, which will consist of a one-room open schoolhouse and fenced in play yard. In the Reggio Approach, the classroom plays such an important role in students’ education that it was important for us to map out the curriculum first to serve as our guide. This way, we are able to design an environment that best facilitates learning in each of the three areas of knowledge we identified as most necessary for happy, healthy development in an ever-changing, global society. These three areas, Social & Personal Responsibility, Agriculture & Sustainability, and Creativity & the Arts, make up the core curriculum of this Hawaii-based program and thus determine how the space is designed and what materials will fill its walls.

The circles are mango trees which already occupy the space that will be fenced in to make the play yard. The entry gate is at the bottom left corner with the covered classroom at the top right (three walls one open to the covered lunch/art table), and the existing play structure next to the mango trees at the top center with play stations scattering the yard, yet to be placed.

Now that I have a solid idea of the space we’ll have to work with in addition to the objectives and focus of the curriculum, we can begin acquiring and developing the educational tools needed to breathe life into the program. For each component of the core curricula, I am researching and identifying activities and materials to support development and facilitate learning. I started this week focusing on the first area of the core curricula, Social & Personal Responsibility, filling in my outline with ideas for fostering empathy and compassion, gratitude, mindfulness, conflict resolution, friendship, self-awareness, responsibility, management of emotion, etc.. For an emergent curriculum to work, Reggio-Inspired programs like ours must be set up to invite and facilitate meaningful and relevant educational experiences. Because the role of the classroom environment is so powerful, it is designed with great purpose and care; every station, object, and decoration has been thoughtfully selected and intentionally placed.

Books are a great place to start building a Reggio classroom because they naturally lend themselves to the idea of teachers learning with rather than teaching to their students. Having worked in libraries for so many years, children’s stories are of particular interest to me and I have repeatedly seen first hand the value of lessons learned from them, so I always like to start here. To help students understand the importance of community and how individual actions and contributions can have collective power to solve social problems, I read stories like Stone Soup. The more kids hear this story and incorporate its ideas into their play, the more ingrained these community values become. Stories are a powerful learning tool because the lessons are there for students and teachers to learn together, inspiring readers of all ages in endless ways. Stories can be read and referenced when their messages are most relevant and they invite students to think deeply and make connections between their favorite stories and their own experiences. There are so many valuable books out there to choose from, imparting wisdom on every topic imaginable, making them a necessary part of any quality classroom, not to mention the pleasure provided by the beautiful illustrations and stories. Check out my childrens’ literature pinboard for a collection of my favorite stories.

To accommodate a wealth of carefully selected stories, the farm preschool cooperative will need a library, or in the case of a small program like this one, a cozy reading area. Since books are in greater need of protection from the elements of an outdoor/indoor classroom, it made sense to incorporate this all-important learning station into the walled-in structure. In the most private and sheltered part of the room will offer big comfy pillows, a small couch or cushy bench, and a cozy rug to accompany the book-display, creating a homy, calming, peaceful place for kids to curl up and dive into a good story. This cozy spot will also make for a great meeting place when the group gathers together for circle time discussions and activities.

more ideas here

In addition to stories, I have stumbled across tons of educational materials for kids to engage with that can help them practice their social and intrapersonal skills. I tend to seek out DIY projects that fill these needs as well as materials that serve multiple and interdisciplinary aspects of our curricula because this means the program as a whole will require fewer resources and less space to create a quality learning environment. Also, the more uses for each material the more creativity and innovation they inspire as children discover new ways to involve them in their play. For example, to encourage a strong sense of responsibility for their space, while engaging their creativity in dramatic play, the playhouse will be well stocked with child-sized brooms, mops, spray bottles and towels, shelves to put play food, and other organizational tools and play cleaning supplies. By trying on the responsibilities of keeping house in an enjoyable (and self-selected) way, kids can develop a more positive association with caring for their personal property and communal space. This in and of itself will likely not be enough to teach all that responsibility but combined with regular classroom clean-up chores, keeping a personal cubby for their belongings, stories, and many other classroom activities, responsible habits are bound to develop over time.

A look inside the future walls of the farm preschool play yard.

There are countless ways to design a classroom space so that kids can develop the skills they need to grow into happy, healthy, contributing members of the community and there are endless materials that can support their growth. The needs of each community are so unique that what works best for this farm preschool cooperative will likely be very different than those of other schools. As I research I am compiling a wealth of ideas for all kinds of programs and sorting my findings on the various Pinterest Boards I have created. For this specific program, I am selecting the most applicable resources and ideas to make up the three boards (Social & Personal Responsibility, Agriculture & Sustainability, and Creativity & the Arts) representing the core curriculum. This way Heather and I can get a better understanding of what we need to do so that the classroom environment itself best supports the curriculum. It is a long process of scouring the internet, flipping through books, and calling on my past teaching experiences to identify the materials and activities that will be most useful to us and effectively support student growth in a meaningful and enjoyable way.

Although the curriculum is well mapped out at this point and we have a rough idea of what the space will look like, there is still much to be done. There are many details to be nailed down, building projects to start, materials to develop and seek out, and to make sure that every aspect of the curriculum is represented in the classroom space itself. Luckily, this is my favorite part of the process as it puts to use my most developed and preferred skills of brainstorming and researching ideas, organizing information, creative problem solving, and crafting handmade educational materials. This project, more than I could have ever imagined, taps into my Element, the place where my greatest talents and interests converge allowing me to be my most productive self while having the most fun at work. Naturally, I have high hopes for the farm preschool project and how the documentation of its development can offer clarity to others who are curious about the Reggio Approach. I don’t, however, believe for even the briefest of moments that my expectations are unrealistic. Anything is possible with the right amount of creativity, motivation, and dedication, especially when the process is as intrinsically rewarding as program development is for me. The key is to start where you are with what you have and build from there one little step at a time, and never forget to have fun with the process.

A Few Projects

Last week, K spent most of her time with her friends. She is an only child and the farm is in a pretty rural area. There aren't any neighbors nearby that have kids, so it's awesome that she has such a close group of friends to regularly hang out with. Just like I did, K gets to develop a small group of really close friends--perfect kind of social interaction for those of us who are more introverted. These few families with kids so close in age are who will make up the preschool cooperative I am collaborating on. I am so excited to be involved with the design of and preparation for this farm-based school community.

My Inspiration from Pinterest

So while K was out being social, I tried out a few new craft projects. Most of my work on the farm is spent with K, but the rest of it I get to spend working on projects for the upcoming preschool cooperative, hoping to start up this fall. So Monday K and I did our usual adventure to the play-set, tour of the main garden, mini-session of yoga, and drew some mountains and letters on the chalkboard table. We also read a few stories and stewed up a delicious dinner of purple potato and apple soup on K's play-stove. It was a pretty typical Monday, ending a but early so K and her mom, H, could go to the meet-up at the beach they do every week. I made pretty good use of my extra project this time and decided to finally try out some felt food projects I had been storing up on Pinterest for a while now.

There are so many wonderful project ideas and inspiration on Pinterest, perfect for a DIY junkie like me. I am so excited to have project time now to devote to creating resources and researching ideas for the school. Not only did I get to make felt food all week, but I also got to start working on the real nuts and bolts of the co-op curriculum! I might be letting my ultra-nerdy side show here but I love designing curricula. I love it. Writing the Parent Handbook for Bella Mente, and really fleshing out our school's philosophy and approach was one of my favorite experiences there and to be able to take what I learned and apply it to a program at the ground level is the coolest thing I have ever done for "work." All of my research, my Pinteresting, and writing now get to be put to use. This is the highlight of my teaching career right here.

More on the curriculum design project later, right now let me show you some of my craft projects:

This was my first attempt at hand-stitching, not too shabby...

K loves purple sweet potatoes, she requests them almost every day and I can hardly blame her, they are delicious. Seriously, they are like natures candy, sweet and smooth and starchy and wonderful. Anyway, K not only loves to eat these delicious veggies, she also loves to cook them for me and her parents and everyone on the farm on her play stove. So the first piece of felt food I thought to make was a purple potato slice. This was the easiest one so I ended up making a few, plus you never eat only one slice of purple sweet potato. K also loves eggs, we feed the chickens together and collect their eggs often, so this is another food regularly featured in her life. It made sense to me to make K play versions of all her favorites so she could practice "cooking" with them on her own. The other one up there is a tangerine, which I made because I happened to have a few of them in my fruit basket and they caught my eye. I think K thinks this one is a tomato though. Oh well, the more uses the better!

K loved the first batch when I brought them over so feeling a bit more confident in my stitching skills I set out to make a few more. Last week K was introduced to asparagus for the first time and it was a hit. She carried around a spear of it all afternoon after she picked some in the garden with her dad. So I figured a felt asparagus spear with be the perfect addition to her collection. This way, she could start learning to cook as she learns different ways to eat it. I also threw in another egg because, well, in my opinion you can never have too many eggs, especially over easy, the way K and I both prefer to eat it.

The asparagus was a huge hit and K immediately added it to the stir-fry she had going on her play stove. I should take a picture of her working at her stove, mental note for tomorrow. Anyway, I really liked how the asparagus turned out too, and I wanted to do more in a similar style so I decided on a carrot, since we just planted a whole bed of them a few weeks ago and they are growing pretty fast now. I made another asparagus and another purple potato to add to K's collection. The carrot and the asparagus were pretty time consuming, but I made them while watching a few TEDTalks and some episodes of Bones on Netflix, so I hardly noticed the time. The Cauliflower was hard. I tried it a few ways before settling on this look, but I still don't love it. This design is going to need some more work but I think I have an idea, I'll add a picture once I get if figured out, so check back again soon!

K thought the cauliflower was a mushroom :)

The extra embroidery makes such a difference in these, i love it!

Projects, Pigeon Peas, and a Sensory Table

I have acquired an old coffee table and large discarded frying pan, bringing me one step closer to constructing my outdoor play kitchen for K. I am still working on collecting the rest of the parts, I need a bowl for the sink, something to signify burners (perhaps I will just paint them, or use old cds), and shelving to hold the kitchen items that I also need to get my hands on. So although there is progress since my last writing, I’m still working on it and will report back when I have something finished. In the meantime, I have been working on a few other projects.

I'll probably start with a very simple, stove-less design like this one and build it up from there as I find more furniture

My hosts presented me two tables to choose between for K’s play kitchen and the smaller one I decided to turn into an art table, specifically a chalkboard table. Now, I have seen similar projects all overPinterest and have been dying to try one out so you can imagine my excitement when I learned that there was a can of chalkboard paint waiting for me in the garage. It was super easy, required only two coats of paint, and the whole thing was finished in no time at all (5 minutes of sanding, 10 minutes to paint each coat and about 2-3 hours between coats for the paint to dry). Piece of cake. It looks great too, I think, and I cannot wait to get some chalk, fasten a basket to the corner to hold it in along with a towel for wiping the slate clean, so to speak. 

K's new chalkboard table!

In addition to these two table projects, I really want to get a sensory table built for K. When I was at Bella Mente, each of our classrooms came equipped with a sensory table and they were always a huge hit. K, being not-quite-two, is really interested in touching, feeling, ripping, squeezing, grasping, and pinching anything and everything she can get her little hands on, so I figured a sensory table would be just the thing. But then yesterday, after we gathered some greens to feed the chickens, did a little yoga together, and read a few stories, we headed out to the upper terrace garden to harvest some Pigeon Peas from the bush that is scheduled to be taken down in the next week or so.

On Monday, I harvested a big bowl full of fresh green pigeon peas which Dylan and I spent a good hour carefully shelling. It was time consuming and tedious, requiring concentration and a lot of fine motor skills. The peas tasted great cooked in a coconut curry sauce and the bush was overflowing with both fresh green pods and rattling, yellowed dry ones. The dry ones just needed to be shelled and tossed into a Mason jar and could be stored like any other dried bean. Knowing that the plant would be coming down, and never wanting to see anything wasted, I decided that I would harvest them myself and slowly, over the course of the next few weeks, shell and jar them as part of my weekly farm work so that our hosts and future WWOOFers could enjoy them without the work.

Anyway, when K and I were hanging out yesterday, it occurred to me that harvesting the Pigeon Peas would be a perfect task for the two of us to do together. She has been really interested in helping out in the garden lately, particularly when it comes to picking and shelling the tomatillos, though at her age she needs a lot of guidance and gets very frustrated when I won’t let her pick all the “babies,” as she refers to the unripe fruit. The Pigeon Peas offered the perfect opportunity to practice; because there are so many of them and the bush is being torn down anyway it didn’t matter how many or which ones she picked.

This is a pigeon pea bush, they produce so many peas it will take K and I days just to make a dent!

So after stomping around the porch like giants, I asked her if she wanted to help me pick some peas. I told her that I had wanted to pick them later but if she was interested, we could pick them together. She eagerly agreed and off we went in search of buckets to fill. K wanted her own bucket, as mine was too cumbersome, being about half her size, so we found a cup for her to fill. When we got to the pea bush, I demonstrated how to grip and pull the pods off the branches and explained that I was collecting the yellowy dried out ones that sounded like baby rattles. She yanked a few of them and threw them on the ground, a few making it into my bucket, and then started grabbing at the green pods, looking to me to see if I would say anything, the way I had when she grabbed the “baby” tomatillos.

This time, I said “I notice you’re picking the green ones, those are ripe and tasty to eat, I ate them for dinner last night.” She looked up at me, down at the pod, then back up at me, lifting it up and saying, “help please.” I explained as I showed her that I twist the center of the pod until it snapped and then use my fingertips to pry open the shell, grab the little green peas, and pop them into my mouth. K grabbed a few more pods and tried her hand at getting them open. She struggled and pinched and twisted and eventually gave in, asking once again for my help. I could tell she was trying hard and this task would take some practice, so for our first day of harvesting, I started the process for her, pod after pod. I left it closed just enough so that she would still have some work to do on her own, strengthening her fine motor skills and allowing her the sensation and experience of opening the shells and plucking the peas from the pod all on her own.

It occurred to me, as I harvested handful after handful of the dried peas and K struggled with the pods and munched away on the little green rewards that perhaps a designated sensory table was not a high priority after all. Living on a farm presents tons of unique sensory experiences every day for a little one like K. If we wanted some sensory activity, all we had to do was step out of the house and rip up some more “salads” out of leaves like last week, or remove the shells from a bowl full of fresh tomatillos or pigeon peas. We could even grab some garden tools and do some digging in the dirt, feeling it squish between our fingers and plant some seeds, letting the dirt sift through our fingers as we gently covered the future veggies, like K watched us adults do together last Sunday.

Sensory table with empty tub waiting to be filled

Back at Bella Mente, an urban preschool in the city of Seattle, there were far fewer opportunities for organic sensory experiences like there are here on the farm, so we teachers created them in our sensory tables. The kiddos loved this and it really helped them develop those fine motor skills, use multiple senses to take in information about the materials presented each week, and manipulate the various tools with which we provided them. We needed to do this because otherwise those urban kids would have missed out on an important learning experience. Here, K and I have endless opportunities for emergent sensory experiences within the context of her life on the farm.

It’s not that K has it better being out here on the farm, or that the kiddos at Bella Mente are missing out, because that is not at all the case. Yes, K has more organic and directly relevant sensory experiences all the time, but she doesn’t get to ride the bus to the library for story hour, or learn from and collaborate with a classroom of her peers, it’s just her and all the adults here on the farm, and baby A who is only 5 weeks old and still many months away from being able to play with us. Each environment has it’s strengths and its challenges and we, as teachers and parents, work with what we have and find other ways to make up for what we lack. K has weekly beach meet-ups with a handful of other mother’s and their toddlers, and the kiddos at Bella Mente have sensory tables. Different environments present different, yet equally beneficial and enjoyable, organic experiences and I love having the chance to experience both ends of the spectrum.