The Playroom at the The Cottage Garden
I have artistically created a space, in two rooms of my house, in which young children can unfold their individualities — their gifts and uniqueness — and begin the long process of socialization.
The space created for the young child is very important, as I believe that the room is the curriculum. I have created a safe, aesthetically pleasing environment where everything has a place. When I planned the room I sat in it and thought about things such as how the children would get the dishes to the table, and, after washing them, what the easiest route would be back to the dish shelf. In the Playroom, I wanted to have little areas such as the house area, the block area and the dress-up area. Although anything and everything can be moved around during playtime, there is order and calmness created for the children when the room is set up with their play in mind. The toys need to be reachable and easily put away by the children. The baskets of cloth, pinecones, wooden eggs etc., always go back to the same basket on the same shelf. This enables the children to truly help in putting away the toys at clean-up time. A focal point of the room is the nature table. This is a shelf or a small table in the room where I bring something of the natural world inside — a reflection of what is happening in Mother Nature. So, in the autumn, Prince Autumn is personified as a felt puppet. He may come first in a story and bring his buckets of paint with which he colors the leaves. He then finds a place of honor on the nature table for the duration of the season. Then King Winter, Mrs. Thaw, Lady Spring and Mother Earth all come in their time with little creatures, stones, nuts, leaves and flowers to help the children learn about the natural world in a developmentally appropriate way.
Rhythm, repetition and reverence, along with imitation and imagination are some of the key words you will hear from me. I would like to explain a bit of what I mean by these words.
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Rhythm
Life is full of natural rhythms: the seasons, day and night, breathing, but because of the dominance of modern technology in our lives, we have lost some of our inner connection to these rhythms. I believe that we need a firm connection to the natural rhythms before we can creatively move beyond their influence on us. Young children are very comforted by the rhythmical activities we create for them. The Cottage Garden day will have a rhythm all it's own, formed by the developmental needs of the children attending the program. There will be a daily, a weekly, and a yearly rhythm, with birthday celebrations being the exception. The young child does not have the same sense of time that we adults have. Any activity that can be done in a more rhythmical way will be helpful for them, as they will then know what to expect. If the outer structure is secure and strong for them, then they are left free to play and to socialize together.
Our day, for example, might look like this: indoor play, bread baking, painting, grinding grain, cleanup, toileting, snack, rest, circle time, story time, outdoor activities, toileting, lunch and nap. The children always know what to expect and thus experience a sense of order and security in their often-busy lives. There is a weekly rhythm formed by having a special activity for each day, for example, baking on Monday and cooking on Tuesday. Seasonal stories and crafts, the nature table, the celebration the children’s birthdays and the festivals of the year create a yearly rhythm.
Repetition
As the children hear songs and stories repeated over time they become more confident and comfortable in participating in our group activities. During circle time, the language arts part of my program, I will sing simple songs and recite poetry and nursery rhymes with the children. We will always begin with the same good-morning verse and song, and the circle content will remain the same for 3–4 weeks. Songs and poems have movement and gestures to accompany them, always the same and in the same order. Soon you will hear all of our songs at home!
Even dressing the young child can have the element of repetition in it. For example, one could always begin with the same arm in the jacket sleeve and the same shoe on the same foot each time. This helps the child feel organized and secure in learning how to dress. The table is set the same way each day. Colored napkins, a different color for the individual days of the week, are placed there and the same snacks are served each week.
Reverence
Reverence for nature, for our room and for each other is practiced by showing respect. We show respect for Mother Earth, for example, by raking, gardening, weeding and shoveling while playing outdoors. In our room, Mother Earth, Prince Autumn, Lady Spring — to name but a few — are personified in stories and as wool figures sitting on our nature table to welcome in each season. For the young child, any activity can be filled with reverence — in folding a cloth, pouring water and in eating lunch with friends. I model this for them in my relations to you, their parents, through the stories I tell, and through how I treat the toys and the objects in our room.
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Imitation
The Cottage Garden will provide a curriculum appropriate to the child’s stage of development. According to Rudolf Steiner, the child learns by imitation during its first seven years. To facilitate the child’s innate imitative abilities, the early childhood teacher spends much of the morning engaged in various activities — baking or cooking the week’s snacks, slicing fruit, washing dishes, sewing, making or fixing a toy or working on seasonal crafts such as felting balls, sewing crowns, gluing a paper transparency. The children will see, watch and imitate the teacher in one of several ways. They may want to do what the teacher is doing. Thus, a teacher who is baking will find that the children all come over to help.
Other children may imitate the teacher’s work in their own creative-play. So, while the teacher bakes a loaf of real bread, some children will “bake” make-believe bread in the play kitchen. Most important to me is the third stage of imitation, in that the intention of the teacher pervades the room and fills the children’s play with calm and focus. When this occurs a kind of hum might be heard throughout the room.
Imagination
Imagination is a wonderful quality that I hope to nurture through all the stories, nursery rhymes and artistic activities that I provide for the children. When answering children’s questions we have the most freedom in feeding their imaginations. For example, when a child asks where snow comes from, instead of a great big scientific answer, it really is sufficient to say that Mother Holle is shaking her quilt or that the angels are cleaning the clouds. This is a simple imaginative picture that is developmentally appropriate for the young child. It creates a sound basis for holistic thinking; later on, your child will build upon this and learn more deeply.
When children balance on a seesaw they are acquiring a bodily and imaginative way of learning physics. Again, this is a sound basis for the intellectual style of learning they will develop later on in school. Abstract thinking, an important human capacity, needs to come at the appropriate developmental stage, when they are a bit older.
Creative Free Play
Childhood is a time for learning through activity, for experiencing the wonders of nature, for growing socially, for playing creatively and imaginatively, for singing, talking, quarreling and crying, for running, and for laughing. One of the premises of The Cottage Garden is that the children's play is the most important part of their morning. Play is their “work” and the way that they learn about life and its abundant wonders and struggles. In many ways, it would be easier to have activities planned for every moment of the morning. In that way, the children would always be occupied with a teacher-directed activity and many more artistic items would come home; but I do not feel that this would be in the children's best interest. They need to be left free to play in order to learn about sharing, taking risks, role modeling for each other and resolving conflict. These are all worked out and explored during free play. I believe it is my role as their teacher to help facilitate the children's play by providing them with imaginative pictures rather than always using explicit guidance — to encourage this in them, and in their relations with each other. During the child’s early years their activity is of prime importance. Preschoolers are naturally active because their rapidly growing bodies require activity for healthy development.
Care of the Senses
We learn about the world through our senses. Young children are total sense organs. Like little sponges, they soak up everything around them. Children are totally open to sense impressions and are easily over stimulated. As adults we can shut things out by not listening or looking. For example, when we go grocery shopping we reach for what we need and want as we keep moving along, but the small child takes in all the sights, smells and sounds and can easily becomes cranky and tired. Children need to have experiences that they can make sense of in order to build up the capacity of discernment. Later, this will lead them to the ability to make judgments on their own. When they are little, they are still learning where the world begins and they end. I hope to provide opportunities where the children can experience the world but still be protected from too much stimulation. I also hope to provide a way in which they can healthily develop boundaries for themselves. A uniquely important aspect of The Cottage Garden program will be the emphasis on bodily care — dressing, potty training, hand washing, and care for the play things in our room — folding cloth, dishwashing, setting and clearing the dining table.
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The Cottage Garden will nurture and protect the children’s healthy development by providing outdoor play and indoor playthings with a connection to the natural world. I believe there should be truth in the objects that surround them, a rock has qualities of heaviness and of coldness, but a plastic rock does not provide these living qualities — it provides an untruth.
Children need to find right relationships to the natural world. We need to protect them and preserve the integrity and the dignity of their moral unfolding in the real world. In The Cottage Garden they will have some soft toys and some wooden objects with different textures of smoothness and roughness. They will have wool, silk, and cotton to touch and to play with. Giving them things in their surroundings that are filled with life and love, such as handmade toys or grandma’s old scarf, is very meaningful for them. If I make a toy in front of the children it is guaranteed that they will play with it more. If they help to make something — even by watching — or set the table, or help to cook the meal, they will be more interested and enthusiastic and will much more likely play with it or eat it!
Children need opportunities to develop both large and small motor skills. They need to have the space for rolling and climbing outdoors. Clapping and jumping games not only aid with language and pre-reading skills but also help them in developing the ability to sit still and listen. Indoors, a 3 yr old “helps me sew” by pulling the needle for me.
We all try to find balance in our lives. As adults we do this through thinking and processing our thoughts. I believe the basis for this capacity lies in the physical realm of movement, of doing. In balancing on a rock or a log, in standing on one foot, children begin to find their outer balance. This accomplishment then moves inward, to an inner balance, which, over time, helps them in developing discernment and making judgments.
Although we do teach the children, I believe that they are truly our teachers and help bring us, all of us, a little closer to the too long forgotten realms of nature, spirit and imagination.
My philosophy and teaching are inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf Education. For more information on Rudolf Steiner and his philosophy please see my Links page.
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| Celia Riahi - April 6th, 2008 |
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