This past spring break I had the pleasure of seeing this wonderful little documentary movie called "Microcosmos," that we have now shared with the children.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117040/
It begins with a macro view or a whole view of a natural space -- a tree, grass, flowers. Then the movie unfolds in many tiny micro stories about many different insects and cycles of life. For instance, two ants working hard to hold something share a drop of water to drink, or the larva of a bee transforms and eats his way out of its shell. The movie carefully weaves between a macro view of the space and the micro stories of all of the precious life that is taking place.
(checking on the gecko eggs)
This movie shows a very precious idea, which is an appreciation of life itself and a connectedness to all living things.
It's this idea that we strive for every year with the children. That they learn to see more in the world around them, that they value and see and feel the connectedness of all living things, and in turn, feeling more connected and empathetic with a sense of responsibility to the world.
("Angel trees have babies!")
Watching this made me think of this idea of macro and micro. It reminded me so much what had happened this year in our preschool projects, of how the children first approached the spaces of the park with a macro view, just seeing the the big picture and not yet understanding all of its beauty and nuances.
(weekly ritual of checking on our spiders that live in the bushes)
And now at the end of the year, we see the children have had many experiences of noticing and seeing and becoming attuned to small details. The micro of these parks now has meaning for children, such as with our family of trees in Manoa Park. Other ideas about transformation are connected to experiences in Mele Park, from tree life to the ocean spiders to shells to crabs that we have come to love and understand, to the messages that have helped us to learn how to look for the details that are decoded, and to understand the relationships in the park, i.e. the clouds to the water, leaves to trees, the spiders to the bumble bees.
These year-long experiences have allowed our community to understand the beauty and aesthetics of our outside world, giving us a more empathetic view of the extraordinariness of the ordinary world around us. The relationships in the outdoor world have become a metaphor for the relationships between our children and a community.
In kindergarten I see this idea of being more connected to the world. The children have learned to decode and synthesize the world around them using the lens of light and shadow, distortion and reflection. This was very apparent this week as I played a metaphor game with the children and their inquiry topic. I asked the children to think about the time we had spent outside and the things that we had investigated and connected them with what they are understanding about the human body. Riah said, "The heart is like the sunlight touching everything, like the blood is pumped everywhere in your body." Haya hypothesized, "The lungs are like the beach -- the air pushes the water and makes waves just like the lungs create energy." Profound! Extremely clever metaphors that show just how much the children are able to make connections between the concrete and abstract.
As teachers we strive for our children to be at this point where they have learned to be astute observers who can make sense of and decode what they are seeing, and who observe and connect what they have learned. We know children have truly built knowledge when they continue to expand and share their ideas about this connectedness in our school environment. Below I would like you to look carefully at the beauty of some of the ways the children continue to connect with what the have learned through all of these projects.
Preschool
They notice and see the smallest and most minute details. This has become part of the decoding process in order to make meaning -- looking at the details and then bringing them all back together in order to understand the macro.
The collective nature of these micro details is what comprises learning. It helps them (children) to build knowledge and develop an understanding of what life is about and how it works on a multitude of levels.
While planting the children discover a whole new world in a 5' x 5' plot of dirt. They relate this experience to their learning in the parks....
"Look a whole family!"-Tyler
"Look a millipede! It's made a home in the plants."
"One day this plant will transform. It will grow and grow like the mommy tree!"
"Look we can make new plants, babies from the mommy plant."
In the studio...
T finds a piece of sea glass, a treasure from Mele Park.
A month later as she creates a message during a provocation in the studio, she points to the same piece of sea glass and says," Ms.Jordan, remember I found that!"
Working with wire and materials from our parks, the children use messages and transformations to express their sculptural work by relating what they have gleaned at the parks to help express sculptural ideas.
(tree message)
Children find leaves outside at school and bring them to their teachers showing them that they are transforming. N draws his ideas of how this leaf will possibly transform further.
E and S discuss and select materials to show the essence of the spooky trees evolving into an angel tree. The materials are selected to represent what would make up the spooky tree.
(making sketches of their work)
In kindergarten, each group goes on a research field trip. They look for and see details, or micro pieces that relate back to their macro ideas of light, distortion, reflection and shadow. This in turn helps them to see more of the details in every space and place, prompting them to decode what they have observed.
"Look each color changes the world, like the colored plexi at school!"
Micheal, Hawaii State Art Museum
"Look at my reflection, like I am trapped."S-Home Depot
At the Hawaii State Art Museum, the children eagerly look at the art and relate it to the words that they had been expressing in their sculptural work at school.
At Ala Moana Park, the children relate their work on reflection to the huge ponds and the amazing effects.
ANNOUNCEMENTS: IMPORTANT FOR KINDERGARTEN,
All of the children's photography work from our Transformation Project will be projected and displayed at two venues:
Friday March 20, 2012
"REFRAME" the high school show
6-8pm at Bakken-on Campus
ONG KING ART CENTER
184 North King Street Honolulu, HI 96817
First Friday May 4, 2012
6:30-10pm
I had the best birthday card last month for my birthday! It literally made my year all because of a simple word -- "working." Yes, I know what you're thinking. Weird, right? But let me put it into perspective. As a teacher, this term "working" affirmed the validity of my role as a teacher with your children.
("LOVE WORKING")
The traditional role of the teacher is to stand in the front of the class and dictate and direct learning by telling the students what they have to do, what to make, and what to think. This view of the teacher might have been acceptable in 18th or 19th century, but not so for the 21st century teacher.
Now to tell you about my wondrous moment. I received a birthday card from all of my kindergarten students. This was a really beautiful book of drawings and notes. What stood out the most to me was that over and over again each child said, "I love working with you," not "Thanks for teaching me or thanks for telling me what to do. but "I love when we can work together." This was profound for me as a teacher because my students were telling me that they regarded me as someone who made meaning with them; we discovered together!
I perceive my role as teacher to be one who facilitates learning, to help interpret and to inspire. And this idea of working together said it all.
I would like to share with you some ways in Kindergarten that we are nourishing this role of the teacher and of the student in order to make true meaning together. The best way to illustrate this is to show the tools we have developed in working together.
I think one of the successful ways that I and my students have been able to reflect on learning is by using some important tools. One that we implemented this year and has been very effective is reflection drawings where the child draws one thing that they found interesting, or that surprised them in the work they did that day.
(I asked this child above to think about what she had figured out about making a swirl. I know it is pretty, but what did she discover? She then thought and said," Well, the thick wire was hard to make the swirl, so I tried with the thinner wire, and then it worked." This was an awesome metacognitive jump in thinking from "pretty" to what she actually had discovered.
After their initial work with wire, they reflect on what they discovered and what they had learned and then they check in with me. I write their words and talk to them about their discoveries . This process is valued as a tool for us to construct meaning together.
-Another tool they have adapted is taking notes or documenting their peers' investigation.
(Above D notices that his material is catching light, to the right R is sketching what D discoveries allowing her to record his her learning inturn learning herslef)
We also use drawing as a tool to plan, so they planned their initial wire sculpture by drawing.
(These girls discuss and draw their idea for a sculpture)
After constructing their sculptures, the children use the tool of editing their work with the whole group while I facilitate. Below is a very rough video, but I wanted you to get an idea of how the children are helping each other redesign their sculptures to be more readable. In this video, J suggests that the children perhaps use a large wire to wrap around a base to create a greater effect of their sculpture theme, "Spinning." I ask -- Does it have to be that or could it be a material like a tube? Notice A looking very closely to where the camera is. He is studying all the different sketches of ideas that have been presented. As each child has an idea for the group presenting, I sketch it and place a number by it so the children have a visual of the idea(below).
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO CLIP.
After editing and co-constructing a new idea, the children begin to build a new sculpture which can be a daunting task. Another tool we use together is prioritizing, so we figure out the steps together that it will take to construct it, and then take one step at a time so they can achieve their idea.
If you look at these tools we use and have developed in order for teacher and student to make meaning together, you can see why working together was such a meaningful word used in the birthday card. As I joke with the children, do you know this is what I did in college? They always laugh! It is a testament to just how amazing children really are!
As educators at Mid-Pacific Institute's Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool, we often toss around this term: symbolic thinking.
Symbolic thinking and representing have many different layers and are very complex. It cannot be easily measured like your child's learning the alphabet because an alphabet, determined centuries ago, is a standardized set of symbols easily memorized. Symbolic thinking emerges with the learner or child and must be documented over time to understand the thinking made visible.
(often open-ended materials allow for symbolic thinking)
Symbol systems allow for your child to invent, create, think, reinvent -- a never-ending cycle of thought and creation. It's hard at times to just understand what symbolic thinking might look like and how it is developed over time in children within our Reggio-inspired approach. In this blog, I'd like to share some examples of just this. As an artist and a teacher, I think that this type of thinking and inventing is crucial in our children's development, if they are to be successful learners and adults in the 21st century.
In Preschool
As our projects continue to expand, we create thoughtful provocations that we can offer to the children to facilitate this idea of symbolic thinking.
We noticed in our painting areas that the children were filling up space and quickly getting new pieces of paper. We wondered how we could slow them down, think more intentionally about their marks expressing ideas, the colors they were choosing, the size of their brushes, and the space of the paper.
At first we offered some cards noting different words like angry, or running, adjectives, and verbs, and asked some of the older children if they could express these ideas without using faces or words, or if could they express these ideas through color, line, or space.
As the drama unfolded at the easel, we decided to bring this provocation into the atelier, anticipating that this could help the developmental levels of all the children. To support mindful thinking, we slowed down their experience to help them think more intentionally through the media of paint. In turn, these ideas could be later revisited and understood through other media such as the use of natural materials, wire, clay, etc.
In the atelier we offered the "line game." Rather than actually painting something like a flower or a tree, we wanted to close in on the element of line, which is the fundamental symbol that creates all things. How would the child think about how to symbolically represent an idea through a line. Could you make a quiet line or a loud line? What color would a quiet line be? What size brush would you use? As an added challenge, the children could only connect to another line not cross through another child's work.
This provocation challenged children's symbolic thinking on many different levels, e.g., inventing a new strategy like "jumping a line," connecting two paths with a short cut, learning how to hold a brush, or inventing words like a "humpy" line. They also had to work collaboratively and patiently wait their turn making their marks while watching their friend work, quite like waiting for the other player to make a move on the chess board.
Materials
In the Atelier, the children have thinking about materials as representing ideas. Why would we choose one material over another to represent loudness or quietness? The example below is of two children who had created flowers out of materials, which is a typical representation perhaps, so in this case we asked the children to think about what might the two flowers be saying to each other? This question now focused the children's on how to think more symbolically, allowing them to ask themselves questions like, if my flower was to shout a message, what would a shout look like? what material would I use to make it look loud? Here is the conversation between the two flowers and the materials the children used to represent their ideas.
(one of the "flowers")
(the conversation between the two flowers)
In Kindergarten
Last semester the children ended their work with materials and digital photography, having explored their ideas around environment and transformation through reflection, shadow, distortion, and light.
This semester we have continued with these ideas as our backbone for our curriculum, adding a new vocabulary of ideas -- spinning, faded, faint, texture, etc. -- that children have collected by looking at last semester's transformation photographs. We have begun a new journey with investigating and representing these ideas above through a new media -- wire.
This is an example of one small group's work below. This is one way the children are beginning to think about feeling, interpretation, and symbolic sculpture.
The interpreted their phototgraphs by looking at expressions of feelings in their photos. This photo uses words like spinning, tunnel distortion, flying through space, and spinning light.
As a small group, they discussed and sketched out a drawing of their wire sculpture. How could they make it look or feel like a spinning tunnel of light with wire? They figured out how they would put it together and who would design and build each part.
Their completed sculpture...
As the children reflect on their sculpture, they are asked to think about these questions: Is this a readable idea? What did you think worked? What didn't work? If you could have any type of materials, what would you use to convey your idea?
As you can read in this blog, symbolic thinking is a complex process of ideation, editing, rethinking, re-constructing, and reflecting, quite the antithesis of memorizing and information regurgitation.
Hello Kindergarten Families!
Below this photo is the link to Kindergarten curriculum summary, please click to download!
PLEASE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD-KINDERGARTEN WRITE-UP 200.pdf
Jordan Guillory - Art for P-K
View the latest images from the Art Pre-K - Guillory Classroom Gallery.
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