Week 2: Monday & Tuesday

Dear Collaborators,

Over the course of the first two days this week (the 24th & the 25th), we have begun using our classrooms even though they aren't quite finished yet.  The lack of doors and windows made it harder for the younger children in the kindergarten next door to stay separate from the first graders, but I made it clear to the other teachers and to the students that we would maintain this healthy boundary.  It is completely acceptable to cry, while in compliance with a rule, as a little kid!  We should not fear tears, but rather fear lack of safe boundaries.  And we certainly had some crying and adjusting periods this week.

However, the crying ended, and the boundaries held firm (at least when I was present), so I am confident we will have less crying in the future.  Having trained my own infant daughter to sleep through the night by not positively reinforcing nighttime crying with anything other than absolute minimal diaper changing and feeding (absolutely no external entertainment or walking around in the middle of the night!), I have seen how quickly happy results can come for everyone over the course of just a few short days when there are no doubts about healthy boundaries and when everyone quickly acquires a feeling of safety through predicability within those healthy limits.

The first grade also had one long last visit to the river Monday over an extended recess period between their early morning English and Math lessons with me and there later Waldorf Spanish lessons with Olga.  This also helped all our sibling pairs to develop a firmer sense of their separation during the school day between kindergarten and first grade.  We ate our snack down but the river before swimming a little, and we developed a new way to practice math as we walked together.  To the tune of "Left, left, left, right, left" marching chants, we chanted our way all the way up the number line from 1 to 100, and even a little further sometimes.  This was actually a challenge for the children.  When I would chant something like "57, 57, 57, 58, 59, 60," it could be very hard for them to repeat.  On our science and math walk Tuesday afternoon, I dropped the memory work down to two number advances only, such as, "57, 57, 57, 58."  Our July birthday boy specifically informed me that it was hard to hear me and remember the four big numbers that I was chanting for them in English so quickly.  After that, when we simplified the work, we enjoyed fuller active participation from all the students.

And that brings me to our new secret code for student names in this blog!  Since we have 5 students all born on different months of the year, I will now refer to them in this narrative as:

February, March, July, August, & September!  You know who your child is.

Now continuing with our summary of Math skills, it has been brought to my attention that some people might be concerned about large gaps in math skills between different.  Fear not!  There are no large gaps in skill.  February and September are the most advance, it is true, but they both wrote that the answer to 6 + 6 was 21 even though they said 12 to me, and neither of them had any clue at all how to add 50 + 50.  Everyone in the class did well adding all the doubles that we can do on two separate hands (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, 4+4 and 5+5).  March wrote the 6 facing the wrong direction, and I had to help August figure out what I was saying in English by showing him on his fingers, but everyone wrote all the answers quickly and independently on their chalk boards after they understood what we were doing.

Over the course of the 1st grade academic year, Melina, Ulli and I spoke about how must students in general around the world are usually expected to master addition and subtraction of sums up to 20.  I am much more ambitious than this although I intend to pursue my goals rather intuitively and amorphously when we are not simply doing Singapore math worksheets (which I will use more for practice and assessment rather than primary instruction).  Young children need to physically and emotionally connect to what they are learning by being active with their bodies and using as many of their five senses as possible.  One of the core axioms or proverbs of Neural Science (See Principles of Neural Science, Kandel) is that "Neurons that fire together wire together."  First grade students can master a grade deal of number manipulations in the first grade (for the whole number line from 1 to 1000 and not just from 1 to 20) if their experience of numbers can be full of emotional and sensual meaning for them and not just be a chore of tiring mental abstraction as a weird kind of game that impresses adults.

What am I talking about?  I am talking about association!  On Monday I had the children create a special 10 digit rainbow for each of our single digits.  It is a rainbow ladder from the ground up, and I intend to create these color coded steps up to our tree house to reinforce this lesson later.  So from top to bottom, imagine the ladder or stairs to the tree house like this:

9 = Pink
8 = Red
7 = Orange
6 = Yellow
5 = Lime Green
4 = Jade Green
3 = Turquoise
2 = Indio Blue
1 = Purple
0 = Dirt Brown

We are now on a deep imagination adventure to bring these numbers to life in the first grade by hunting for more exciting and meaningful things that we can associate with these numbers and colors.  On Tuesday we created one very exciting association that I am deeply enthusiastic about.  Our stinky fruit, as the children call the cashew fruit, has become the absolute perfect manifestation of the number 7 and the color orange for us.  Seven now has shape, texture, feel, color, and potent smell!  The amazing thing about this fruit is that the nut at the end of the orange fruit is actually shaped like a number 7!  It couldn't be better for our work.

The other numbers are still a work in progress.  I am optimistic that we can break off just the right branches on the dark green mint plant in the garden to reveal a hidden number 4, and it seems we can easily work with the banana flower hanging down at the end of a stock of bananas to reveal the number 6 connected to our yellow theme.  That big round flower at the end of a curving cord is the perfect number six.

If you have additional ideas for the other numbers, so that we can also discover those other numbers connected to their shapes and colors in Ecovilla, please let me know!  I am planning on buying a turquoise fish for the classroom to put in a turquoise tank full of real turquoise stones, and then I am going to make a turquoise sculpture of a diving and twisting fish with the head as the bottom of the number three shape, the tail as the top, and a side fin sticking out as the middle of the number.  The other fin will either not be visible from the class viewpoint or it will be flapping against the outer curve of the body to maintain the shape of the number 3.  Look at the Pisces sign to get an idea of how this works abstracting the shape of a fish in the direction of the number 3.  Fish also have a smell as we all know!  So if you have any other colorful, edible, drinkable, smelly ideas, please let me know quickly!

As I start to teach the children English phonetics, I will follow a similar path of creating living association for them to letter shapes and sounds (as I have done with great success in teaching children to read quickly in the past).  But for now, I have nothing thrilling to report to you.  We are just practicing fine motor skills by working with our pencils in the workbook Handwriting Without Tears.  Fine motor skills just take work and practice.  We have created an atmosphere of cooperation that facilitates such discipline easily through the methodologies of the Virtues Project (www.virtuesproject.com).  I may start to read simultaneously to the children today, Thursday, as they continue this handwriting and fine motor skill practice.  We need to work on our 7 Habits story book which will will want to re-read many times for a week or two.

AND KINDERGARTEN?

Right now what the kindergarten needs more than anything else is unity, consistency, clear boundaries, and motor skill development.  I am concerned about certain students indulging in frequent absences.  A little strategic suffering in the beginning of a new venture avoids a lot of protracted suffering in the long run (like in my story above about teaching my infant daughter to sleep better through the night when she was 5 months old).  We will soon see some of the younger toddlers in preschool much better adjusted to the environment than some of the older students if the younger ones have more consistent boundaries around attendance than the older ones.  I will address this with individual families in private conversations soon.

In more exciting news however, I am happy to report that kindergarten has been playing happily with large left over PVC tubing that serves as wheels and forts on the playground.  The more we can do to create united play space like this for the kindergarten especially, the more they will thrive.

Then, in a month or so, after 1st grade has helped to create a sense of magic and wonder around numbers and then later letters, I will have them teach and guide the kindergarten in number and letter games to subtly invite the kindergarten to focus more on their fine motor skills in drawing images and symbols on the path to number and letter acquisition.  Just as there is a time to separate first grade and kindergarten, there will be times when it is equally advantageous to bring them back together.  As the old proverb says, there is a time for every purpose under heaven.

And now it is time for me to pack up and get ready to head out the door for another day of school!


Love and Light to all of you,

Sky