If the whole is mounted on light cardboard before the figures are cut out,
the different parts will last longer and the tabs will not tear so easily
Color if desired, then cut dotted lines in hats and slip over the head.
Fold base on dotted line to make figure stand.
Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew were an American comedy team on stage and screen. The team initially consisted of Sidney Drew (August 28, 1863 – April 9, 1919) and his first wife Gladys Rankin (October 8, 1870 – January 9, 1914). After Gladys died in 1914, Sidney Drew married Lucile McVey (1890–1925), and the two performed as Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. Read more...
These fairies have butterfly wings and companions who play with them inside of a garden. Paper cuts also include flowers, grasses, birds and animal friends.
This seated soldier is relaxing a bit with a pipe in his mouth and a bayonet in his left hand. He also wears a army cap and a backpack. The little paper cut is by Sir Robert Baden-Powell.
This three year old (left)
and a five year old (right)
are both learning to
distinguish between shapes.
Both students are in stage 2
of early childhood learning.
Early childhood education refers to the formal teaching of young children
by people outside the family or in settings outside the home. "Early
childhood" is usually defined as before the age of normal schooling –
five years in most nations, though the U.S. National Association for the Education of Young Children defines "early childhood" as before the age of eight.
Early Childhood education focuses on children learning through play, based on the research and philosophy of Jean Piaget.
This belief is centered on the "power of play". It has been thought
that children learn more efficiently and gain more knowledge through
play-based activities such as dramatic play, art, and social games. This
theory stems children's natural curiosity and tendencies to "make
believe", mixing in educational lessons.
Preschool education and kindergarten emphasize learning around the ages of 3–6 years. The terms "day care" and "child care" do not convey the educational aspects, although many childcare centers use more educational approaches.
The distinction between childcare centers and kindergartens has all but
disappeared in countries that require staff in different early
childhood facilities to have a teaching qualification.
Researchers and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process. Often educators refer to parents as the child's "first and best teacher".
The assignment shown above is not just
entertaining; it serves a very important
purpose in the development of small
motor skills. This four year old is
learning "how" to work with her fingers.
In the future, she will be asked to per-
form the same movements with a
pencil and a eraser.
It is very important for parents to stay engaged in their child's
learning process even if they are getting most of their education from a
daycare, day home, school etc. The knowledge learned from a parent will
be more cherished and remembered by a child then if any other person
taught them, especially at an early age. Early childhood education is
crucial to child development and should be entered into cautiously with
someone you trust will benefit your child.
Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a
child's first "sense of self"; most children are able to differentiate
between themselves and others by their second year. This is a crucial
part of the child's ability to determine how they should function in
relation to other people. Early care must emphasize links to family, home culture, and home language by uniquely caring for each child.
Children who lack sufficient nurturing, nutrition, interaction with a parent or caregiver, and stimulus during this crucial period may be left with developmental deficits, as has been reported in Russian and Romanian orphanages. Children must receive attention and affection
to develop in a healthy manner. There is a false belief that more hours
of formal education for a very young child confers greater benefits
than a balance between formal education and family time. A systematic,
international review suggests that the benefits of early childhood
education come from the experience of participation; more than 2.5 hours
a day does not greatly add to child development outcomes, especially
when it detracts from other experiences and family contact.
The Developmental Interaction Approach is based on the theories of Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, John Dewey, and Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The approach aims to involve children in acquiring competence via learning through discovery.
Very young students are positively motivated to learn by two basic instincts, pleasure and acceptance.
This little three year old is manipulating brightly colored bits of ribbon and fuzzy pom-poms in order
to create a collage. She thinks that crayons, paper and glue are materials to play with. However,
these art supplies will shape her ability to communicate and to also find pleasure in doing so.
Teachers, parents and caregivers will encourage her productivity and voice their approval frequently
in order to strengthen her will to manipulate the materials more and more as she matures.
There are five developmental domains of childhood development:
Physical This section refers to how well your child is
developing physically. You should keep an eye on their eyesight and how
their motor skills are developing; they should be able to do small
crafts and puzzles.
Social This section refers to the connections they've made with people and how well they are interacting with them.
Emotional This section refers to the emotional connections and amount of self-confidence they have.
Language Development This section refers to how well they communicate with people. Also how they represent their feelings and emotions.
Cognitive Skills This section refers to how the child lives in their everyday environment and how they solve everyday problems.
There are three very basic, age appropriate, stages of early learning: 1. Ages 1-3 Years Old: Learning through the discovery of knowledge:
exploring
the five senses
kinesthetic memory
discovery of basic motor skills
identifying self and others
experiments with making sounds and copying sounds
2. Ages 3-5 Years Old: Learning though the processing of
knowledge:
identification, definition, categorization of knowledge
development of basic motor skills
social engagement with
others i. e. “acceptable behaviors”
learning to read faces, emotions
differentiate between good and bad conduct in oneself and others
learning to make specific sound associated with language
3. Ages 6-9 Years Old: Learning through manipulation of knowledge:
fine tuning (controlling) large and small motor skills
cause
& effect social interaction and feelings (Cause and effect theory in academic subjects begins in grade 4; the children approx. 10 years of age.)
Basic academic identification and applications: Integrated studies in multiple academic
studies: math, science, art, history, literacy/reading and language (how do subjects compliment each other or relate to each other)
working in
a group to achieve a common goal
learning to both speak and identify the language preferences of one's own people and also languages foreign to one's own people
developing and adapting sophisticated memory cues, processes
Watch a candid and inspirational discussion with teachers from the Georgia
Wolf Trap / Alliance Theatre community - including the social, academic,
and emotional impact of Wolf Trap's early childhood arts education
program. Parents can see how an "art rich" curriculum is developed for early learners.
The learning center strategy uses ten basic learning centers to address the countless objectives of American early childhood classrooms, attempting to develop the student’s social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and aesthetic abilities.
Encourage independent use of learning centers with these quick and easy tips:
One Define the space. Use throw rugs, bookcases, and curtains to help children contain their play within the center.
Two Take a room tour. Start the year by taking a few children at a
time on a quick tour of the centers. Show them where materials are and
how to put them away.
Three Keep materials accessible. Put current materials for each
center in well-defined containers and marked shelves at children's eye
level.
FourStore a few teacher materials in each center. It takes too much
time to have to search for your own materials. Place your materials on a
high shelf in each area.
Five Stock centers sparingly. It is easier for children to manage
materials if there are just a few items there. As children learn how to
easily use and put materials away, ask them to suggest what new items
they would like to add to the centers.
Six Set up portable centers. Use plastic tubs or bins to create
portable centers children can take to a private area to work and play.
Seven Make a cooperative center rules chart. At a group time,
encourage children to suggest rules for working/playing in learning
centers. If children are having difficulty, suggest issues such as
sharing materials, respecting eachother's work, and putting materials
away.
Eight Display children's work. Use bulletin boards, shelf backs, cardboard boxes or room dividers as a place to show children what others have done in the center.
Nine Set up a works-in-progress shelf. Sometimes children don't have
enough time to complete a project in a center. Create a "safe place"
where children can store ongoing projects.
Ten Create a take-home box. Set out a box near the door for children
to place their finished projects for take-home at the end of the day
There are nine basic learning centers in an early childhood/elementary classroom,
each structured to expand the students’ experiences in a variety of
meaningful and effective ways. Each center is constructed to encompass
numerous objectives, including state and federal standards, school
standards, and community standards.
Many church nurseries and preschools acquire large collections of Legos for early learners; when partnered with a nice table and a few extra trays this will serve as a very nice building block center.
The learning centers approach
focuses on student autonomy by giving each student an
opportunity to explore his learning environment hands-on in a
developmentally appropriate classroom.
Teachers act as facilitators, providing materials and guidance, as well
as planning discussions, activities, demonstrations, and reviews around the learning centers. These should never be used entirely as the only form of teaching in a classroom setting. That being said, learning centers may be integrated into the daily curriculum of a typical preschool or kindergarten.
The art center both personal and multi-cultural visual expression. This center also supports many opportunities for core subject integration such as: science, math, literacy, and history.
The building block center is essential in a pre-kindergarten classroom. Students recreate structural environments and explore concepts taught through math, geometry, and sturctural engineering in this center.
A discovery center is often used to introduce children to nature and/or science.
Dramatic play centers promote social interaction, role exploration, and abstract thinking.
Library centers or literacy centers focus the student's attention upon a particular theme for the week's studies through type and pictures.
The muscle center engages students participate
in activities that exercise their bodies and develop large and small motor skills.
Music centers creates opportunities for children to
cooperate in activities that stimulate creativity, listening, and
language. Children learn the natural intonations
and rhythms of language here.
The table games center teaches children to
explore an established set of rules.
Writing centers integrate the development of fine motor skills with self expression, reading, spelling and art.
In the manipulative center children play either alone or with each other using small toys to explore identification skills, math, and also story making. This center has similar attributes found in building block centers and dramatic play centers, except that the scale of the toys and environments is much smaller. The child's perception is no longer in the form of role play as an equal to his piers. The child becomes the manipulator of a story or of elements that they can control apart from social engagement if they choose to do so.
Below is a video depicting a wide variety of sensory table ideas. Sensory tables are often introduced into preschool and kindergarten centers by early childhood educators. Children learn to associate ideas with those memories developed through tactile learning as well as the visual. Smells are also integrated into sensory tables although the examples shown here focus primarily on the tactile.
Video by MyCreativeTeacher.com. Children use their senses to understand the
world around them. Engaging in valuable experiences is important for
building their overall development. Who says sensory tables are only for
preschools? Get your child his or her own sensory table so that you can
encourage them to investigate, learn and discover!
Visit http://thevirtualinstructor.com
for more art lessons like this one. Learn the stages of artistic
development and how knowing them will help your drawing improvement.
As young students develop,
their art passes through a number of stages. It is thought that all
children pass through these stages:
a.) Scribbling: From about their first birthday children achieve the fine motor control to handle a crayon.
At first they scribble. The youngest child scribbles with a series of
left and right motions, later up, down and then circular motions are
added. The child appears to get considerable pleasure from watching the
line or the colors
appear. Often however children do not pay attention to the edges of the
page and the lines go beyond the confines of the page. Children are
often also interested in body painting and, given the opportunity, will draw on their hands or smear paint on their faces.
Later, from about their second birthday, controlled scribbling
starts. Children produce patterns of simple shapes: circles, crosses and
star-bursts. They also become interested in arrangement and can produce
simple collages of colored paper, or place stones in patterns. Once
children have established controlled scribbling they begin to name their
scribbles.
b.) Pre-symbolism: From about age three, the child begins to combine circles and lines
to make simple figures. At first, people are drawn without a body and
with arms emerging directly from the head. The eyes are often drawn
large, filling up most of the face, and hands and feet are omitted. At
this stage it may be impossible to identify the subject of the art
without the child's help.
Later drawings from this stage show figures drawn floating in space
and sized to reflect the child's view of their importance. Most children
at this age are not concerned with producing a realistic picture.
c.) Symbolism: In this stage of a child's development, they create a vocabulary of
images. Thus when a child draws a picture of a cat, they will always
draw the same basic image, perhaps modified (this cat has stripes that
one has dots, for example). This stage of drawing begins at around age
five. The basic shapes are called symbols or schema.
Each child develops his/her own set of symbols, which are based on
their understanding of what is being drawn rather than on observation.
Each child's symbols are therefore unique to the child. By this age,
most children develop a "person" symbol which has a properly defined
head, trunk and limbs which are in some sort of rough proportion.
Before this stage the objects that child would draw would appear to
float in space, but at about five to six years old the child introduces a
baseline with which to organize their space. This baseline is often a
green line (representing grass) at the bottom of the paper. The figures
stand on this line. Slightly older children may also add secondary
baselines for background objects and a skyline to hold the sun and
clouds.
It is at this stage that cultural influences become more important.
Children not only draw from life, but also copy images in their
surroundings. They may draw copies of cartoons. Children also become
more aware of the story-telling
possibilities in a picture. The earliest understanding of a more
realistic representation of space, such as using perspective, usually
comes from copying.
d.) Realism: As children mature they begin to find their symbols limiting. They
realize that their schema for a person is not flexible enough, and just
doesn't look like the real thing. At this stage, which begins at nine or
ten years old, the child will lend greater importance to whether the
drawing looks like the object being drawn.
This can be a frustrating time for some children, as their
aspirations outstrip their abilities and knowledge. Some children give
up on drawing almost entirely. However others become skilled, and it is
at this stage that formal artistic training can benefit the child most.
The baseline is dropped and the child can learn to use rules such as perspective
to organize space better. Story-telling also becomes more refined and
children will start to use formal devices such as the comic strip.
There’s hardly a lad whose heart doesn’t beat fast at the very
thought of pirates and buried treasure. So for the invitation to this
party, for boys of 7 years or more, cut a 12″ x 4″ piece of yellow
construction or wrapping paper. Fold it in half.
On the outside of the invitation, write the young host’s name and
address, etc.: “Captain Bob Foster’s Birthday Party, 120 Valley Avenue,
Blue Mountain, California, Friday, October 14th, 1955.”
On the inside, at the left, draw a compass rose and map of Treasure
Island; the dotted line leads to X, where the rhyme begins (see above).
On the inside, at the right, write the rhyme; at the bottom, print
the secret password and prick it at intervals with a pin. Add
instructions on how to read it.
The Pirate’s Den
Shipshape fittings: Place a sturdy box on each side of the doorway
leading into the party room. Nail a broad 4′ plank across the top of
them. Then hang a curtain or sheet in the doorway so it just touches the
plank. Pirates must use the plank to enter the room.
Cut out lots of pennants from bright-colored cotton yard goods.
Staple them to a heavy cord; then string them in the party room, here
and there or from high to low points.
In the wall light fixtures, use red and green bulbs to simulate the port and starboard lights of a ship.
Cut cardboard to fit over each window; paint it black; cut a circle
from the center of each to resemble portholes; tape to windows.
Captain Morgan’s Table
It’s a swashbuckling setup: Use a picnic table with benches. Cover
the table with a black cloth made of yard goods. Set the table with red
paper napkins (a red rubber hatchet holds down each napkin) and
red-handled picnic-type forks and knives. For plates, collect the
metal-type plates on which frozen dinners come; with enamel paint, paint
each white; when it’s dry, paint on a black Jolly Roger
(skull-and-crossbones) insignia. Complete the setting with white china
mugs (dollar-store variety).
Jolly Roger place cards: From thin white cardboard, cut 7″ x 3-1/2″
place cards. Fold in half; on each, outline Jolly Roger insignia, with
top of insignia at fold. Cut out around top of insignia, as shown. Write
name of pirate on each—Captain Kidd, Jean Lafitte, Captain Morgan, Long
John Silver, Ben Gunn, etc.
Pirate-Garb Favors: Each young pirate receives a pirate hat (with
white Jolly Roger insignia on it), an eye patch, and mustache, all made
of black construction paper. The hat and patch are held on with hat
elastic. A rubber dagger from the dime store and a red crepe-paper sash,
cut from folds of crepe paper, complete the attire.
Galleon Centerpiece: Buy an 18″ black sailboat; remove cloth sails.
Insert 3 wooden dowels of different lengths into holes in deck as shown.
Make sails from stiff white paper; paint Jolly Roger insignia on one.
Paste sails onto dowels as shown; with cord, attach 4 jib sails to bow
of boat.
Pile some rocks at far end of table; to these, secure the ship,
letting it heel. Scatter colored pebbles about. To the masts, paste
white and black pirate flags as shown. Station rubber pirate figures, in
various poses, on deck and in tiny crow’s-nest (use a paper cup). Place
a cork float at either end of the ship; into each, insert a large red
candle.
Have a retro pirate party for your little buccaneer this year.
Seafaring Food
Twin Treasure Sandwich Chests
Pirate Treasure (Raw Relishes)
Ship Ahoy Ice Cream
Jolly Roger Cake – Cold Milk
Twin Treasure Sandwich Chests
2 loaves unsliced bread
Lettuce
Raw relishes
Sandwich fillings of tuna, deviled ham, etc
Chocolate “gold” coins
With long sharp knife, cut off 1/2″ slice from top of day-old loaf
of bread, cutting almost but not all the way through and leaving hinge
along long side.
Now, starting 1/4″ in from edge of crust and letting knife extend down to 1/4″ from bottom, cut all around inside of loaf.
Then insert knife into outside of long side of loaf, 1/4″ up from
bottom crust and in from end, so that blade extends across width of loaf
to within 1/4″ of crust on opposite side. Then saw across length of
loaf to within of other end, so block of bread is completely loosened.
Now lift out block.
Slice block of bread; then make it into sandwiches with tasty
fillings of tuna, deviled ham, etc. Arrange sandwiches in chest, tucking
lettuce here and there. Garnish chest with carrot curls, radish roses,
celery sticks, and ripe olives (resembling jewels) ; add “gold” coins of
sweet chocolate.
For second chest, repeat above.
Ship Ahoy Ice Cream
Make small square paper sails—2 for each ship. Insert narrow candy stick into each.
Quickly halve each very firm pint of brick ice cream into 2
lengthwise oblongs; cut corners from front end of each oblong to form
bow of ship.
Into each oblong, insert 2 candy-stick sails: then press 2 or 3
small round candies with holes in the center into each side for
portholes.
Jolly Roger Cake
Fill and frost 2 9″ cake layers with 1 batch seven-minute
frosting, or 1 pkg. fluffy white frosting mix, prepared as label
directs.
Make Cocoa Party Cream this way: To 1/2 recipe Party Cream (page 185), add 2 Tablesp. cocoa.
Draw 9″ circle on piece of cardboard. In circle, sketch Jolly
Roger insignia. Cut out insignia; lay on center top of frosted cake;
then sift cocoa from tea strainer over entire top surface of cake.
Carefully lift off insignia.
Using Cocoa Party Cream in cake decorator with plain tube, write “happy birthday, Captain Bob” around side of cake.
Buccaneer Games
PIRATE GOLD: As guests arrive, each gives the secret password, then
draws a name tag bearing one of the pirate names on the Jolly Roger
Place Cards (page 74). Each guest pins on his name tag and receives a
bag of chocolate “gold” coins or marbles. Anyone failing to call a guest
by his pirate name during the party forfeits a “gold” coin.
WALK THE PLANK: Lay a plank flat on the floor; at the end of it,
place a small tub of water. As soon as each guest has assumed his pirate
name, give him a trial run and let him walk the plank, then jump over
the tub of water with ease.
Now blindfold the victim; while he is being blindfolded, the water is
quietly removed. It is very comical for the guests who have already
gone through the ordeal to watch each one cautiously edge his way out on
the plank, then jump wildly into the air, momentarily expecting to land
with a splash.
PIRATE HIDEOUT: The child who is Captain Kidd for the afternoon hides
while the others slowly count to 25. Then all scatter and hunt for
Captain Kidd in his pirate’s den. As soon as one player finds the
Captain, he doesn’t say a word but hides right along with him. And so it
goes until all have found Captain Kidd. The first one to discover the
Captain’s hideout becomes the next person to hide.
TREASURE HUNT: Before the party, the young host fills a treasure
chest with chocolate “gold” coins and hides a silver fifty-cent piece at
the bottom.
For each pirate, the host prints, on torn pieces of brown paper, a
different set of 3 clues, each giving directions on how to find the next
clue; then he prints a fourth clue, which is the same for all. He puts
all the first clues into a bag, hides the rest as directed, and finally
hides the treasure chest itself in the “West.” Here’s a sample set of
clues:
Yo ho ho and a pirate ship, In the piano bench you’ll find a
slip.
Look alive, man, or you’ll walk the plank. It’s hidden beneath the piggy bank.
Look under the rug; step lively will ya, You’ve been double-crossed by Long John Silver.
And now, young man, go West, go West, The treasure’s in the
treasure chest. At the party, each pirate draws his first clue from the
bag. It leads him to the next, etc., and finally to the treasure.
The winner must turn in all 4 clues. His prize is the fifty-cent piece. All share the “gold.”
Shadowgraphy has progressed a long way from the rabbit on the wall; but in the house, ambition in this accomplishment does not often extend further than that and one or two other animals, and this is why only the rabbit, dog and swan are given here. The swan can be made more interesting by moving the arm which forms his neck as if he were prinking and pluming, an effect which is much heightened by ruffling up and smoothing down the hair with the fingers forming his beak. To get a clear shadow it is necessary to have only one light, and that fairly close to the hands.
This illustration show the positioning of the hands to make a bunny, swan and dog.
All children who like drawing seem to enjoy this game. Take a piece of paper and make five dots on it, wherever you like--scattered about far apart, close together (but not too close), or even in a straight line. The other player's task is to fit in a drawing of a person with one of these dots at his head, two hat his hands, and two at his feet, as in the examples below.
As a change from ordinary letter-writing, "Hieroglyphics" are amusing and interesting to make. The best explanation is an example, such as those given below, the subject being in two versed from a favorite nursery song.
First half of "The Owl and The Pussycat" hieroglyphic.
Second half of "The Owl and The Pussycat" hieroglyphic.
The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear
The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are, you are, you are,
What a beautiful Pussy you are."
Pussy said to the Owl "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O let us be married, too long we have tarried;
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows,
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose, his nose, his nose,
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children’s verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. Read more . . .
Below is an article written in 1919 and although it is very old, the content I feel is appropriate for today's educational environments. The authorship is excellent. The only argument I would bother to make with it is that it underestimates the qualities young children give to inanimate objects that look like themselves. Children will use particular toys like props, thus dramatizing all kinds of scenario through their play with dolls, stuffed animals and puppets.
Also, having a traditional home environment inside of the classroom helps to promote affections in a child's family where they live for twenty some odd years and in some cases even longer than this. It is still very important to reinforce nurturing and care for others through the positive roleplaying children experience at school. Therefore traditional centers with dolls, kitchens, living spaces etc . . . should not be excluded from primary learning environments.
Could there be a better use for a laboratory floor?
The question seems simple. Yet the answers as they are silently expressed in the majority of schools and homes are strangely confused and superficial. For the most part they are based on the idea that play is a waste of time good padding for the early childhood years before real things can begin, and later an interlude between periods of real accomplishment to be tolerated because children will get ill if kept too closely to their books and tasks.
But, as is being more fully recognized each day, this negative assessment of the natural activities of little children is not merely inadequate. It is false. It makes us do wrong things to children. If we really understood play, we would be stirred by the scope of its educational possibilities. One vital aspect of play is the child's duplication or interpretation of the life processes ! going on around him. In their play, children create the world as they see it with the equipment they have at hand. And to them this created world is real real as the artist's; world is to him and in much the same way realer than the adult's world which the adult would force upon him. Play, instead of being a wasted interlude in the learning process, is the process itself.
Every Class room should have a work-bench.
The kindergarten was founded upon play activities as grown people conceived them, and it made a distinction between systematized play and what was termed "free" play. The kindergarten never recognized the latter as a vital part of the educational process. But in the last few years, educators have dimly seen and slowly groped their way toward the fact that play is the child's method of experimenting with his environment. At the same time they have come to realize that experimenting is the soul of education; that much sound knowledge is gained by the trial and error method ; that a child will continue to learn by the same process that he learned to walk by falling down.
When these great, simple facts are appreciated, the problem of school and home assumes an entirely new aspect. How can they be made over into places where children can educate themselves, can learn through experimenting the meaning of the world they live in, and do it by the natural means of play? What must be done to furnish a genuine laboratory for children? What are the necessary appliances with which it should be equipped?
These are searching questions. They send a challenge to nearly everything which has been thought proper in a small child's school surroundings the teacher's attitude, the classroom furniture, and the equipment.
In a little child's laboratory, the teacher becomes an observer of and specialist in play. She does not impose her personality or her methods upon the child. The child's world is his own world. He wishes to interpret that and not another's. The work of the teacher is not to lead him to see her world through his eyes, but to put before his eyes a world which he may make his own. For the child, the stimulus to experiment should come from the observation of the life of the city streets, or the farm, or the home, or whatever his environment happens to be. The teacher should put her energies upon the ordering and simplifying of this larger environment, rather than upon suggestions as to what the child shall do within his laboratory in experimenting with or interpreting this environment. The child's interpretation of his environment is play. No child need be taught it.
Up to the age of six, a child is an individualist.
But if the child himself is to get from this interpretation all that it has to yield, he must be given the very best appliances to express this interpretation. And these appliances are technically "free materials" colloquially, toys.
This word, like play, is burdened by the weight of years of misunderstanding and abuse. Toys have not been treated seriously. They have been regarded as a waste of money or as things to amuse children. With what consequences? What kinds of things have been given as toys? To begin with, boys have been given one kind, girls another. The environment of a brother and sister is the same, and yet, under no condition, has the little girl's interest been allowed to be the same as the boy's. The fact of their sex has been seized upon and emphasized until it has built a Great Wall of China across which a small girl may not venture without fear of being a hoyden, and a small boy, a "sissy." Moreover, the toys have not been toys with which children could do things. A set of tools occasionally came into a small boy's hands and released his pent-up desire to make, to construct. But, for the most part, boy and girl alike were limited to already finished objects which could merely be moved about or watched and not in a real sense played with.
The climax of absurdity in playthings is the so-called "mechanical toy." It does all the work. The child does nothing. Watch a child in front of a mechanical toy say a miller who runs up a ladder and dumps a sack of grain down a chute. It seems to hold much of promise for interpreting a child's surroundings to him. He is fascinated by the first few trips of the miller. He endows the man with human qualities. He names him. Then, after the novelty has gone by, he longs to have his miller do something besides race up and down the ladder at superhuman speed. But the miller has no other possibility. So the toy is finally discarded, or, more probably, dissected by a bored child who wishes to find out how the little man works. The net result is a disappointed donor, an "ungrateful child," and a little heap of unusable rubbish. There exists, to be sure, another type of mechanical toy of which the electric engine is a good example. A toy of this type may be used as the basis of very wonderful constructive play for children old enough to "run it" themselves. But the usual type of mechanical toy should never be classed with toys at all. It is destructive of play.
Again, toys, even good toys, which help a child to duplicate the processes going on around him have never been planned together. They remain separate objects, unrelated units, disjointed bits of the universe, which grown-ups, having forgotten their own play-thoughts, imagine children are interested in. It is difficult to reconstruct a sector of life with a two-foot rag baby, a four-inch wagon and a rocking-horse.
"Free materials" aid him to enter the social world.
Toys real toys are the tools of play. And since play is serious business for children, these tools must be selected with serious intent. The requisite for toys is that they must be efficient as toys. That is, they should be suggestive of play and made for play. They should be selected in relation to each other, both in size and in kind. They should be consistent with the environment of the child who is to use them. They should be constructed simply, so that they may serve as models for other toys to be constructed by the children. They should suggest something besides domestic play, so that the child's interests may be led to activities outside the home life. They should be durable, because they are the realities in a child's world and deserve the dignity of good workmanship.
Toys of this sort may obviously form an equipment for a child's laboratory, and anything which answers these requirements becomes in this sense a toy a tool for play. Some toys of this sort for example, blocks are as old as the proverbial hills; they have even been used in the schoolroom. But to use them as a basis for constructing a miniature world, a world in which the related toys the dolls and the horses live, move, and have their being, an incomplete world which may be supplemented by all sorts of plasticene (modeling clay) and bench-made things (wooden), a world, moreover, which may be decorated to any extent to use blocks in this way is an innovation in education. Yet there is no appliance better suited to a laboratory for play than simple blocks.
Work benches, with real tools, are an essential for the laboratory. The possibility for purposive action which a work-bench holds is literally boundless.
So, too, with play materials, such as crayons, colored papers, plasticene (play-dough) and clay. If children are let alone with paper and pencil, they will quickly learn to use these playthings quite as effectively as they do blocks and dolls. Left to dig out for himself the "soul" of an object and transfer this soul to paper, which is, after all, the true province of art, a child under six may produce something that at first sight seems to our hide-bound imaginations grotesque. But rest assured that this absurdity is based on some reality. He has drawn the essential rather than the object itself. Take the small boy of six who drew airplanes, guns, ships, and then smudged the whole thing with red crayon. When asked what his drawing represented, he said, "Why, that's war. Isn't it a mess?" Or the child who drew a barely perceptible automobile in white crayon because, as he explained, "It's going so fast you can't see it." Or again, the seven-year-old who passed a green crayon lightly over a sheet of paper and placed at the bottom a tiny figure who "thinks he is walking in the grass, but he really is in the bottom of the sea!"
Children fashion almost anything into their dramatic purposes.
If a laboratory is to give each child die full freedom for his own expression, it has to provide not only appliances which he can easily manipulate to his own ends, but physical space and guarantee from interruption as well. The ability of even well-to-do homes to command these last essentials is seriously threatened in these days of congested cities and small apartments. The school's task is no light one. It must see to it that children have the playthings which are the nucleus of a significant life-process known to them through their own experiences; that is, toys which are related and suggestive; that they have at hand materials with which they themselves can supplement these provided toys; and then, that they be given time and space in which to work out their own experiments in their own way. The easiest place for little children to play is on the floor. Why not a school floor? Why not let him construct his little scheme on the floor and then use this scheme to carry out in action whatever miniature dramatic situation he has created? Could there be a better use of a laboratory floor?
It seems obvious that a child turned loose with appropriate appliances appropriate to his ends rather than the teacher's will develop his own method of expression. He will enjoy it, too. For up to the age of six, a child is an extreme individualist. He does not naturally do things co-operatively. There comes a time, however, when he steps from his individualistic into a social world. The school should meet the requirements of his individualistic period and bridge the gap when he begins to be a communistic souL Here again, toys free materials are the school's chief reliance. They adapt themselves to the needs of a project in which a whole group of children spontaneously develop joint floor schemes such as a section of a city with its streets full of autos and carriages, lined with trees, flanked by houses, restaurants with out-door gardens, railroad station with incoming and outgoing traffic, river with wharves and shipping, grocery shop, baker's shop, factories and all the endless array of industrial activities which make up our modern world. This is not a theoretic description. It is the kind of thing that those who work with free materials and comparatively free children constantly see. It is what keeps their courage steady!
Young student building his own world.
But it is all important that a child should not be forced too soon into a social world. He must work his own way gradually from his own concrete interpretation of a special fact or situation to a social interpretation. To socialize a child's entire day implies that he has reached a stable stage where he has something to say which will contribute to the little society of which he is a part, and that he knows how to say it. It is doubtful if many children acquire this stability during "kindergarten age" though the kindergarten practices are based on the assumption that they do.
There are, to be sure, some practical difficulties in devising a schoolroom where little children may have both ample privacy and ample social life, particularly if they work with free material. In one school, the mechanical difficulty has been met by two simple devices. Small, low, and easily handled screens are placed so as to give each child his own isolated space on the floor. Here he is free to follow his own bent to draw, to model, or to construct and develop a miniature dramatic scheme, as he may desire. And when this individual expression is completed and the floor space is needed for common purposes, the screens may be removed. By the other device a small balcony, easily built in any room the additional space needed for co-operative "floor schemes" is secured. This balcony may be too low to let a grown-up pass underneath, but it doubles the space for the children.
Much of the furnishing of a schoolroom, such as screens, folding tables, chairs, rugs, etc., is good dramatic material. And so is what- ever there may be in the way of outdoor apparatus. If children are encouraged to use materials freely, they fashion almost anything into their dramatic purposes. It is their natural attack on life.
But even if it be conceded that free play with appropriate playthings is good for little children, since it may make them resourceful and observant and independent, it does not logically follow that it covers the whole ground that it is a substitute for "lessons" that it gives the child the "tools of learning." Of course, it is obvious that play-schemes may be made an excuse for making children swallow sugar-coated pellets of arithmetic and reading and writing. Devices of this sort to beguile the unsuspecting child have multiplied like weeds in recent classrooms. They are largely responsible for the common suspicion that freedom within a schoolroom must mean either coaxing or license. They are devices, nothing more. And they are a bit unworthy of the situation. It is not that the play of children affords an opportunity to slip in unnoticed something which an adult values, but which the child would repudiate if he were not duped. It is that interpretive play, constructive play, depends in its very essence upon the same relations, whether expressed in human terms or in books, upon which our real world depends. In order to carry on organized life, we find it necessary to use symbols. These symbols have grown up just because they are necessary to facilitate the processes of the world. The same necessity will be felt by the children in any play which reproduces these processes. And the use of symbols will grow up in the same natural way. Children cannot reproduce an environment which implies a number sense without having that number sense; children cannot do exact bench work without measuring; children cannot play store without arithmetic. This is less true of reading
and writing.
It remains to be determined whether this means that reading and writing must be taught formally or that reading and writing are a later necessity for children. Our own experiment in this field seems to indicate that both of these contentions will be found true and that formal reading and writing come as a welcome opportunity at the age of eight or nine to children who have enjoyed a rich preparatory experience of constructive and interpretive play.
Such an experience, while it does not supply the necessary technique, makes definite contributions toward its acquisition and, a fact of greater import, ensures the immediate use of any tool acquired for practical, purposeful ends. Thus the free use of crayons in big sweeps on large sheets of paper, the blackboard, or the floor, gives preliminary skill and confidence in manipulation. Early drawing may contribute by clearing up visual images. Enterprising play and work experiences demand clear and definite oral expression, ever the basis for clear written expression. After an extended period of such preliminary experiences children are ready to put real effort into the mechanics involved. In addition to the acquisition of contributory habits and skills they invariably bring to the situation considerable "picked up" knowledge of technique. Thus equipped they should learn to read through reading, and find no difficulty in using the tool of writing for thought expression.
The problem of reading and writing links itself very closely with the whole problem of the use of books, of stories and verse. The idea of giving children "free material" with which to experiment and to create has rarely been extended to language. Books for children have been like the toys of old to amuse; or like the lessons of old to instruct.
By a small balcony, the additional space needed for co-
operative floor schemes may be secured.
The effort to amuse has produced a literature of fairy tales steeped in the imaginary romance of an imaginary world a world which often confuses a child's thinking and seldom has any significance in understanding the very real romance of the modern world: it has produced the "story of adventure" with its basic appeal to excitement, its familiarity with killing, impossible heroisms and violence of all sorts; it has produced the "animal story," in which the animal leaves both his nature and his habits and masquerades in human form, not uncommonly in human apparel. The effort to instruct children has produced a quite different but hardly more happy literature if indeed it deserves that name at all. Facts chosen by an adult because of his own interest in them, presented to a child without being related to the child's experience, in a form which too often a child cannot perceive such is the stuff of most of our informational books for little children. Readers which constitute most children's introduction to "literature" are pieced together from these two types of stories the amusing and the instructive and cast in a language intended to facilitate the technique of reading and the technique of writing regardless of the effect upon the art of reading or the art of writing. Care for a child's sensitiveness to sound, care for a child's natural play use of words, care for a child's interest in his own experiences and for his method of reaching the remote and the unfamiliar thru the immediate and the personal, care for a child's creative power in language these are not the things that have guided most of the adults who have written the books for little children.
We need a new literature for children. We need stones which recognize the art the play spirit in words and which are cast in patterns which a child is equipped to see and enjoy. We need stories which will start with a child's own experiences and environment and thru following the line of his own inquiries, lead out from his immediate limited surroundings to richer, wider environments. We need parents and schools who will test the stories and verse which they give to their children not by what a child takes in but by what he gives out in stories and verse of his own creating. For create he will, if he is not diverted from his natural bent by some adult conception of what he should enjoy or should know. There is no telling how far the dramatic appeal of a story might carry a child into genuine scientific habits of thinking. There is no telling thru what new forms of play expression, of "literature," he might express himself, if language were to him "free material" suitable for play purposes. Not till we have this new literature will we have anything like a well-equipped laboratory for our little children. Committee on toys and school equipment, 1919
I've included this video because it will hopefully inspire all teachers in different types of environments to pursue teaching children how to love learning. I am not trying to promote Montessori schools over all other alternatives here. Both of my adult children attended private and public schools during their childhood. None of these schools were Montessori. However, the teaching philosophies of their classroom teachers made a heavy impact on their personal growth. The most important value passed onto my children from those who cared daily for them in school was a love for learning.
