My friend told me he went so high on his swing set he went right over the top in a complete circle! True story! Yes, it did too happen… No, he’s not lying, I believe him, he’s gone super high before. It did so happen. The Boy came home absolutely convinced that the creator of [...]
This post is far more academic than any of my others, so reader, be warned. (cross-posted to http://milestomes.com) While studying my B. A. at the University of Manitoba in the mid to late 80′s, I fell in love with Canadian Literature (CanLit). Courses with David Arnason and Dennis Cooley, encounters with Robert Kroetsch, and had [...]
Remember digging a the deepest hole you could and dreaming about going to the other side of the world, of finding hidden treasures from ages past, or underground caverns to play in. And that special place in the trees at the park became another world where the gathered rocks, sticks, and leaves became furniture and walls. We [...]
Piano lessons, Cubs, church, soccer, judo, day camps, summer camp. That was me growing up. I could tell you the extra curricular activities of any one of my friends at that time too. We never thought of ourselves as students – for the most part, the unique elements of our personalities and lives came from [...]
My friend told me he went so high on his swing set he went right over the top in a complete circle! True story! Yes, it did too happen… No, he’s not lying, I believe him, he’s gone super high before. It did so happen.
The Boy came home absolutely convinced that the creator of his favorite game had been hacked and the game shut down for a while. Hackers went to a website where you can take over any computer in the world and they got in to the programmers machine and shut down the game all over the world.
He was excited to be connected and experienced about something far beyond his daily life. The exaggerated expressions of shock and disbelief that this could actually happen was clearly exciting and engaging for him. He wanted to call his friends to sha the news.
We listened, reflected, asked some questions, and talked out loud our search strategies to verify the story. Surely something of this magnitude would be topics of discussn on gaming boards. Finding nothing, he was still reluctant to let go of the story, to disbelieve his friend, to realize he there was nothing to be excited about?
“Don’t worry… Nothing to get excited about.”
How disappointing?
I am certain that The Boy has seen us adults having animated conversations about things: the economy, politics, home repairs, challenges at work. He wanted to experience that kind of passionate engagement and latched on to something big.
Denny Coates, on his Building Personal Strength blog reflected on teen peer pressure and the misguided, but noe meaningless, things teens do and believe:
This is one of the perils of being young. They haven’t had much time or opportunity to do things that prove they are capable and worthy individuals. Also, the young lack knowledge and experience, so they make a lot of mistakes.
Listening and respecting the intent behind the talk, he says, supports personal growth and lead to a confidence in teens that makes it harder for them to be misled. With The Boy, this discussion of probable versus unlikely revealed a new shade of grey between the black and white of fact and fiction. Developing complex and critical understandings of the world happens when we explore ideas with kids. Open discussion is an opportunity to model thought processes that lead to rational conclusions. Using online sources to validate understandings is another critical skill and anoth blog post.
This post is far more academic than any of my others, so reader, be warned. (cross-posted to http://milestomes.com)
While studying my B. A. at the University of Manitoba in the mid to late 80′s, I fell in love with Canadian Literature (CanLit). Courses with David Arnason and Dennis Cooley, encounters with Robert Kroetsch, and had the opportunity to hear Timothy Findley, W. P. Kinsella, Kristjana Gunnars… ok, I’ll stop name dropping now. I was particularly enamored with prairie lit and, through it, developed a tremendous respect for my own ancestors who settled here more than a century earlier. The sense of place, the character of the land, struggles to carve out a life in these wild but fertile spaces caught my imagination.
Research of settings in children’s literature (KidLit) reveal a trend away from natural to constructed spaces; stories take place in and explore more urban settings, or have plot lines in which setting is secondary or unrelated to the main action.
“Natural environments have all but disappeared,” wrote University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociology professor emeritus J. Allen Williams Jr., and colleagues, reporting their findings in the journal Sociological Inquiry. The books they assessed were all winners or honor recipients of the prestigious Caldecott Medal for children’s books.
world-science.net
While the sample is relatively limited, the time span is great (>80 years), and the percent change is less than 10%, it points to issues worth exploring. How does KidLit influence a child’s world view? Does exposure to natural spaces affect individual senses of environmental stewardship? These questions speak to KidLit’s role as communicator of larger community and world values.
Root & Kiefer point to the influences of 18th century thinkers and philosophers for the start of,
a transition from the deliberate use of purely didactic literature to inculcate moral, spiritual, and ethical values in children to the provision of literature to entertain and inform
Children’s Literature – History, Literature in the Lives of Children, Environment, Awards
Like adults, children show preferences for natural settings and report that nature offers restoration and relief from stress (e.g., Korpela, 2002; Simmons, 1994; Wells & Evans, 2003).
teachgreenpsych.com
I’m not one to cry wolf, nor am I luddite standing in the way of progress. I even stopped decrying the evolving nature of language recognizing that it has always changed, and that understanding, while facilitated by convention, need not be limited by it. Nevertheless, it concerns me that children are not experiencing nature in the wild, as it were. In the spirit of The Story of Stuff, we must understand the impact of human action and consumption on our host planet.
I know it’s a big leap to make: urbanizing settings in a few dozen children’s books to the demise of the human species, but it is a conversation worth having. Where do children get their nature fix? How can children’s literature fill that gap? Should this understanding be reflected in school reading lists? Lots of questions, few answers.
At home with The Boy, we are fortunate to live in a rural-ish area with a mini forest and and lots of space to roam and explore. I will, though, be more thoughtful about including nature-oriented stories more freq
Remember digging a the deepest hole you could and dreaming about going to the other side of the world, of finding hidden treasures from ages past, or underground caverns to play in. And that special place in the trees at the park became another world where the gathered rocks, sticks, and leaves became furniture and walls.
We are fortunate to live just outside the city on a couple of acres surrounded with trees. In my younger years I lived near a large city park with plenty of green spaces, trees, water, rocks, and wildlife. As much as my friends and I loved playing on the climbing structures, we loved exploring, finding secret places to set up camp. To others it would have been a collection of rocks and sticks, maybe some cardboard and scraps of wood found in the bushes. To us, it was the club house, the gathering place defined more by imagination than by substance. We shared our visions and dreams for the space and played architect, engineer, interior designer, gardener, king, and god.
We set aside a portion of the yard in which the boy had free reign. It is his space to dig, and cut, and create, and move, and build. Everything in this space has purpose and meaning to him. He loves taking others on tours, articulating his imagination to the visitors, “Here is the secret path and there is my throne. Over here is the spy area so we can keep a look out for intruders…”
As much as imagination is developed, there are practical skills developed. His first attempts with the shovel were awkward and ineffective. We talked about the difference between a shovel and a spade. Now he selects the right tool for the job. Stringing a tarp between two trees presented a minor feat of engineering balancing the tensile strength of the string and the mass of the tarp. Fastening the string also meant learning some knots – practicing patience in learning how to tie, then patience in having to undo and reposition. He cleared and pruned a path through an unruly bush learning to differentiate live from dead growth, recognizing the poplars from the lilacs, and becoming more familiar with the creatures that live under the leaves in dense bush.
While pre-fab play houses seem increasingly popular, the incidental learning that happens with imagination and creation, as well as the joy that comes from problem solving and creating may be lost. Make frequent visits to the same park and encourage interacting with the natural elements, beyond the play structures and, like the boxes the toys come in, the park itself will become the playground.
Piano lessons, Cubs, church, soccer, judo, day camps, summer camp. That was me growing up. I could tell you the extra curricular activities of any one of my friends at that time too. We never thought of ourselves as students – for the most part, the unique elements of our personalities and lives came from what we did outside the classroom. We relished the chance to pursue our interests and engage in cool activities, connecting with people and learning new skills.
A colleague told me years ago of the “rule” she has with her children. They have to participate in a sporting activity and an artistic pursuit. It was their choice, but there needed to be balance and commitment. It also creates a manageable minimum that allows for mom and dad to have their own lives too. The child sees the balance of physical and intellectual pursuits and by requiring it of them, you are showing that you value both.
We do this with The Boy too. He played soccer for a couple of summers then wanted a change. Visiting our provincial amateur sport website we scrolled through the list of clubs in our area talking about each one. Local newspapers are good sources for programming. Some activities are year-long while others have a short run.
Childhood is a great time to explore, experience a wide variety of things. We talk about the commitment part of participating, in trying your best while having fun; acknowledging that skill development is sometimes frustrating and difficult, but ultimately rewarding in a way that can not be achieved any other way but through hard work and effort.
Math wasn’t my strongest subject when I was a grade-school student. It was full of mysterious and unintelligble machinations with numbers that made no sense to me. Why do I have to find a common demonimator? Why does that number change signs when we move it to the other side of the equal sign? How come I keep adding zeros in long division? Why does counting digits behind a decimal places in a multiplication equation give me the number of decimals in the product?
It was all so much magic to me inasmuch as I couldn’t understand what was happening even though I could see it there in front of me. If nothing else, it has made me a much stronger Math teacher today because I understand what kids are thinking, I know what questions they have about processes and my goal is to remove the magic and mystery of math while retaining the marvel at what math can do for us. Math is the language with which we describe patterns.
As a parent, I love pointing out and creating patterns with the boy. When you strip away the magic shortcuts we were taught in solving equations and focus on what it means in nature, we can expose our children to very advanced topics from a very young age.
Take the humble Cheerios,
It isn’t hard to see that simply playing, talking, exploring patterns, while using the vocabulary of math will lead to significant understanding. The boy had a hundred grid poster at the foot of his bed since he was one year old – at bed time we’d count across, read columns, and find all the numbers that met certain criteria (where are all the numbers that end in 5? What about all the ones that start with 3?) Now he has a multiplication grid. (Proud dad moment) A couple weeks ago, at age 8, the boy pointed out to me in his own language, that the sum of sequential odd numbers starting with 1 always results in the square of the number of odd numbers in the equation. For example:
1 + 3 = 4 there are two odd numbers, 2 squared is 4
1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 = 25 there are five odd numbers, 5 squared is 25
1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11 + 13 + 15 + 17 + 19 + 21 + 23 + 25 = 169 there are 13 odd numbers, 13 squared is 169
Cool, eh?
Elsewhere I posted about the cumulative effects of this kind of interaction. Over time, as you help your child recognize patterns, and he start to recognize them on his own, the understanding will come. In school, when the teacher introduces new concepts, he will already have some experience with that language, manipulating objects following those patterns.
How far can you take this? How about factoring polynomials with cheese, crackers, and pretzels!
“How was your day?” Good.
“What did you learn today?” Don’t remember.
“Did you have fun at recess?” Yes.
Sound familiar? I have no doubt that as parents now, and children ourselves years ago that we engaged in similar conversations. Frustrating on both sides: one wanting to know about their child’s life and the other… Well, what is the kid thinking?
Teaching young teenagers I learned early that questions are not always effective. The teen response to “do you want to get your math books out now?” is “No.” Whereas, “get your math books out.” is usually met with the desired response. While it print here it can seem harsh, cold, and dictatorial, your tone can be light and inviting. There are ways of making statements that elicit longer responses, or open ended questions that cannot be answered simply yes or no.
For example, saying:
“Tell me about your day.”
“Who did you play with at recess.”
“What happened in the story you read?”
The companion to a good question is wait time. Don’t be too quick to let the kids off the hook by asking the next question, or answering for them, or worse, pestering them for a response. A helpful rephrasing I have used lately to fix the following exchange:
“What did you learn in math today?”
“Nothing.”
“OK, what did the teacher try to get the kids to learn today?”
It is certainly a challenge having our children away from us for so long and getting such scant information on their day. Continuing to let our children know we are interested, will listen, and developing those lines of communication is critical for everyone. Please share your suggestions, techniques and ideas on getting the kids to share more.
Back in the 70s there was a telephone number you could call that resulted in a busy signal. If you listened carefully enough, you could hear voices and, by yelling loud enough, you could talk to them – whoever they were. I also had pen pals with whom I corresponded. It was all pretty harmless but a lot of fun. Today’s version of that kind of communication takes place online and on mobile devices and in a very different public social landscape.
I’m not pining for the past, but it seems to me that things were much easier, and safer. First, my parents saw all the mail coming in and out of the house, they could hear my conversations on the phone, and there were no advertisements or viruses packed in my letters from friends. Nevertheless, this is the world in which we live, and to participate, we need to engage with these media forms in responsible ways with our wits about us.
The Boy has, under supervision, entered this world. With privacy settings cranked up, only family and a few trusted family friends, he is excited to see the posts, to write notes to them, and read their responses. We talk about what is appropriate to share, how to craft a message, what parts of the screen are “real” content and what parts are advertisements. Passwords are kept secret so we have to log him in. Recently, though, he has figured it out – so then came the conversation about trust and responsibility.
As he wants to engage more with all elements of the site, we continue to question whether or not we’ve made the right choice, so we continue to monitor closely, to talk about the site, and what he sees. On the positive side he is excited to do some reading and writing to people we know and trust; on the down side, it is opening his eyes to parts of the world that we’d just as soon not have him see. But, having seen it, we’re committed to talking openly and honestly about it trusting that knowledge, understanding, and our sense of morality and ethics will enable him to react in a responsibly and make positive choices.
I have always been an audio story fan, since my 1979 discovery in the CBS Radio Mystery Theater. I loved how I could listen to a story and still be doing something else – unlike books and television that occupy so much more of your attention. (Don’t get me wrong, I love books, and I watch television a couple times a year.)
Listening is one of the “Language Arts” with its own set of skills, strategies and techniques. Active listening requires attention, imagination, processing and questioning. Dramatizations use a different set of techniques to tell a story in the absence of a narrator, and relying entirely on sounds to create setting, tone, suspense, etc.
The Boy’s iPod is filled with audio books and dramatizations. Lately we’ve added some regularly updated podcasts geared for kids. Here are descriptions and links to our current subscriptions
BBC World News for Children – 4 minute weekday news bulletin for 7-14 year olds
Sesame Street Word on the Street – celebrity guests and fuzzy friends explain the meaning of words
CNN Student News – ten-minute, commercial-free, daily news program for middle and high school students
While the CNN broadcast is a little higher level, it is very well produced and The Boy (now 7 years old) still takes comprehends a good chunk of the content, and it generates a lot of questions that leads to some good discussion about the world and what is going on.
The Boy is connecting more with events beyond his own experience and developing an understanding of the world, events, challenges, and problems. With the naivety of youth he wants to solve them all and it leads us searching for ways to make a positive difference.
It’s hard to beat a cardboard box for pure imaginative entertainment; the bigger the better. I was blessed for a time when my father was selling appliances – we had a steady supply of enormous boxes and we loved them. From submarines, to houses, to space ships, to pinhole cameras, we played with those boxes until they collapsed.
In this time of cheap disposable dollar store items I’ve noticed that kids have more and more toys, and use their imaginations less and less. Perhaps I’m wrong, or just being nostalgic, nevertheless, I think there’s value in creating and playing with “found objects”. Hunks of wood, cardboard, string, shoe boxes, tape, etc. and some free-reign can result in some very creative thinking.
We are fortunate to have a large yard and recently I called the boy and his visiting friend who were about to sit infront of the television. We grabbed a couple shovels, some scraps of wood, a length of rope, some old lantern hangers, and a few empty pails and headed off to an inconspicuous corner of the yard. “Build a fort here,” I told them and handed over the gear I had collected. They spent hours there. Weeks later, they are still working away and hanging out in their “fort”. They’ve come up with rules, and plans for if they’re attacked (by whom, I don’t know… neither do they!), and continue to organize and sort out their space.
Crafting books, books that show how things work, how to construct simple machines or toys, woodworking magazines and the like are all great additions to the boy’s book shelf. In addition to the books, a supply of crafting stuff, some simple tools and materials will encourage creativity and experimentation.
These kinds of creative pursuits lead kids to set goals, determine and implement an action plan, then evaluate the results. Of course they don’t know they’re doing it, but asking what their plan is, how they’re going to do things, and whether it’s working out for them, you can see how you’re helping them articulate goals, plans, and assessments.
I admit to really not enjoying history when I was in school. Seemed it was all about names and dates and places and politics. I couldn’t absorb it when I was first exposed to it at age 13 let alone make any sense of why it was important. It’s beyond me why curriculum creators thought that it was a good idea to start teaching world history at the onset of puberty.
Now, irony of ironies, part of my job teaching grade 8 is World History for Social Studies and I’ve learned to love it. As a consequence, when I do watch television, I try to find programs on ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, or the Middle Ages.
We stocked the book shelves in his room with some kids books on history. He wouldn’t take them down on his own, so occasionally I’d grab one and have a flip through it with him before getting on to what he wanted to do. Eventually he’d pull them down on his own and ask questions about what he was seeing.
Learning related material is easier than learning completely new material. For the new stuff, we have to prepare “containers” in our brains to hold this new information. Early exposure to ancient history, the images, ideas, names, and places, helps to establish those containers so that subsequent experiences with similar material, or even the same material, will be easier to absorb and creating meaning. Library books, documentaries, and even history podcasts targeted to a younger audience can all serve to establish those brain containers providing context for subsequent exposure. It also offers some fun crafting ideas which we’ll explore in another entry.
