a bit more thinking on the competent child...

I have just got back from a wonderful evening talking over dinner with Debi Keyte-Hartland (you can check out her blog here) talking about creativity, children, the competent child, preschools in UK and Sweden and much more...

I am having a bit of a crisis about what is a competent child at the moment... which Debi reminded me is a good thing... doesn't feel like a good thing at the moment, but I know exactly what she means... I am wrestling with ideas... and the fact that I am challenging everything I have been accepting about what a competent child is.  I am uncomfortable with some of my ow thinking... is it allowed, is it really competence, have I understood it right, am I challenging it right...

This evening Debi said something that has been allowing my thoughts to feel like, yes, they are going in the right direction...

Competent child... are we sometimes confusing it with an independent child. Debi mentioned how here in Sweden there is a huge focus on making the child be independent - what is the learning value of children doing everything themselves?

Also the fact in Reggio adults loan their competencies to a child until the child have them themselves... (going to look for the quote and share it when I have dug deeper here).

It is interesting to be able to view my work here in Sweden with Debi's eyes (even though she has not observed me personally work, she has observed and worked with many Swedish preschools and the Reggio Institute here in Stockholm) - because it affords the opportunity to see it with a new perspective... and I think my perspective will never be totally Swedish due to my English roots and education which i feel allows me to see things from more than one perspective (but I want more and more perspectives in the hope that one day I will get to see a whole).

Hmm, it getting late, and I was going to write about our light exploration today... dinosaur shadows and then colour shadows in the afternoon... it developed... but I will have to save that... I thought I was going to be able to write about my thoughts that were starting to collect on my journey home from Debi.... but I still haven't quite got them sorted yet... they are jumbled up and exciting and wanting to be sorted... but I need to pause and just let myself take the time to reflect...

So I am going to leave you with an image from this afternoon's light fun... of which there are many more to come tomorrow...

exploring materials on the OH