a whole load of doors!

Well my inner child has been saying "get on with other stuff and not bother with the blog"

The countdown to Christmas is about spending time with family and preparing a little magic - as well as realising that another term has come to an end which reminds you just how tired you actually are...

My inner child wanted to play and rest... and not bother with much else!!

So this blog is going on holiday for a few days... to recharge my batteries - just like all children need... time.

I will be working the few days that are open over the Christmas period - as will a few other colleagues to take care of the children who also have working parents... Hopefully there will be time (as there ARE MUCH fewer children than usual - on one day there is just one child coming in) to attend to the Third Teacher - to give the learning environment a make-over. There are areas we have seen that do not quite work the way we hoped - and are not as clear in their language to us or the children - so with a little attention we plan to work on the settings communication skills...
No doubt I will document its transition...

There is much to plan and fix before the start of the next term - the new project that has got off to a bit of a start already "Together on the Square" where we can explore empathy, design, and learning more about the community the preschool is located in...

At the end of January we will be meeting teachers from Iceland, Germany and Norway to discuss philosophy with children - I am excited about this - not just about the discussion but also by the fact that they will be in ENGLISH... that will make my life so much easier... my Swedish is fluent - but even after 21 years I get frustrated when I cannot say things the way I want to... there are more words in the English language than the Swedish language and sometimes you can only find a word that "sort of" comes close to what you want to say...

At the end of the year I will go through my posts of this year - my first full year of blogging and pull out my favourites - and give my reasons why...

BUT until then
HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS

hehe - one of the few times you will get to see me!!

Foil art

Yesterday afternoon my inner child wanted to play with shaving foam so out it came onto a table that I had put some foil and some glitter on to let the children play.
I had taken the chairs away - this was not so much a sit down and play quietly sort of experience but a move back and forth interactive experience - not only with the shaving foam but each other too - it turned out to be quite noisy.

When they were finished the foil was no longer flat or across the table. The children spent some time cleaning the table and the foil - and then I sat down to see if I could make sculptures with the foil - some of the children watched with interest and sat down to give it a try themselves... creating wands, dogs sleeping in bed, presents with ribbon wrapped around it amongst other things - we exchanged tips and ideas about how we could attach things and create shapes - children aged 2-4 were busy making things - the youngest liked to rip pieces and make small balls that were then wrapped into another piece of foil.

They were all very keen to save their sculptures for later and the extra foil... and maybe next time we could use fresh foil that was not quite so sticky and glittery!!

OK - I am trying out sunglasses as a way of protecting identity but not making them quite look like ghosts!!! She was not wearing the sunglasses at the time!!!

Christmas colours on the light-table

Last week we asked the children what colour they thought Christmas was... the first colour mentioned was white - thirteen times in fact in one short statement about the colour of Christmas... white most definitely needed to be included...

Pink was anthter colour the children thought was Christmas - although they were unable to explain why - it just was... red, green, black and blue all were suggested too.

It was not quite what I was expecting - as I knew that mixing all these colours together would create a colour that none of the children had mentioned... and yes, maybe I could have challenged their thought process by allowing that to happen and the resulting colour of Christmas would be a very dark brown... but, but I just couldn't pull myself round to do that THIS time... so it was the PAPER that was blue, black or green - and the paint was white and then red was added to create the pink - a bit of Christmas magic.

I had wrapped the light-table in a big plastic sheet that had come with the latest delivery of art supplies (I love it when you can recycle) and squirted it with white paint.
The children got to squish it around one by one, using their fingers to create patterns. Once they were saitisfied with their pattern a piece of paper was placed on top and a little gentle press and a magic spell from the child (they all made up their own) the paper was lifted up and a print of their light-table creation was saved on paper!

Once each child had created their own white masterpiece - there was the chance for those who wanted another go to work in pairs ... this time red was added to the white (the children were well aware of the colours they had chosen as we had read their words back to them just before the session)...
The children who did this bit could not believe their eyes as their hands turned pink - it was red on the light table but pink on their hands and paper!!!

Not all the children liked doing this - one child put her finger in a few times and moved it a bit with her nose wrinkled and a look on her face as to say "what on earth...?"

there were many different techniques... some kind of skated, some scratched, some smoothes their hands over, others bounced their hands up and down.... etc

some worked with one hand while other worked with two...

most created random patterns and needed encouragement to create something specific which nearly always got wiped out to continue the experience and just feels the paint glide under and the light shine through...

Time - a child perspective

days are going by so fast.. the countdown to Christmas is almost over so I am going to talk about time from my inner child's perspective.

reflecting on time...

As an adult I totally understand time.

But sometimes it just does not make sense.

How some weeks Friday feels an age away and then suddenly its Thrsday and you wonder what happened with the other days...

Or how time can tick SO unbelievable slowly sometimes and then race away other times. Every once in a while I enter a time warp and resurface totally surprised so many hours have gone by in what felt like half an hour...

What does soon mean, really? Sometimes it means minutes, sometimes hours and other times days or weeks - "it's Christmas soon", and yet we are still over a week away and yet we also say "mummy is coming soon" when there is half an hour left before pick up time.

No wonder children think time is complicated.

But sometimes I wonder if time and being able to read what the clock says is the same thing.?
Yes that second hand ticks at the same beat... but why does it have to feel so different.

I still remember when it clicked that the days of the week actually repeated and was not a brand new name invention every day. Mostly because I remember the surprise on my mother's face when I told how smart it was to have a seven day rotating week instead of having to think up new names all the time (and who did that anyway?) - for the longest time I thought that my mum's surprise was due to the fact that I had revealed something new to her and she was taken aback by the news - and not until much later did I work out that she was actually taken aback by me actually thinking there were new week names for all infinity... hehe (I bet my dad and her had a good giggle that night)

Time is strange.
I don't feel much different - and yet I do - hmmm, how do I explain? I don't feel like I have got older, just filled with more experience.

Anyway
8 more sleeps to Christmas Eve!

Door 14

I found myself alone in the house...
so the music went on at full blast - and I started along to the Christmas songs at full blast too, with penty of dancing and moving around as I tidied up the apartment.

You should have seen the look of surprise on my son's face when he walked through the door and saw me before I saw him...
hahahaha

Lucia Celebration - (Door 13)

On Friday we celebrated Lucia...
NOT by the children standing in front of a bunch of adults (parents and grandparents etc) to sing - but sitting together WITH their parents to sing. Those children who liked to perform ad space in the middle to dance and sing. But most of the children at Filosofiska Dalen are 2 and under so it seemed inappropriate to do Lucia the "traditional" way of performing for parents. It felt far too intimidating for the children and not at all meaningful.

Last year the preschool had much fewer children and Lucia could be shared around a board and a series of images representing the various Lucia songs. This year, as we were so many more we decided to use a powerpoint and project it on the wall - using the same images from the previous year - to continue a Filosofiska Lucia tradition. I photo-ed the drawings and fixed them in the powerpoint together with the text of the words so that those not familiar with the songs (as not everyone comes from Sweden) can sing along and join in too - afterall inclusive means the parents too!

Afterwards we ate pepparkakor, Lucia buns (saffron buns) with coffee and juice (not glögg).

Lucia is one of my favourite celebrations - I love the singing - I love the lights and candle - the whole idea of light in the dark. BUT I have not always liked the performing in front of the adults mostly as I have seen year after year and in every group of children I have ever worked in - children that get stressed about the idea of singing IN FRONT of their parents.

To celebrate this way was relaxed and joyful for everyone.

For more information about Lucia click here.

Sharing Pepparkakor - Happy Lucia

On Friday we celebrated Lucia here in Sweden.

At Filosofiska we celebrated our way - creating our own traditions. We had made pepparkakor (check out the recipe and a little know-how at Anne's Food blog) during the week. If you have read my post "Children and Empathy" you wil already know that I have been trying to incorporate the children's interest in selling things to passers by with developing their sense of empathic awareness and ability to respond to this awareness.

We decided that we would hand out the pepparkakor for free so that the children could see for themselves the effect of their kindness - serving as a sort of empathy seed to grow and bloom.
I noticed that in the comments that the suggestion of a collection jar for those passers-by who were interested in donating. I think this is a great idea, and had thought about it a lot a great deal too, but felt that in this first attempt with sharing with our comunity - of making the children visible - that the donations might have been tricky for this group of young children to understand that they were NOT selling the pepparkakor. THIS time I felt it was necessary for everything to be clear so that the children could see how the effects of their own actions had on the people around them...

 Here are just some of the people that stopped and took their timeto interact with the children and take a pepparkaka. The great part of taking a small table out was that it really did encourage the adults to come down to the children's level... I hadn't thought of that before. I wonder how it would have been if it was a usual adult sized table... would the adults have all come down so low and communicated with the children whilst down there.

Those who took pepparkakor all talked with the children, asking them if they had bked them themselves and congratulating them on a job well done. The children were bouncing up with joy as they could see how much others were smiling.

The children found it tricky at first not to say "come and buy" and needed some help to remember that they were in fact offering the cookies for free.

This was something they pointed out to everyone... "they are free" "they cost free", "you don't need money, they cost nothing".

Some children were much more active than others to approach people and ask if they would like a pepparkaka. In the beginning the children only asked women - I asked why they had not yet asked any men. "Because they are a little scary" came the answer - but as they went on they got braver (plus a another child who came late arrived and was not the least shy of the men, gave courage to all the children)

BUT not EVERYONE stopped to share... not EVERYONE even gave eye contact. Some did not want a cookie or could not eat them due to allergies (next time we have to make some without flour said one of the children) and some were in an obvious hurry to catch the train and could not stop. (there were not so many trains that day, as there had been a fire at a station a few stops away which meant our steady supply of passers-by was not quite as steady as we would have hoped)

The children came to the conclusion (when we talked about it later indoors in the warmth of the preschool) that maybe they did not stop or look at us because they were shy and scared of us or that  they were in a hurry and didn't have time. They did also admit that it was not a good feeling to be ignored like that (that they just walked by without looking or saying anything, or even a smile) - but there was a humbling understanding that they must have had a good reason to behave in that way.

Of all the people that stopped and interacted with the children three of them also came and talked with us - 2 men and one woman. The woman wanted to share her joy at what the children were doing - and learn more about why we were doing this (she turned out to be a retired teacher) the two men came and shared their own Christmas and pepparkakor experiences from their childhood.


We are at the beginning of a project and the end of the a project... I see the fairies will still have their hold over the children, but not in the same way as the children's comunication with the people around them.

So in the new year we will started "TILLSAMMANS  PÅ TORGET" (Together on the Square) a project about meeting various needs and wishes on the square outside the preschool. A project that will encompass the whole of the preschool curriculum, all of Filosofiska's VISION  and will also allow us to deepen out own understanding of empathy together with the children....

I am so looking forward to getting started... well we have already sort of started...

a post about our Lucia celebration will come shortly...