Mixing Up the Message

This is a Wordle of my post Invincible Summer

You can play too: Wordle.

If You Can Dance on the Wind, the Fall is not so Bad

We flew our kite at school today and the wind took it high into the blue. It shone bright yellow and the green of new spring leaves with a tail the color of fire. the kite spun and danced in the wind.

“Higher! Make it go higher!” the girls yelled. “let out all the string!”

We did. The kite danced so high it looked like a tiny bright swallow swooping and diving and recovering, but one dive brought it out of the wind and sunk into the houses and trees across the road. We followed the string and found it on a roof.

The girls were full of climbing recovery strategies which I vetoed. So we went back and unhooked the string from all the trees and other obstacles. But, by the end of outside time the kite was still on the roof.

Despite the loss of a kite the children were enthusiastic to get on with the rest of our activities. We drew and used our sled on the ramp and had a lively lunch full of discussion about the adventure of the kite, and what we would do the rest of the day (most of the plans were around the goats and garden). And so we moved on. The kite, it seems, had served its purpose, flying lovely in the sky and providing an interesting problem that was ok to let go of. I think a lot of people are trying to get their kites off of roofs instead of maybe keeping a good memory, making a good try at recovery, and moving on to the next part of life that may or may not involve loud, smelly animals and flowers.

After a long afternoon of goats, flowers, and water, We sat on the carpet reading books. The three year old looked at me and said, “That kite was really high!” her face opening into a great grin. “And then it fell so far. That was ok, too.”

“Yeah!” said one of the 4 year olds. “Cause then we had an aventure of finding it and getting the string.”

I pointed out that we got to practice crossing the street safely several times.

“But the greatest thing was when it went up and up,” another girl chimed in.

“It was the best kite today,” The three year old finished off the thought.

Then the talk drifted to some silliness about bathrooms and burping. It is hard to keep the philosophy going in a preschool room. It almost always comes back to bodily functions or silly noises. I am just happy to be working with a group of kids that are able to move along to the next adventure and leave the kite problem to the wind.

another experiment in combined images

Paying Attention

Death and decay are necessary parts of the process of life and creation and rebirth.

Bubbles of Earth II

She Bursts From the Earth

I was playing around with a couple of images I found yesterday and came up with this.

This Should Be More About Me

I realized this morning that I hadn’t just written about my life in a while, and it seems as though when I ignore that aspect of my writing, I begin to lose track of the flow of my life. I become trapped in cul-de-sacs of repetitive (have you noticed that this word describes its own spelling) thoughts and my trains of thought start to run in loops around the switching yard. Well I intend to take my trains out and give them a good run 2 or 3 times a week for the rest of the summer at least.

I have started working on the end of my novel again as well as studying 20th century poetry and writing some as it inspires me. I have less time this summer to focus on writing as I have been working, not at Head Start, but at a private cooperative school. It has been a nice break nevertheless, as the school is a relaxed and truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life even though it is right in the middle of our city. I have rediscovered how important environment is to the teaching/learning experience along with the teacher’s commitment and ability to learn his students, the most important factor in a early childhood education class. Our “classroom” includes a large garden, a grassy hill, climbing trees, a sliding ramp, a large field with  two 4 foot diameter plastic pipes about 7 feet long for sitting, or rolling around in, an outdoor stage, a goat pen with 3 goats that get milked once a day, a basket ball court and an ancient gnarled apple tree.

We have a tiny inside classroom, but I never have more than 8 students, so I have been able to make personal connections with each one everyday they come a nice change from having 18 everyday and a set schedule that often gets in the way of important interactions or activity threads. Conversations have been my main teaching tool as my students are all articulate and curious about the world as most 3-5 year-olds are. We have been exploring nature and art, bubbles, kite flying, and the finer aspects of tree climbing. Every day is full of choices which lead us outside in search of wind, bugs, and flowers and trees to climb. Inside we paint and draw, sing songs, tell stories, and talk about whatever comes up. There are some tears, but mostly laughter and joyous screams that are too loud for inside. So we go out and visit the goats and take pieces of cardboard to the ramp and test our speed and daring and then there is always the trees and bubbles and a kite to fly and just plain running crazy through the field. Its a rough job but somebodies got to do it.