Nature Materials and Forms: Inspirations from the work of Andy Goldsworthy-Spirals in Nature

I first encountered the work of Andy Goldsworthy in a film clip during a leadership seminar led by Margaret Wheatley. It immediately struck me as something that teachers should know about. Soon after, I found a photograph of a child's stone spiral constructed next to the cover of Goldsworthy's amazing book, A Collaboration with Nature (1990), and I soon started introducing the images and materials to students in my curriculum courses.
Recently, in the process of developing a photo-presentation for a workshop for teachers, I became enamored by all of the spirals in nature: from snail shells to galaxies, seed patterns in a sunflower head to fiddle head ferns, a ram's horn to the petal patterns of a rose.
The spiral is one of the most ancient human symbols and was described mathematically by the ancient Greeks, including Archimedes. I like them because they are simple and elegant, and children are naturally drawn to them- they love snails and curly snakes and anything that loops around. It's a form they can make using a variety of media and materials.
Check out spirals in google images, then go on a spiral hunt in your school yard. Introduce photographs and natural spirals to the children and see what happens. It's a lovely way to help children connect to the natural world.

Go to flickr.com and search on dgmurphy2002 to see some photographs of Goldsworthy-inspired art by student teachers.

Resources and Inspirations- A great book

Picture Science, Using Digital Photography to Teach Young Children, by Carla Neuman-Hinds. Redleaf Press. 2007

This is a wonderful book to help you get started introducing children to nature science. It includes dozens of photographs and sample lesson plans, many with a focus on plants. It is divided into four sections: photography for collecting and analyzing data, photography for demonstrating conclusions, photography for making the process of inquiry visible, and photography for creating documentation. One great idea is a photo-scavenger hunt. Take close-up photographs of nature around the school and mount them on cardboard. Have the children match one card at a time to the actual objects out in the yard. There are ideas for creating charts, sequencing, sorting and matching activities, puzzles and making books. It is very concrete and will inspire you to invent your own activities. You do not have to be a scientist or a photographer to implement the great ideas in your classroom.

Butterflies: A Great Place to Start

Almost everyone is attracted to butterflies, so they are a great window into the world of nature. I actually wanted to a Lepidpterist (a person who studies butterflies and moths) when I was 12 years old, until I found out that you had to kill them to study them! No thank you!
Many early childhood teachers include a cursory treatment of butterflies as a unit, but there is so much more. Here are some tips and resources for enhancing and enriching your butterfly studies:
1. Find out what kind of butterflies live in your area. For instance, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts where I live, there are over 70 species of butterflies! Contact your local nature museum, county extension, of get a butterfly field guide and look at the range maps to see if they might be in your area. You can also go out on your own before you talk with the children and look for them, too. Butterflies are often seen in wild meadows and fields, along the borders of woodlands and forests, as well as in gardens, especially butterfly gardens.

2. Borrow or buy a copy of The Family Butterfly Book, by Rick Mikula. There are literally hundreds of books about butterflies, but this one is itened to be used with children and is very comprehensive and includes detailed information on butterfly gardens, raising butterflies, and lists the most common butterflies as well.

3. Find out more about the butterflies in your area. Did you know that each species of butterfly has it's own caterpillar food plant (No, they do NOT eat grass!) and favorite nectaring plants as adults? You can attract specific butterflies from your area to your school yard by planting both types of plants. Did you know that butterflies sip nectar through a long "straw" that they keep curled up until they need it? Patient, careful observation can reveal this and more, which is why studying butterflies have all of the benefits of engaging children in nature.

You can google butterflies for web sites and images. They are there by the thousands, testiment to the human facination with butterflies.

Back to Nature

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he or she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in."

Rachel Carson

Inspired by Richard Louv's stirring book, Last Child in the Woods, hundreds of teachers around the world are searching for ways to become that adult in the lives of the children in their classrooms. But most teachers have little nature experience themselves, and struggle to know where to being. Louv gives us a hint: "The main thing is to discover or own sense of joy, excitement, and mystery." In the next few months, I am going to offer some thoughts on this subject:

Nature 101:Resources, Strategies and Inspirations for Teaching Children about Local Habitats

I will be exploring a variety of nature topics, books, websites, and ideas to help you implement intentional, authentic nature science experiences in your classroom.

Taking Back Early Childhood Education

I have been watching with escalating concern the trend of public schools taking over Pre-K in their communities all over the country to bolster their waning enrollments. In my own community, state funding meant to help support local Pre-K programs was diverted into creating and maintaining several public Pre-K classrooms that are not only competing unfairly with long-established local programs, but are being run and taught by people without education or experience in Early Childhood Education. This alarming trend is a threat to the well-being of young children and families. ECE programs should be run and staffed with well-trained Early Childhood professionals, not Elementary educators, not special education staff, not school administrators who have no idea what quality early childhood education looks like. Here are some examples of the kinds of developmentally inappropriate practice going on in these schools:

In one classroom I was observing, a staff person was standing there scowling at the children as they made use of the bakery my student teacher had developed. The student had made mini-muffins for the children to buy from the bakery, and as one girl approached to buy her muffin, this teacher, who made no attempt to do anything but stand and glare at the children, told the girl that she had already had her muffin, so she had to leave. The child quietly told the teacher that she had not had a muffin, and the teacher insisted she had, until the child admitted to having one, when in fact, she had not!

In another instance, one of my students reported that the teacher sat at the table, dabbed the paint brushes into paint one at a time and handed them to each child, one at a time. When my student remarked to a girl that she had created a new color by mixing red and yellow together, the teacher yelled at the child not to mix the colors!

It's bad enough that children in K-2 classes must endure these disrespectful, unethical practices, but we early childhood professional must find a way to take Pre-K back; at the very least, to make sure that it is carried out and administered by competent, trained ECE professionals.

If you are interested in learning more about high-quality, apporopriate practice in Early childhood programs, read We Are All Explorers by D. Scheinfeld, K. Haigh and S. Scheinfeld, Teachers College Press, 2008.

Debra Murphy
http://www.classroomtoclassroom.com/

Imagining Better Images, Part II

In my last entry, I described a strategy for helping students and teachers rethink their mental models, or images about children, families, and themselves. Here are examples of two reinforcing loops: one negative and one positive. Notice how the initial belief influences expectations, behaviors, and outcomes. If we proceed as if we believe the positive image (even if we do not), we can influence the loop to create more positive outcomes.

Sample Negative Reinforcing Loop about Parents/Families

Sample Positive Reinforcing Loop about Parents/Families

Sit down with a group of students or colleagues and write a positive Image of the Child, then create a positive loop. Use the sample as a guide. You can repeat the process with the Image of the Teacher. I think it is worth the time it takes to imagine better images.



Do you want to find out more about working with others to improve policies and practice?

Read The World Cafe: Shaping Our futures Through Conversations That Matter, J. Brown and D. Isaacs. BK Books, 2005.

Imagining Better Images

The early childhood educators in Reggio Emilia have a concept they call the Image of the Child. When I first returned from visiting their schools, I was very surprised by how many teachers and students said, "That's fine for Italy, but we could never do that here. Our children could never do that. Our parents would never do that. We could never do that." When I thought about this, I ended up calling it, the 'Power of No'. I am convinced that as long as we believe that our children, our families, our teachers could never create the experience of exceptional quality preschools, that we will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to do it. I believe that it starts with the image: the image of the child, the image of families, the image of ourselves as teachers. In my Leadership course, we explore the idea of reinforcing loops, as defined by Peter Senge. We start with a negative image (or mental model as Senge calls it), then extrapolate how this impacts our expectations, which in turn impacts our behaviors, resulting in children, families, and teachers living up (or down) to our negative images. Next, we re-write the negative images into positive, and create another reinforcing loop, but this time with positive outcomes. This is a powerful exercise that helps students and teachers reconsider their Images. Students often ask me if they can take the positive loops back to their centers for the rest of the staff to see. In my next entry, I will include some sample loops. Consider creating these loops with your colleagues. Try to imagine better images.

Debra Murphy

If you want to learn more about reinforcing loops and mental models, read Schools That Learn, by Peter Senge, et al. Doubleday. 2000.