It's important for the teacher who works with young children to understand that she knows little about children. -Loris Malaguzzi

This week I thought I'd write about an important piece of our MVS philosophy of teaching and learning: the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. It informs many of our choices regarding the environment that we prepare for the children, how we approach our roles as teachers, and our expectations of children. At the core of the Reggio approach is an image of the child that is described in this essay by its philosophical founder, Loris Malaguzzi:  https://www.reggioalliance.org/downloads/malaguzzi:ccie:1994.pdf The gist is that every child is viewed as a strong, competent, creative, capable, and ambitious human being. When we hold such an image of the child, our job as teachers shifts away from direct teaching and more toward careful observation of each child's interests, motivating desires, and strengths. I love this excerpt from the Loris Malaguzzi speech linked above:

The child wants to know that she is observed, carefully, with full attention. The child wants to be observed in action. She wants the teacher to see the process of her work, rather than the product. The teacher asks the child to take a bucket of water from one place to the other. It’s not important to the child that the teacher only sees him arrive with the bucket of water at the end. What is important to the child is that the teacher sees the child while the child is working, while the child is putting out the effort to accomplish the task — the processes are important, how much the child is putting into the effort, how heroic the child is doing this work.

One of my favorite parts of my job is watching for such heroic acts throughout the day. Children work so hard to satisfy their innate desire to learn, develop, and grow. While we adults tend to stay focused on the products of our efforts, children put everything they have into the process. Emphasis shifts from what they do to how they do it, and as teachers we have to shift our intentions and our goals to support children in the "how."

I also have a parent-recommended book to share with you: How to Raise an Adult by Julie Lythcott-Haimes, a former dean at Stanford University who grew concerned about incoming freshmen lacking basic life skills because they had been overparented. Here is a radio interview with the author: http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/08/28/overparenting-how-to-raise-an-adult Though sending children off to college probably feels pretty far off to most of you, it may be an interesting perspective on supporting children's independence and competence.

Finally, the Art Hop event where some MVS photos will be displayed is next weekend, Sept. 8-10! Let's Grow Kids has organized a day of family fun on Saturday the 9th; details here: http://seaba.com/art-hop/kids-hop/ Our photos will be in the Permanent Fund space at 19 Marble Ave, South End, Burlington.

Thanks for reading!
Megan

News and Reminders

We will be closed Monday, September 4th in observance of Labor Day. Enjoy your long weekend!

A change in how we clean outside water bottles: Please take your child's outside water bottle home every Friday to wash it and bring back on the following Monday (along with bed linens).

Classroom Updates
Infant I
This week one of our favorite activities was stacking! From brightly colored geometric blocks inside to small wooden stumps outside, we have been creating towers as high as four units tall. It takes patience, focus, and careful coordination to balance those slanty stumps on top of each other, but it's also very exciting when they tip over. Our technically non-mobile children have been looking pretty mobile as they roll, scoot, and slide their way around to cover quite a bit of ground. Finally, we had a new child join us and he was a real champ getting used to life at school. Welcome, H and family!

Infant II
We have been spending as much time as we can outside soaking up the sun! Our children have a new favorite place to play while outside: under the climbing structure. They love to dig in the dirt under there. They also love playing peekaboo with us and think it's hilarious that they are somewhat hidden. This week on our weekly mission of searching for worms we discovered a pregnant momma worm and her babies– this was new and different. Ball play is huge in our room right now and we have had a blast passing balls back and forth in small groups.

Toddlers
We had a busy and active week, with lots of gross motor play outside. The children are really engaging in the outside environment, finding large sticks to carry around and use as tools and natural props. The beautiful weather this week was thoroughly enjoyed by all. By the end of the week, the children began to notice the slightly colder weather as we begin to transition into fall. Note to parents: Please check the whiteboard daily; this is where we let you know when your child is running low on diapers, wipes, etc. Thanks!

Preschool I
It is hard to believe that August is over! We closed out the month with a week long study of shapes. We focused on four basic shapes: the circle, triangle, rectangle, and square. We worked on counting sides and corners to help us correctly distinguish shapes. The book of the week was Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece Meets the Big O which features shapes as characters. The Missing Piece was a triangle and the Big O was a circle! Parents– by 9/11, please provide a current family photo and a picture of your house so we can guide the children through a "Who Am I?" study throughout September. Thanks!

Preschool II
Kindness week was a huge success! I hope some of the kindness and kind words have made it home and will continue for the weeks to come. We kept track of our kindness all week by adding glass beads to a kindness jar until we filled it up. We also played a fun cooperative board game that LHB shared with us where we helped owlets make it back to their nest before the sun rises. We played several afternoons after nest and it was great to see the team effort picking which owlet to move, helping each other find the right colored spot for the color card that was flipped, and working together to take turns flipping the color cards. We have added a new white board to our classroom in the "kozy kitchen" area. This board will have weekly information, long term projects or books, and more information about our day. Please take a moment to have a look, thanks.

PreK
This week we spent a little more time in our classroom working on indoor voices, walking feet, and putting toys away where they belong as soon as we are done with them. We spend so much of our day outside that our indoor classroom is a very exciting place, especially for our newest classmates. The train table and drawing table were both very popular. We also enjoyed geoboards as a quiet end-of-rest-time activity. Outside we have been experimenting with our yellow slide, working as a team to adjust it, move it to new locations and... cover it with sand to make it go "SO FAST." We also unearthed one of the stumps in the cluster near the stairway and after deciding it might be an unsafe situation the children dug out all of the stumps. They've been using them to create bridges, see-saws, and obstacle courses.