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Nelson Mandela is an amazing man who showed us that it is possible to make a difference, to build a new nation, a new culture. He died at the age of 95 on Thursday in Johannesburg. So many of us are grieving his loss and also celebrating his legacy: as we work together for a world of equality and inclusively.
Photograph from The Guardian 7th December 2013 Flowers and tributes for Nelson Mandela outside South Africa House in central London. Photograph: Laura Lean/PA
For love, peace and reconciliation. His fight was ultimately for spiritual freedom, within us all, no matter what our circumstances. Is this you? Caring for each other, simply because we are alive and we have common feelings and needs and we live on the same planet is often far from our thoughts when we are in conflict. An attitude of reconciliation is rare.
What I have learnt is that our true nature is to love and to contribute to each others well being: I invite you to look into the eyes of a baby to see if this is true.
Why do we deviate from what is our true nature?
It seems it is because of the way we are being educated. In schools, families, because of our history, our culture, religion, language etc and the result of our education is often that we sense we need to fight for survival and our actions follow this. Competition rather than togetherness becomes the norm. Mandela showed us that it is possible to learn to love and forgive even when this has not been the way we were raised.
“Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world”
“We are taught to hate and if we can teach a human being to hate we can also teach a human being to love, to embrace, to forgive”
I just listened to Mandela's daughter Makuziwe speaking about how difficult it was for her father to express his emotion and her sadness about this and this caused me to reflect on how difficult it is sometime to notice what is going on emotionally with children, from the impact of all aspects of their lives. I think we need to get better at this in education, knowing how to engage with children who struggle to show themselves. Recognising that children are part of a family, part of a community. This is when our children will flourish.
I long to see an education system that places relationships and community at the heart of the curriculum. If our children value life and their interconnectedness to each other and the environment around them a new culture can be born. In the past few months I have been introducing teachers and childcare professionals to the power of music, imagination, dance and movement. We have been engaging in activities that bring groups together and foster a sense of belonging. Through some simple activities we can help children learn how to appreciate each other, to learn how to resolve their differences and to make choices that serve life
Nelson Mandela was a courageous man who made a tremendous difference in the world his work for humanity his work can continue through us.
Here are questions to consider, in your school, home, setting, centre etc:
Do the children feel confident, competent, comfortable with themselves and others?
Can they deal with their conflicts?
Do they feel supported, celebrated?
Do they know their roots and the roots of their ancestors and how this has affected what they believe and who they are now?
Do they know that they have a choice about what they value and how to be?
Are they free to share their stories?
Are they being listened to?
Are they willing and motivated to learn?
Are they connected to the feeling of being alive?
Do they feel that they matter?
How often do you dance and sing and create as a community together?
This poem was written by my dear friend and colleague, Penny Vine, Early Years Consultant, CNVC Trainer. Penny tells me she was inspired to write this after reading a piece on imagining a child’s worldby Warwick Pudney and Eliane Whitehouse, authors of Little Volcanoes, Helping Young Children and their Parents to Deal with Anger. Lines in italics are copied from their writing.
Imagine yourself as a two year old...you’ve been on the planet for 24 months... what might your body feel like?
Imagine not being able to see people’s eyes unless they remember to crouch down when they interact with you?
Imagine being woken from your warm bed, dressed quickly, having toast put in your hand and put in your pushchair and wheeled quickly to nursery and your parent is running late and gets cross when you cry and you don’t have your hug as you usually do?
Imagine being unable to tell anyone you’re so tired and they try to engage you and you just want to lie down, somewhere warm next to your Nana who makes you feel safe?
What might you feel when you hear the sound of someone shouting, someone shouting loud?
What might it be like to be running along and someone shouts “Hold my hand...don’t let go...”
Imagine seeing a poppy for the very first time, you crouch down and look and look and you want to stay forever looking into this deep well of red and a hand pulls and says “Come on we’ll be late now!”
Imagine forgetting your blankie, the one you always remember and feeling poorly and blankie’s not there?
Imagine an adult telling you it’s time to get your coat, gloves and hat on now when you were right in the middle of the most exciting construction you have ever, ever made?
Imagine playing near the bushes looking at a wiggly worm, when someone appears and begins to shout and says “You know you mustn’t go where I can’t see you!” and you don’t really know what she means...you smile because you’re scared and you’re not sure what to do as this has never happened before and she says “Don’t you smile at me young man!”
Imagine watching everyone’s mum and dad come to collect them...you’re sat on the carpet...tears are coming...you hear someone say “There’s no need to cry...she’ll be here soon” and you want to know what soon means and you want to cry more...but you don’t...
Imagine the most comforting thing alive was a tone of voice saying noises that meant nothing but familiarity.
In the early years sector it has taken years to build networks and support systems that work together and target the training needs of the providers. Relationships between advisors, officers and settings in many authorities are working positively, even collaboratively with some settings, towards improvement.
I have been involved in helping to forge these relationships in some boroughs and we have undertaken some fantastic transformational work and seen amazing improvements. Forward thinking authorities know that collaboration is about co-creation. Its the function of genuine communication.
"In
the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to
collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. " Charles
Darwin There is more work to be done in this arena, settings working together to evolve practice and projects, to support each other with staff with training. Every child matters and we want the very best for our children and families. Networks, training days and programmes specifically designed with care and consideration to support settings is all coordinated by the early years department in local authorities.
The proposals in"More Great Childcare" are suggesting that the local authorities should not continue its quality assurance, support and training role any more . Instead, it suggests making Ofsted the sole arbiter. This could have a huge impact on the quality of provision in the sector.
I'm wondering what your thoughts are about this, will you share ?
All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
There are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you flush. Warm cookies and cold mild are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
Take a nap in the afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch the traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember about Dick and Jane and the first word you leaned, the biggest word of all: LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there some where. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about 3.00 O'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are when you go out into the world, its better to hold hands and stick together.
Another wonderful entry from my regular guest blogger Ellen Duthie. Sharing how The Boy in the Garden highlights the divide beetween the adult and child's code and language - see other entries from Ellen too.
Ellen also writes an extremely interesting blog on the essential role philosophy can play in education from an early age - watch this space! or take a look yourself http://storyphilosophy.blogspot.co.uk
The Boy in the Garden, written and illustrated by Allen Say.
Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010
Click on the cover to listen how we read The Boy in the Garden by Allen Say. The Boy in the Garden is one of my son's absolute favourite books. He went through a phase, lasting around two solid months, when he had to have it every single night. He's grown out of that now, but it still remains one of his favourites. Although in terms of reading age, it's probably best suited to children from around 4 up to 8 or so, there's something about it that attracted my son's attention -and kept it!- from the age of approximately 22 months. I think it manages to convey a sense of mystery beyond the words and the pictures, and to provide an immersion into a child's retreat away from an adult world and code that can sometimes seem puzzling, even mean.
There is perhaps something about this retreat into a private mental life, portrayed here as ultimately positive, even liberating, that seems to resonate even with kids as young as that.
We like it! The Story
takes as its background (and includes as a preface -also read in our recording, even though we don't include it every time we read the book) the traditional Japanese tale of The Grateful Crane, where a crane repays a man who rescues it from a trap by turning into a woman and marrying him, and then withdraws the repayment when the man breaks his vow not to look while she is weaving beautiful cloth for them to sell and survive, turning back into a crane and flying away.
In The Boy in the Garden The Grateful Crane is presented as "The story that Mama read to Jiro".
The Boy in the Garden itself is the story of Jiro and his father paying a New Year's visit to one Mr. Ozu, whose garden is very famous and whose house is full of treasures, Jiro is warned, in a "don't touch" fashion.
After saying hello and accepting Mr. Ozu's New Year's gift it very soon becomes clear that this is all an adults' affair and Jiro wonders off, eventually into the garden, where he is drawn to a crane standing in the distance. He slowly creeps up to it, holding his breath, listening to the stones crunching under his feet, and is about to reach out when his father abruptly interrupts his solitary adventure with loud laughter from the house, pointing out that it's only a statue. Mr. Ozu joins in the laughter. "How charming", he says.
Embarrased, Jiro runs off and retreats into what initially seems like a daydream and ends up as an actual dream involving the crane woman of his Mama's story, a kimono just his size, him acting "just like Papa" and going out to search for firewood and him promising not to peek when the woman announces she's going to do some weaving.
Stop! he shouts, until he hears a door opening, then voices and eventually his father and Mr. Ozu saying he's had a bad dream. "A charming boy", Mr. Ozu laughs again. The father chuckles too.
When they are leaving the garden, Jiro can't take his eyes away from the crane statue, and his father makes an attempt at an apology, now that no other adults are about: "You know, son, for a moment that crane looked real". But Jiro answers: "It's just a statue, Papa".
The last scene shows a crane flying in the light of the moon above Mr. Ozu's garden, with Jiro, we are told, fast asleep in his own bed. The Illustrations
(Apologies for the appalling photographs, but there are practically none to be found online and all I could do was take snaps with my phone. I will eventually do my best to put this right.)
There is something about Caldecott Medalist Allen Say's pencil and watercolour illustrations in The Boy in the Garden that draws you in quietly but surely.
The first time I saw them I wasn't particularly taken by them. Yes, technically they are very good, exquisitely executed and rather sophisticated, but not really my style. However, reading the book to my son and watching what caught his attention it struck me that there was something rather special about the illustrations.
Say makes Jiro and his perspective lead the illustrations. It's almost like watching a warped perspective, which just happens to be perfectly straight. We are shown the story through the child's mind, and get to feel the excitement, the sense of divide between adult and child code and language, and ultimately, the unique combination of fear and thrill, disappointment and excitement of a child learning about the world.
The technique is impeccable and the result is complex.
Here are a few of our favourite illustrations of The Boy in the Garden:
Jiro peeping out at the crane in the distance
Jiro about to touch the crane, with his father and Mr. Ozu laughing in the distance
Jiro embarrassed
Jiro finds the woodcutter's cottage
Aren't you supposed to be lost in the snowstorm?
No, I'll never peek. Never!
By the time the moon rose above the garden of Mr. Ozu,
Jiro was fast asleep in his own bed.
Reading it Aloud
As I have said at the start, this book is probably best suited to the 4-8 age group (give or take). However, this book has what I call the "early interest factor". Some books are enjoyable from a much younger age than their official target audience. What younger children enjoy about it will almost certainly be very different from what older children who understand all the story and all the nuances will get out of it, but that does not mean they will not enjoy it (in my son's case, it's true love!). And its fascinating to watch how what they enjoy about it gradually shifts as their understanding of the actual story increases.
The Boy in the Garden is a gentle book to read aloud, with just the right dose of tension and suspense, perfect for bedtime.
I'm talking here of reading it to a two year old (obviously reading it to an older kid will be rather different). For a two year old then, the "high points" of the book read aloud are:
-The laughter of the father interrupting Jiro's private expedition to touch the crane:
Ha, ha, ha!, bursts of laughter rang out.
-The moment when Jiro spots a small cottage:
"It's the woodcutter's house! he said excitedly. And he forgot to close the door". (I think this is one of my son's favourite parts),
-The rustling sound outside the cottage and finding out it's not a woodcutter, but "a tall woman":
Welcome, Jiro-san", she said and bowed. The boy stared. How did you know my name?
-Jiro going off to gather firewood, looking back and waving to the woman:
"I'm like Papa going to work in the morning, he thought. I'm the woodcutter.".
-Where Jiro promises not to peek:
No, I'll never peek. Never! But don't go!
-And my son always liked, and now repeats, Mr Ozu's comment when Jiro wakes up:
"A charming boy, Mr. Ozu laughed. Naps in the teahouse like a cat.
Like a cat! says my son.
The illustrations provide a lot of nice detail to point to and talk about too. It's a very enjoyable book to share.
More on Allen Say
Allen Say won the Caldecott Medal in 1994 for Grandfather's Journey. We haven't read that one. Must get it.
Read a nice interview with Allen Say here:
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2010/11/portland_author_and_artist_all.html
(c) of all the illustrations in this post: Allen Say, 2010
We sing before we talk, we dance before we walk” P. Grendrad
I thought that you might be interested in a (just launched) video that Marjorie Ouvry just send to me. She helped to produce it.
It is part of a series of videos on U-tube by the London
Early Years Music Network funded by Youth Music and it shows the basic stages of
supporting and extending young children’s innate
musicality.
Their intention is that it will be the starting point, helping staff to be more aware of children’s
innate musicality and to give music more prominence in the early years
curriculum. If you enjoy watching it please do pass it on. " I am more and more convinced that if
practitioners promote music and movement in our early years curriculum all the
other things would fall into place!" Marjorie Ouvry I totally agree how about you ?
In the midst of all the politics, proposals and changes, I am remembering a few weeks ago
in one London Borough as part of a series of EYFS workshops a group of inspired
child care professional exploring their work with children focussing on the Prime
area of Physical Development and Creative and Expressive Arts.
"Nothing changes until something moves" - Einstein
Through movement, dance, art
work, music and song we explored our own creativity and natural capacity for
fun, connection and freedom of expression and we discussed how limiting beliefs
become installed during childhood.
“I cant’sing”
“I cant draw”
“I can’t dance”
“I am no good at sport”
Learning does not only take place at a cognitive
level. There is also learning on the affective, emotional, and visceral
level." - Rolando Toro
When early childhood professionals
explore their own potential and have fun learning together, they return to their work with young children full of enthusiasm which is infectious.
We played games, engaged in a magical adventure and moved with flexibility, force, agility, fluidity through space and time, balance, coordination, increasing mobility, muscle tone and strength - personal empowerment and freedom in a unique expression of ourselves.
"We can sing"
"We can draw"
"We can dance"
"We can .......".
And we are the people that provide the early years environments that help to realise these potentials in young children. Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” – Pablo Picasso
Genius is nothing more or less than childhood clearly formulated, newly endowed with virile and powerful means of self-expression.''— Charles Pierre Baudelaire
Both hands together
clapping with joy, gazing into your eyes, meeting for a moment in complete connection, such pleasure of human
connection – energy of heart and soul.
“Movement is what we are,
not something we do” – Emilie Conrad
“We sing before we talk,
we dance before we walk” – P. Grendrad
Lets always remember to have fun with movement and
sound, make up stories and take on characters. Laugh and sing nursery rhymes and poetry, children love this and so do adults too.
Move and shake,jump high and low
Take a friends hand and move very slow
Now in a circle altogether found
Turning around and around and around
Sitting on the floor now lying down
Crawling on your tummy not making a sound
Wriggling along like a snake in the grass
Up on all fours like a dog running fast
Now like a monkey climbing up a tree
And become a bird flying over the sea
Landing on the water
Swimming to the shore
Back to the land where the rain starts to pour
Hiding in the bushes until it stops
Back home for tea now and some lolly pops.
“Learning begins from birth, and high
quality early education and care has the potential to make an important and
positive impact on the learning, development and wellbeing of babies and young
children, in their daily lives and the longer term’. Professor Cathy Nutbrown
This wonderful blog is written by my guest blogger Elizabeth English BA (Hons),
MPhil (Oxon), DPhil (Oxon)www.lifeatwork.co.uk
Why is listening the
perfect gift?
How do we feel if we're fully heard
and understood? Relieved, perhaps! But much more too. When somebody really
listens to us, we feel it viscerally; we sigh deeply, our whole body relaxes and
responds; we feel valued, affirmed, respected, confident, happy, empowered and
ready to move on, to take the next step. Being fully seen and heard
brings possibilities of change. Like all communication when it works well, it
naturally carries us forward.
Who's it
for?
An empathic listening space is
suitable for people of ALL ages! I've yet to meet anyone who isn't thankful when
another person catches what they say, or grasps their meaning. Even if being
heard doesn't seem important to us on a personal level, the moment we engage
over something practical, we need to be understood. And on a human level, we can
all benefit. With the warm, non-judgemental acceptance of true listening, we are
seen (or have the potential to be seen) in the clear light of reality - not
just as who we are, but, perhaps more importantly, for who we want to be. We're
given the freedom to be ourselves.
Note: If there's nobody you want to
give it to - you can listen to yourself! When did you last have time to enjoy
just being? It may be just the treat you need ...
How much does it
cost?
Here's the catch. It costs
everything we have! When we listen fully, we listen with the whole of ourselves.
We put down our own agendas and concerns, and immerse ourselves completely in
the other person's world. True listening, even for the briefest moment, is
total. The other person feels our full attention. We give our human presence,
just as we are.
Can anyone give
it?
Listening may be a special gift, but
we do not need to be a special person to listen. All that's required is our
curiosity. We do not need to be wise, or clever, or funny, or sorted, or calm,
or good-looking or even have a good memory. We spend time with the other person,
just as we are. And because we are present with them just as they are, we
validate their world of experience. We do so without trying too hard; without
doing anything 'special'. Now, they can stand on their ground more firmly; they
inhabit their world more freely.
Which size should I
go for?
Our listening space is as large or
small as we want to make it. What matters is the quality of that space. But if
you are short of space and time this Christmas, remember: a little empathy goes
a long way! We need only pause for a moment to resonate with someone's words.
Instead of dashing onto the next thing, we take time out; it's a moment of sheer
holiday spent in someone else's landscape. We enter the dimension Being, not
Doing. Here, even a small interaction feels large. For the person we listen to,
it's as if we have all the time in the world to take them
in.
It's ecologically
sound!
If you're catering for vegetarians
or eco-warriors, it's the perfect gift:
It creates spontaneous warmth It raises energy levels naturally It's never wasted, and fully recyclable (we can listen as often as we like to the same thing!)
No wrapping
required!
Listening is best seen for what it
is. The fewer layers the better. Our warm interest in another person doesn't
need pretty words to be appreciated. Without frills and glitter, our listening
can be direct and authentic.
Fully
refundable
If your listening gift is not what's
wanted - you can exchange it any time, for words. Your words may be what your
loved ones want, after all ...
True Christmas
spirit!
Listening never leaves anyone out
- even ourselves. Although listening seems to be about another person, at best,
it'sjust as much about us. When we pause to create a listening space for someone
else, we get a break from our busy Doing mode - and a chance to enjoy a
stress-free moment of pure Being. We listen for our own sake, as much as
another's:
True listening
enriches the listener
as much as the
speaker
And the benefits go beyond this.
When we drop all expectations and wishes for what another person 'should' be, or
'could' be, but see them just as they are, something magical happens. We
discover, and rediscover, the timeless
truth, that:
If you listen to
someone fully, you can't help loving them
Postscript: what's
the aftercare?
Warning: You may need to listen
again! (Because the person enjoyed it so much the first time! And I hope because
you loved it too ....)
