So let me catch up then on last week, week five. Since this was my first week back after said incident, I tried to take it a little easy. The theme was Rainbows, but I just didn't have the extra oomph for researching and creating a rainbow story. Every morning, however, I placed watercolor paints out on the large table, and I would paint rainbows...R and Curtis followed suit. I placed many of the rainbow results in the nature hearth. yes, lame-o but the children didn't seem to mind.
Instead I used the plain old vanilla verbal stories I have been telling. Curt seems to have graduated from Robin Hood and has been asking about Mulan. We have a book with many of the Disney stories that believe it or not Dad found in the trash of a local gift shop. I was trying to hide it for years...he found it a little too soon. But then he has transitioned to the world of good versus evil, princes, princesses, evil sorcerers, and Jedi knights a lot earlier. He will be six years old in late September so this is his final upcoming Kindergarten year....the Grimms tales are not set to be introduced in the Steiner curriculum until grade one. But as I mentioned in previous posts, it seems the children are coming to the good vs evil tales younger and younger.
I am currently reading a great book by Daniel Udo de Haes called The Young Child: creative Living with Two to Four year olds. This gem of a book is currently out of print..it was first published in 1979.. but at Sophia's Hearth they sell photocopies of it. I highly recommend it. Udo de Haes was born in Bali and studied in Holland. He was a student of anthroposophy and a teacher. He talks of the child coming to us from the spiritual world and that in certain objects in our mundane physical world, the young child/toddler recognizes archetypes from the spirit lands. Some archetypes that are recognized: the perfect roundness of a ball, the toy cupboard with it's quietly guarded secrets, the forming of bread dough into form and then sustenance. The toddler immerses themselves in for example the experience of the ball, they are not by nature compelled to do something with it...like kick it toward a goal..unless they are prematurely taught to do so.
I just have to include this quote because I love it. "Thus the toddler observes with an utterly open soul not only the ball but all other objects and also all that happens and is done around him; and when we see how completely he is absorbed in this, we are bound to feel how important these early sense -impressions - and his deep inner experiences- must be for him. This quiet activity, which takes place behind his dreaming, wondering or delighted eyes, remains hidden to us. Our adult consciousness has lost the connection with what goes on in the dreamy depths of the child's soul. But we may be able to sense how the little child, who is still so close to the spirit-land from whence he came, can still see something of the cosmic, and sometimes also the moral, source of the things in his surroundings;and that he can still experience something of that region which we can only grope towards with our thoughts."(Udo de Haes 12)
Udo de Heas goes on to explain the gap between the toddler's rebelling in the beingness of things and of sounds and of sensations as opposed to the kindergarten age child or first grade child who has already developed the ability to separate themselves and form concepts. Ironic isn't it that as we grow up..we learn more in this life, but it requires our separation from the spiritual.
"Then we realize that the toddler cannot be receptive to fairy-tales, for instance, and that this is not only because certain capacities, such as vocabulary and ability to follow the thread of the story, are insufficiently developed, but because he has a faculty which is still very much alive: he can listen to those even deeper messages, to the language of the things and actions themselves and also to the sound of human words, an ability which we have already lost. It is these archetypal revelations from his surroundings which the toddler still understands and from which he will not allow himself to be distracted by the even more complex language of fairy tales, or even our normal conceptual language."(Udo de Haes 14)
But what does one do when they are taking care of children of mixed ages? I have Curtis who is almost 6 and drinking up the fairy tale realm..and R who is 3 but already quite aware of princes and princesses, evil sorceresses, etc...and then some in between.
Well, as I asked this question, I was flipping through the book and there in chapter eight was the answer. The chapter, entitled, "the toddler in a large family" explained it all. The trick is to not tell the fairy-tale directly to the toddler, expecting them to follow the story line or comprehend the imagery. The idea is to tell the story to the 5 or6 year old and let the toddler live on the fringes of the circle and maintain their dreamy state. the kindergarten age child will be deeply moved by the imagery of a dark forest and an escape to the light. He will recognize this imagery on a soul level. The light is a return to what Udo de Haes calls the Father-Land or spiritual home of the soul. The dark, earthy forest is the Mother -land. The toddler has newly arrived here in the Mother-land and will be intrigued enough by that..they have little care for the imagery of an escape from it...and we as adults can let them just be. If left to their own devices, the toddler will naturally develop toward the kindergarten phAse..he will slowly begin to follow the story characters and the story line. The toddler needs to become so comfortable with the sense world...has to let it lose it's novelty, then he will be less focused on the dark forest and will be interested in finding or rather rediscovering the light.
I was so glad to have found this chapter. It really made a lot of concepts a lot clearer for me and also allows me to focus my storytelling without feeling a need to shield the younger children so much.
Anyway, I took this digression because I want to describe a moment of storytelling of the fairy tale Mulan. O.K. As far as I know, this was a pure Disney creation..but it is a fairy tale nonetheless. Soon after R arrived, I was sitting on the living room floor with she and Curtis, and I started telling the story. Curtis began using the toys around us to build"sets" for the tale. He built a lotus flower tree which Mulan and her father sat under to talk. He used a piece of drift wood and wrapped it in red yarn. He then used some silks and Tinkertoy to build a house. R found the people to fill these sets...little acorn people in the dollhouse, Felted folk, barn animals. It was really something to sit in the middle of the living room while the two of them surrounded me with creations depicting the story as I was telling it. When I realized what was happening, I truly felt I would make it through the week even with my lower than usual energy.
On Thursday, A finally joined us. A is a four year old girl. A and Curtis attend Kindergarten together. Curtis as mentioned in previous posts, has modified his play for R using the Princess Kitty character, but he has been longing for more rambunctious play/playmates. A fit the bill. She climbed with him alot and he was very happy. A was able to go between rambunctious play with Curtis and the slower play with R.
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| From downllded 08.01.2011 |
A found a tree branch across the stream that sticks up a bit and is a little bouncy. She turned this into a horse and all three children enjoyed riding upon it.
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