This week we are featuring a lesson from one of SEEC’s two year old classes. The teachers Melinda Bernsdorf, Brittany Brown, and Brittany Leavitt used Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors as inspiration for talking about and designing a theatrical set with their class. After experiencing the Infinity Mirrors, the class went to the theater to rehearse their performance and talk about sets and props while on stage. Below you will find images from the lesson and a reflection from Melinda, Brittany, and Brittany.

Here are some pictures from the day’s lesson:

The first Infinity Mirror room that the class visited is entitled “Souls of Millions of Lightyears Away”. Before each group entered the space, their teachers asked them to think about “What story might take place here.” When the children exited the room, some of their answers included a story about “outer space” and “rainbows” and a story that included “flashing light, jingle bells inside a cave.”

The class then visited “Dots Obsession Love Transformed Into Dots”. This space also inspired the class to think about a variety of stories including some about “Spiderman”, “a circus with balloons”, and “soccer balls”.

The final mirrored room that the class saw is called “All the Eternal Love I Have for Pumpkins”. Possible stories that could take place in this room included a story about things “that live in space” and a story about “polka dots on (people’s) cheeks.”

The class finished their trip by stopping in “The Obliteration Room” where they were given polka dot stickers to put on the walls. It was fun for them to help take part in designing the space.

After their trip to the Infinity Rooms, the class went to the theater to rehearse their play entitled Abiyoyo. While on stage, the class was given the chance to hold the props, run through the play, and discuss potential set designs.

In their reflection, the teachers noted this time on stage as a trying part of the lesson. The children had just completed an immersive experience while visiting the Infinity Rooms and were having a hard time focusing on their rehearsal. Upon identifying the problem, the teachers were able to work quickly to try to resolve it so the class could experience a successful rehearsal. Since the class was struggling with staying in their positions, Melinda Bernsdorf grabbed blue tape to mark the ground.

After placing the blue tape and with the guiding support of Brittany Brown and Brittany Leavitt, the class was able to focus on the play.

After thinking about how sets help tell stories, the class designed and created their own set for the play Abiyoyo which they performed in front of their families.

A reflection from Melinda Bernsdorf, Brittany Brown, and Brittany Leavitt:

This lesson was a part of a month long exploration of musical theater. Our class had been examining different plays and musicals as well as talking about the areas of work that go into putting on a production. As a class we had been working on our own production of Abiyoyo, which we had adapted from the book Abiyoyo by Pete Seeger. In the weeks leading up to this lesson, we had talked about stage make-up, choreography, costumes and props, and set design, discussing how each had an impact on furthering the story narrative.

We had been anticipating the Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors exhibit and because of the high level of interest in the exhibit, we had to schedule our trip long before we knew what our class would be exploring. It worked out beautifully that we could use Kusama’s immersive art to extend the ideas we had been discussing. We hoped to dive further into the concept of set design and setting as storytelling devices. We intended to use each different area of the exhibit as a different “set” and discuss what story was taking place. We also had a more challenging goal of using Kusama’s Infinity Mirrors to get across the concept of remaking a whole world or reality within a tiny space, like how the set of a play can bring a world to a stage.

From the first room, our students were open to the idea of telling stories about their surroundings and were imaginative in their ideas. In this way, Kusama’s art was very successful in showing how set design and setting are important aspects of storytelling. The more abstract ideas of directly associating that with the play we were producing in class may have been lost along the way, but that was fine. Our main goal was facilitating an incredible experience for our students and pushing them to wonder and dream about what they were seeing, rather than just being present for the moment.

Our visit actually went much more smoothly than expected. We had anticipated a high volume of visitors and had some plans in reserve in case there were long lines for the infinity rooms. We also had a strategy in mind for which rooms we thought would be most valuable if we discovered that we could only see one or two because of time. We knew that we could only ask our students to stay engaged for a limited time if most of what we were doing was waiting. Luckily, none of this ended up being a concern during our visit. We were able to walk up to each area and enter almost immediately. However the rooms were small and only allowed for a few students to enter at a time. While waiting for each student to have a turn, we talked about the storytelling aspects of our environment. These small amounts of down time enabled us to have open ended discussions with our students in small groups while still in the museum space. Our class had the opportunity to share their ideas while they were still surrounded by the experience.

We followed our visit to the Hirshhorn Museum with a trip to the theater we were using for our play. Each day this week we had been spending some time rehearsing in this environment, allowing our students to become comfortable on stage and in the space. This ended up being the least successful part of our lesson on this day. The transition from the time spent exploring Kusama’s art to the more focused work of rehearsing our play was difficult for our students. We had been able to maintain their focus for an extended period of time in the museum, and if in the same situation again, I would give myself permission to let go of the second part of the lesson. Trying to make the connection by physically having our students experience both the Infinity Mirrors and the theater was unnecessary and too much. It would have been more appropriate to revisit the lesson the following day as we assembled our own set on the stage.

We concluded our exploration of musical theater by putting on our Abiyoyo play at the end of the week in front of an audience of our students’ families.

Stay tuned for the Roundup on Theater for more ideas from Melinda, Brittany, and Brittany and to learn more about their class’ exploration of musical theater.

We recently decided to start up our own book club and chose The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind for the club’s second meeting. We featured this book in a recent blog post “From Blobs to Beings: An Overview of Research on Baby Brains” and it made sense for us to come together as a group of professionals to think more about it. In the course of our book club discussion several topics emerged including teaching empathy, learning, and language. Below are some highlights from our discussion.  

On Empathy

The Scientist in the Crib explained that “real empathy isn’t just about knowing that other people feel the same way you do; it’s about knowing that they don’t feel the same way and caring anyway” (p. 39). The authors describe an experiment during which they provided young children with broccoli and goldfish and then requested some broccoli from the children. Children younger than 18 months, gave the researchers goldfish, despite the researchers requesting broccoli. These children cannot fathom someone wanting anything that differs from their own desires, which in this case are clearly the tasty goldfish. By 18 months, children realize what they want may actually be different from what someone else wants, hence they are willing to give broccoli to the person who requests it even if goldfish seem like the only logical choice to them  (p. 38-39).

This example of young children showing empathy was shared at book club. The teacher described the situation by explaining that one of the children in her class was feeling upset and another child crawled over to pat the child’s belly, which made everyone feel better.   

Our discussion began largely by sharing examples of young children being empathetic in our own classrooms. The teachers fondly recalled examples of young children acting emphatically for the first time. There was a discussion about a toddler offering to help zip up their friend’s jacket and another example of a young child who was barely talking going out his way to find a sad child’s favorite toy in hopes of making the child feel better. These examples of young children showing empathy were clearly some of the teachers’ favorite memories of their past classes. The teachers also talked about how important it was to teach social emotional learning, because according to one teacher “children need to learn how to become people”. We concluded that teachers need to focus on teaching empathy as well as teaching the classic academic skills in their classrooms.

On Learning and Language

Much of The Scientist in the Crib featured the different ways that babies learn about the world around them and it devoted a whole chapter to children’s development of language.  As a group, we talked about how difficult it can be to learn a new language as an adult and how baby’s brains are better suited for the task than adult brains.

Brooke demonstrating her juggling, which she used as an example of something that she learned to do as an adult.

Babies are learning far more than just language as they develop. In fact, since everything they experience is brand new, they are actively learning about everything. As adults, we rarely get to experience the challenge of learning something completely new. This is yet another difference between adult learning and children’s learning. One participant, Brooke, brought up the challenge of learning how to juggle as an adult. She explained that it was “Simple once you get it; you can actually move your hands and stop paying attention.” But before you get to that point it was “super hard!” From the discussion of the difficulties of learning a new language and learning how to juggle, we noted how hard we had to work to accomplish our goals and we were amazed by just how much and how quickly infants and young children are able to learn. Throughout our discussion we became more and more amazed by the infant brain.

Required Reading

As we were concluding our discussion one participant said “I think this book should be required reading!” When pressed about who should be required to read The Scientist in the Crib, the group decided with a resounding “everybody!” The benefit for parents and caregivers seemed obvious. In fact, one book club participant had texted the paragraph on the “deliberately perverse” two years to a friend of hers who was currently experiencing that phenomenon (p. 39).

In addition to parents and caregivers, we discussed how policy makers should read this book so they can gain an understanding of the importance of early childhood education. We concluded that everyone was a child once and will probably interact with a child at some point and this book would help people gain an understanding of their own brains as well as the brains of young children.

Catch us next time when we will be reading For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood, and the Rest of Y’all Too by Chris Emdin.

References:

Gopnik, A., Meltzoff, A. N., & Kuhl, P. K. (2004). The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind. New York, NY: Perennial.

Over the last hundred years there has been a monumental shift in how the scientific community sees babies. Neuroscientists and clinical psychologists now deem young children worthy of study and through their studies we have gained a wealth of information about brain development. This shift from seeing babies as blobs, to babies as beings undergoing a crucial stage of development, has been slower outside the fields of science and academy.This is unfortunate because every day people have the opportunity to interact with babies and are able to observe firsthand how babies grow and develop. These observations can result in an appreciation for the importance of enriching early childhood experiences.

What follows is an overview of brain research. It starts by discussing some overarching theories and moves into a breakdown of some of the newest findings. Hopefully this body of work will inspire you to take a new look at babies and discover that they are fascinating beings.

Ted Talks offers a series of five videos in a playlist called “Genius of Babies”. Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist and author of The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind, The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life, and The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children, is one of the speakers highlighted. During her Ted Talk, titled “What Do Babies Think?”, she makes the argument that babies are born as scientists who actively conduct experiments to learn about the world around them.

Cognitive brain scientist, Laura Shultz explains “The surprisingly logical minds of babies”. Shultz notes that babies’ brains have to be very powerful because “they are figuring out their entire world.” She concludes her Ted Talk by saying:

In the years to come, we’re going to see technological innovations beyond anything I can even envision, but we are very unlikely to see anything even approximating the computational power of a human child in my lifetime or in yours. If we invest in these most powerful learners and their development, in babies and children and mothers and fathers and caregivers and teachers the way we invest in our other most powerful and elegant forms of technology, engineering and design, we will not just be dreaming of a better future, we will be planning for one.

Researchers have noted the importance of babies’ exposure to both language and stimulation. Dana Suskind, a surgeon who routinely performed cochlear implants, wrote the book Thirty Million Words: Building A Child’s Brain. Suskind begins with the premise made famous by Betty Hart and Todd Risley’s paper “The Early Catastrophe”, which was published in the early 2000s and describes the thirty million word gap. Children in lower socioeconomic backgrounds have heard thirty million less words than their peers from high socioeconomic backgrounds by age three. According to Suskind, some children thrived after receiving a cochlear implant, while others did not and she discovered that the children who thrived heard millions and millions more words. In addition to regularly hearing words, a new study from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology “Babies Exposed to Stimulation Get a Brain Boost”. The study highlights the importance of actively challenging young children as well as stimulating their senses.

Another recent baby brain study to note is from the University of Miami about how “Mothers and infants connect through song”. The study noted the mother’s ability to change the pitch or the tempo to keep the infant engaged in the song. Another interesting study looked at how babies’ sight develops. According to the study from the University of Oslo, babies who are 2 to 3 days old can see emotions on a human face from a distance of 30 cm, but at 60 cm the faces become too blurry to detect any facial details.

There should be plenty more interesting neuroscience studies in the future. In fact, the researches from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have adapted MRI machines to make them more baby-friendly by making the MRI seat more like a car seat so the baby is more comfortable. The newly adapted MRI machines also have a mirror that allows the baby to watch videos and provides a space for the parent or researcher to sit next to the baby while the baby is getting an MRI. These adaptations have allowed researchers to discover more about how babies’ brains work. It has led to findings that the same part of a baby’s brain responds to images of faces as in an adult’s brain, which has allowed researchers to conclude that babies’ brains and adult brains are more similar than previously thought.  

As an educator, this wealth of information on how babies’ brains develop has impacted my practice. Research tells us that babies and young children need to be exposed to variety of subjects, materials, and situations. One wonderful way to expose babies and young children to new environments is to take them to museums and to explore the collections and watch their brains make connections and grow. Scientific research has shown the importance of exposure in early childhood and I am hopeful that one day this knowledge will permeate even into our everyday thinking.

Our most recent infant Teacher Feature on frogs was part of a larger unit based on the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. This classic picture book asks different colored animals, such as a brown bear, a yellow duck, and a green frog, what animal they see. Both colors and animals are major themes of the book. The infant class teachers, Logan Crowley, Jill Manasco, and Rosalie Reyes, realized that the children in their class were requesting to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? more than other books, so they decided to create a unit focusing on the major themes, animals and colors. The web and pictures below show some of the activities, songs, stories, and museums that Logan, Jill, and Rosalie utilized when teaching the unit.

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

The infant teachers, Jill, Logan, and Rosalie, followed the interests of their class to come up with the unit on Brown Bear, Brown Bear. The infant’s love of Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle’s classic children’s book did not wane during the unit. Since infants learn through repetition, this story was read to them over and over again.

The infants would often pick up Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and look at it independently. For young children, books are not merely books, books are objects that are meant to be explored and played with along the lines of toys.

Brown Bear

Infants love discovering how their bodies move. While learning about bears, the class experimented with moving like a bear by doing bear crawls.

To compare different types of bears, the class went to the National Museum of Natural History’s Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals. While there, Jill was able to point out the characteristics of bears and allow the children to observe the similarities and differences between the brown bear and the American black bear.

Yellow Duck

To explore the environment that ducks and frogs live in, the infant teachers allowed plenty of time for their class to experiment with water in the sensory table.

Throughout the unit, the infants were provided with many different examples of the animals that they were learning about. The class played with rubber and stuffed ducks and were able to investigate images of ducks in the wild.

Green Frog

As part of an art class, the infants painted on toy frogs and lily pads. They were able to experience their toys in a new way. Using a paintbrush and their hands to paint, they were able to practice their fine motor skills.

The class explored the colors related to the animals. For frogs, Logan, Jill, and Rosalie put out different types of green things. Some of the green objects were soft like the scarf and the infants were able to look through some of the objects like the plastic green containers.

Color Mixing

Logan, Jill, and Rosalie realized that one way to extend the unit on Brown Bear was to add a unit on color mixing. They put out zip lock bags with two colors of paint inside and allowed the children to mix the colors to discover what happens when different colors are mixed together.

So their class could further explore color, Logan, Jill, and Rosalie made sensory bottles. They filled water bottles with colored water and some oil as well as glitter. Lastly, they glued the lids shut and then gave them to their class to shake, hold up to the light, and look through.

This blog was originally posted February 18, 2016 by our former executive director Kim Kiehl. To learn more about SEEC’s kindergarten, please come to our Kindergarten Open House on Thursday, February 9, 2017 from 10:15 to 11:30. Check out our event page for more information.

When I went to Kindergarten it was the place where I learned about being in school. Nobody expected me to be reading by the time the year was over. I had music and art and recess. It was a gentle transition into school and one that made me love learning and be excited to go to school, a feeling that is still with me to this very day.

Sadly, the same is not true for many children today. For them, Kindergarten is a place of high stress and pressure. Stories and questions have been replaced with worksheets and testing. Rugs and shared round tables have been replaced by individual desks. But none of this is true in our Kindergarten at SEEC. Sure, our morning is spent learning math and reading but not in a high pressure, “you have to learn this by the end of the year” way. Instead, it is done in large circles on a rug with conversation, at shared tables with the children discussing what they are learning, and in ways that introduce concepts connected to things the children care deeply about. In the afternoon they head out on their daily trip to the museums of the Smithsonian to more deeply explore some of their ideas, to ask questions and search for answers, and to learn to look carefully at the world around them.

Let me give you and example of how this works. During the fall months our Kindergarten teachers noticed the children had a strong interest in Star Wars. For months they used that interest to teach everything from reading to appropriate behavior, from marketing strategies to the elements of a fiction story. Some of the activities that happened during these months included the following…

The classroom made connections between the women of Star Wars and the First Ladies of our country, exploring everything from their clothing to their characteristics. They explored the First Ladies exhibit in the National Museum of American History and through careful looking noticed that Michelle Obama’s dress looked very similar to the dress worn by Princess Leia!

They talked about Luke Skywalker and then visited the National Portrait Gallery to look at a painting of William Campbell, a fighter pilot who flew more than 100 missions across three different wars. They talked about the characteristics of a hero and what makes a person brave and what courage looks like.

They learned math and compared their own heights to the height of C3PO, learning to measure and compare.

They learned about the elements found in fiction stories as they explored the Star Wars story.

And, of course, there was a lot of learning about space and the stars!

At SEEC we also believe that art and music are vital parts of the curriculum and we have playground time every day. We have a Spanish teacher who comes several times each week and a researcher from the Smithsonian who comes to teach science as well. All of this is done in ways that are engaging and fun—no high pressure, no testing. But there is a lot of conversation, a lot of questions being asked by both the teachers and the children, and a lot of curiosity. Do our children learn to read by the end of the year? Those of them who are ready to read absolutely do, the rest leave us with the skills they need to make that leap in first grade. Do they do well when they leave us for “regular” school? Absolutely. The biggest concern we hear from parents is that when their child gets to their new school they get in trouble for asking so many questions. If that’s the biggest issue that comes up we’ll take it because ultimately the best learning comes from asking questions. So we will keep encouraging questions, helping children learn to look at the world around them carefully and with great curiosity and allowing them to explore their own ideas and search for their own answers to things that interest them.  Because we believe that is what Kindergarten should be– a gentle transition into school that leaves you hungry to learn more.