Making beautiful things

During my student teaching I was poking around the classroom, totally in awe of all these fun things I was just learning how to use and teach when I found them. These beautiful, colorful, enticing....folders. Yeah, like a folder you're supposed to organize your papers in for school.

In fact these were the cultural folders for the classroom, each one color coded for the continents of the world and containing pictures of all sorts of different scenes from that continent. Lucy, the absolutely wonderful guide, saw me admiring them and admitted that she had just gotten around to finally making them, even though they had been on her "to do" list since leaving training years ago.

Now it's not that these fabric folder were that spectacularly beautiful. Sure they were well sewn and had a fun color scheme, but it was the contrast to other versions of that material I had been seeing in different classrooms. Some teachers had put the pictures in paper folders that seemed to inevitably get bent, ripped, torn, etc. and just look tattered. Other used plastic pockets of some kind that also quickly got cracked or broken in some way. Yes, we're supposed to teach the children how to handle things gently and with respect but still, they're in preschool and things happen.

But these colorful, fabric ones weren't going to do that. It might have taken a bit more money and time, but they were going to last far longer than one school year and still look great.  I immediately decided that was how I wanted to make my folders too. And now, almost 6 years later, those same folders are still lovely and enjoyed by the children in my classroom.

A monkey see monkey do moment as one child inspires others to get out their own cultural folder to enjoy
The penguins in Antarctica always seem to be the favorite and l love showing them that they are in Africa too!

Now, this isn't just about the cultural folders though. It's about thinking how to offer children beautiful, quality things that will last (especially in a classroom setting!). Whenever I'm looking at making or buying a new materials I'm sub-consciously thinking about these folders. I want to have something that's able to be used independently by the children, but will hold up to them fumbling through how to use it the first few times. Something that can be easily fixed by me if it does break/tear/fail for some reason. I have a box of fabric scraps of things I've sewn for the classroom, and some cardstock remmanents for printed materials.

We want to be able to tell children that they are worth our time and effort. That they are worthy of things which are valuable (both monetarily and personally). And I know that I don't want to spend time walking around my classroom cringing about how tattered and torn something looks!

So I'm trying.
Trying to make it well the first time.

A geography day

W and C started it by working on the world map today. I think W just really wanted to use the clay, but they also had fun putting the puzzle pieces in the frame. While they were doing that S took out the new little flag book I had made for them and was heading to the library to look at it when M caught her.

"I wanted to read that!"

"Ok," said S, who's always up for some socializing. So together they got out the reading mat and crowed around, flipping the pages to look at the different flags.

"That's South America," S said matter of factly as they flipped to one page. Now I know "South America' doesn't have a flag but hey, at least she was using geography terms! Then S got in trouble with the next page.

"What's that one?" M asked.

"I don't know." S replied after a short pause, quickly flipping away from it.

"How about this one?" M asked again. S just looked at it for a minute, struggling to figure out what to say. Finally she came up with,

"You have to read it silly!" and turned the page again and stated "That's South America." I couldn't help but giggle a bit as she kept trying to convince herself that she knew the names of those flags. After a few pages she did come and ask me to read a few of the names, but S was definitely determined to know them by herself. I have a feeling that girl's going to learn to read by sheer determination some day when she gets it into her head.

Afterwards C recruited M to do fetching with him using the flags. She happily pointed out the pictures in the book and sent him to bring them over from the stand. Unfortunately there were so many flags there that it was hard to pick out specific ones so I helped them spread all the flags out on one mat and work at a second with the ones they had already found. They were so in to their little game that when we noticed that some flags in the book were not out they asked me to check in the closet for them.

Soon they had ALL the flags for North and South America out on the mat or in the stand. They were bound and determined to find all the matches. M was having a great time directing C, who couldn't have been more pleased than when he brought back a matching flag. They made it through nearly all the flags before they finally got tired and went on to new work. I checked it later and that's about 35 flags....They went back and forth nearly 30 times matching the flags and pictures. Without any prompting or real help.

Now that's a great example of the kind of repetition we want happening in the classroom!