How Do We Expand Our Ideas from Others Around Us?

To expand our ideas from others around us, we actively listen to different perspectives, engage in meaningful conversations, and work together on tasks that use different opinions to our interests. We learn from our neighbors that picking berries from the wild is healthy and fun. They share some ideas to make blackberry jelly or blackberry jam. The idea to make something out of it is indeed in line with our sense of curiosity.

During the process of picking ripe blackberries, Vivaan, Nora, and friends are working with abilities to focus and be strategic. For example, berries really need to be black to be sweet. Removing the branches to locate the blackberries can be challenging sometimes. However, with determination and cooperation we manage to deal with the situations.

As learners, we have the opportunities to learn about risk management. During the berry picking, we provide ourselves with the tools like scissors, sticks, and gloves to make judgement for ourselves about own safety.

We take note of the step-of-step processes like paying attention to small details. Observing steam comes out from the mixture on top of the induction cooker is a learning experience to understand the concept of heat. Communicating our expressions of interests, disagreement or just to do questions creates an environment of reciprocity. We learn to manage new challenges when sometimes things require some negotiations.

During team building learning experiences, we have the opportunities to communicate with each other and work towards a common goal. For example, we attempt to share our ideas to measure the length of our structures by using a tape measure or our feet. We hear various exchanges of comparisons using early math concept such as my structure is longer, look! and the distance is so far away.

Brooks  assembles pegs to hold the sticks to stand in a row as a bridge.
Fides is interested to see how keva planks line up in a circular shape and the relationships between force and motion. 
Nora demonstrates careful actions in stacking objects to support one another while practicing early numeracy skills like size, height, comparison, and order. 

Another book written by Yobi Kamada becomes our continuing story to inspire and understand ourselves better. Maybe is a story about the glorious possibilities that lie in each and every one of us. It recognizes our uniqueness and touches on all of the exhilarating possibilities that exist for us if we reach out and harness our own potential.

Maybe emphasizes on knowing ourselves of our own gifts or talents. During our group discussion we unpack how sometimes we have so many ideas of us being builders, dreamers, creators, inventors, or entertainers. Basically as humans, we bring our uniqueness to the world with goodness. 

Based on one particular page of Maybe, we extract an idea to draw out a stairs with a question to keep in mind - What do we wish to wait for us on top of it? Most of us draw out a flower or a part of nature or a balloon to express our wishes or ideas. 

Kindest,
​Children & Friends.