|
Simply listening to the various sounds around us while walking slowly - from the rustling of our clothes as we move, to chirping birds, to the everyday commuters around us - can a simple technique to learn mindfulness. When our attention is drawn to a puddle, we take time for some puddle pondering. It is about an attitude to appreciate the beauty of being in the present moment. We are all inherently mindful. Simply observe how a child is naturally mindful, bringing a sense of wonder and curiosity to his immediate experience and to the world. As we weave mindfulness into our lines of inquiry, we train ourselves to respond more skillfully to whatever shows up in our present experience. “Look! A bird’s nest!” - Elie points out on our way back from the library. Mindfulness fosters us to be more deliberate in directing our attention to our moment by moment experience as it unfolds with kindness, curiosity and acceptance. Improving our ability to pay attention and focus and provide us with skills for understanding our own emotions and how to work with them. This shift moves "our attention away from whatever it is we are worrying about, to a present moment experience such as the feeling of our own breath," said Susan Kaiser Greenland. We can bring mindfulness to movement too by paying attention to the body when we are walking, running, dancing, and playing sport. Practicing mindfulness in our everyday moments enables us to explore opportunities of kindness and curiosity by noticing our senses and emotions. Kindest,
Children & Friends.
0 Comments
The BC Early Learning Framework states: "Critical reflection is the art of thinking deeply about our own fundamental beliefs, with the goal of understanding the various cultural and social forces and factors that shape our own sense of self - and then taking our own thinking one step further." (Ministry of Education 2008, p.11). 
By embracing other postmodern perspectives to "challenge common knowledge and explore new viewpoints and actions" (Government of British Columbia 2008, p.11), we can begin to invite what we already know as our points of reflections. Then, as competent and capable beings, we continue researching the world and how it works as our new ways of thinking and doing.
Being able to be open-minded to different viewpoints creates opportunities to engage us in important conversations. While sometimes these conversations seem tough, it is an important opportunity to help us actively choose to be inclusive of others who seem different from us. It is helpful to challenge various perspectives to see past differences. Each one of us is unique and special in his or her own way. We learn to open our eyes and mind to the wonders of the world around us from the smallest living thing to the largest and understand that each plays an important role.
As co-constructors of knowledge, we carefully and intentionally ask different kinds of questions about what we encounter. By paying close attention, by listening with intent, we begin to see what interests we have, and what questions we are actually trying to understand. Noticing ordinary moments, choosing what to observe, and being there with our many ways to try different viewpoints. "We must teach our children to smell the Earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall-to-care." - John Cleal. As we experience the truth that we are not separate from the natural world, but a part of it, the qualities of empathy, patience, and compassion blossom forth. Interacting with nature helps us keep alive a sense of the connection of all things. Being in nature in a reflective way, listening, watching, touching, and feeling, allows us to witness the interdependence of all things. Our natural curiosity about our world supports our critical thinking. We embrace multiple perspectives and develop our social responsibility necessary for effectively communicating and collaborating with others. Kindest,
Children & Friends. Awareness empowers us to notice when details (similarities or differences) are informing our perceptions of and interactions with others and to take active steps to change our perceptions and interactions. In her book Start Seeing Diversity, Wolpert outlines similar goals reinforcing the needs and importance for anti-bias curricula, one of which is to promote the child's developing awareness of these differences and to help foster preschoolers' empathic responses to others (Wolpert, 1999, p.13). As we enter our years of growing up, we get to understand through our lens how all of us have a wide variety of abilities, cultures, interests, and backgrounds. It is indeed natural for us, being curious beings, to notice similarities and differences. However, it is totally up to us to frame our lens to look through diversity as a unique value in learning together. In Children & Friends we choose to appreciate the similarities and differences in respectful ways. We encourage ourselves to be open-minded to converse about our differences and mention, "It's okay to be different." We acknowledge how sometimes differences may infuse some kind of tensions into our situations. To a certain extent, it may create some discomfort. However, we choose to learn how to be comfortable with and embrace it constructively. We are too proud to stand up for our points-of-views which is important for our self-identity and self-esteem. Below is an applaudable example of how bold a friend to share her unique thoughts. Afterward, we provide ourselves with opportunities to support one another and to make each other feel valued during the sharing session. We learn to say, "Let me hear you" or "Can you tell me what you think?" Building up on our understandings that we have different points-of-views and thinking on how we should go from here open up another learning opportunity. We include include a mini voting to further our sense of democracy. Kindest,
Children & Friends. This will happen when we look at everyday spaces as places of possibilities to communicate relationships developed through interaction with materials. When we choose materials to work with, we actually invite ourselves to think about the languages that the materials speak. Some materials are more expressive than others. Sometimes we choose to work with clay to observe the expression of the languages of form, shape, and texture. Clay is often used as a way as medium for self-portraits. In other words, as a way to express identity. Identity is revealed through the language of materials and our relationships to materials. This is a process that takes time. For languages to be heard, time and space is needed. The more languages we can express ourselves the more ways we can connect to the world. There is beauty and pleasure in languages such as sculpting, drawing, dance, and movement. As we think about our space as a place of connectedness and relationship, we dig deeper into our relationships between us and selves, us and friends, us and materials, and even us and nature. "Every child is a creative child, full of potential, with the desire and the right to make meaning out of life within a context of rich relationships, in many ways, and using many languages" - Gandini, Hill, Cadwell & Schwall, 2005, p.1.). On this opportunity we would like to express "big thank you" to friends for sharing the expressions of friendships in many ways. As well as wishing "Happy Birthday to Brooks! May you be surrounded with abundant happiness and love!". Kindest,
Children & Friends. As an emotion scientist, Barbara Fredrickson highlights in her research that positive emotions like love, joy, and gratitude help us grow and become better versions of ourselves. Love means a synchrony in the tempo of action and connection, often through eye contact and touch. There is some evidence to suggest the more we share the same moment, ideas, or focus, the more neural synchrony as well.  Our day-to-day experiences of love can not be supported when our attention is drawn to so many different things. So we learn to pay attention to small little things that we do and be present in the moments. We too learn to recognize that touch, eye contact, and being mindful of one another's emotions is an ongoing processes in our building relationship with self, others, materials, and environment. Planting some seeds is one of our many ways to building relationship with natural environment. First thing we could try is to say hello to it, and welcome it into our environment. Plants appreciate attention just like any other living thing. The second thing we could do is to try to think like a plant. Imagine for a moment that we are the little green thing with the flower. What would we like? We too make time to celebrate love and friendship and the joy of having others in our life. We choose to make moments to share about our heart to heart expressions to foster connections with self, others, and materials, too.  We honor the art of expressing our gratitude in many ways. The writing that we scribe or drawing that we scribble mean a lifetime to say how grateful we are in having them in our lives. Sharing positive emotions is something we can do with any living creatures as well. It is a kind, caring way to connect with. The more we connect more broadly with our natural environment and in open, respectful ways, the more we learn that, too.   Taking time to be outdoors everyday builds our love connection with nature. It is about being active outside in the fresh air is our beautiful moments, Living a more natural life does not just benefit our environment; it also benefits our health and wellness.  Children & Friends is pleased to welcome Jana Aviado to be part of our Learning & Teaching Team. She is currently pursuing her diploma in Early Childhood Care and Education with Capilano University. We are looking forward to building relationships through our processes of learning and teaching. Please be informed that Children & Friends is closed for B.C. Family Day. It is a provincial statutory holiday falls on Monday, February 21st. Kindest,
Children & Friends. Each day offers opportunities to encounter and learning with processes of character building. Working with politeness, honesty, diversity, and sharing are only a few among many we, as we strive to promote pro-social values of citizenship. We can help us understand these attributes and their importance by forging meaningful connections in our lives, setting fair and clear guidelines, accepting own and others' feelings, showing respect for ideas and developing competence, and modeling respect in our interactions with friends.  We also move the play to a higher level by helping us find ways to resolve our active movement - moving the play and thinking to a prosocial level. We need a safe space in which to express and regulate our emotions and an early childhood classroom provides ongoing opportunity for learning. Cooperation, kindness, consideration, responsibility and trustworthiness are all part of us having fun and building relationships with friends. We love to help! We like to know that we are contributing, that we are needed, and that our actions are having a positive impact on others in our environment. Beyond just saying “thanks for your help,” we give ourselves more learning experiences on how we are being helpful, what that means to us and others, and how we can continue to be helpful in the future. Our thinking is often "magical". Sometimes our emotions can overtake our reasoning, And many times we too see more positive qualities in our pretend characters.
We draw attention to small movements and name gentleness when we see it in action, need it to be present, or notice it’s absence.  We must practice what we learn before it comes naturally to us. This applies in learning character, too. We can learn vicariously when we see character-building in action and learn directly when we hear learning experiences in values. But we need hands-on experience to know the true meaning of character. Kindest,
Children & Friends. "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller  The words "I love you" have been shared throughout our life. We can understand the feeling and the actions that go along with this character trait. There are many branches that grow from this root such as patience and responsibility. Therefore, the root has to grow strong and solid. Once we make the connections between the traits and how we improve our well-being and relationship with others, there is a chain reaction and the awareness of values in our everyday life becomes more apparent.  The heart, which is full of love, inside each one of us grows to reach out to others, materials, and our environment. When we care about the environment, we care for it as best as we can. Picking up trash on the road by using pick-up tools or planting some gardening outside. When learning experiences emphasize on how our actions go along with our verbal expressions of love, we make sense between abstract and real expressions. By interpreting the words "I love you" into our experiential learning, we are actually embodying the virtue.  We can exhibit love to everyone and everything around us by looking out for what each person or thing needs to be happy and healthy. We take turns coming up with creative ways to display love. For example, greeting others, opening the door for others, getting aid when friends are in need, or serving meals to friends. On different opportunities we too try to ask ourselves "How do we know when someone loves us?" Each one of us mention various expressions such as hugging, having someone's help, or enjoying our learning experiences together.     Love feels so good that we often smile, laugh, sing and dance when we are with those we love. We sing songs we like or dance moves we can do together. Being joyful enables us to see and touch beautiful things in this world with our hearts. Kindest,
Children & Friends. During our moments in life we may encounter various feelings … happiness, sadness, anger, shyness, bravery, and among many others. |
|||||||||
