I am still learning. After 39 years of teaching preschool, I still learn from children. Thank goodness! Today was one of those days, or I should say one of those ‘moments’.
It happened like this…
We’re learning about woodland animals. Bears have been very popular. Our loft has become a bear cave, we had a Teddy Bear Clinic with a nurse, and we made a giant Brown Bear, Brown Bear with ‘tear art’.
Children are working hard.
Today we created our own bears. We had many circles of different sizes and shades of brown. Watching children select the sizes of the circles, and how they placed them for bear parts was a joy. Every child’s perception was different. Vastly different. Art and creativity flowed.
And then there was Maddie…
She’s one of the older children. She loves art, so when she glued this I was surprised:
“Maddie, can you tell me about your bear? Is that the body?”
Silence.
I pointed to different circles and asked her to tell me about them.
Dead silence.
Okay, Jennie. You know when to let it go. So, I handed Maddie the Sharpie pen to draw the face, or decorate the bear. This is what she drew:
OH MY! Of course that’s a bear! And that’s one of the most creative bears I’ve seen. I never saw this in her circles. I looked hard, but I couldn’t see a bear. I doubted Maddie. No, I didn’t understand her thinking. I was ‘in the box’ and she was ‘out of the box.’
Thank you, Maddie. You were my teacher today.
“Every child is an artist.” ~Pablo Picasso~
Jennie
A Teacher's Reflections 