Smooth & Easy Transitions

          Usually we think of transitions as something that must be done in order to get to something else, but very young children don’t think this way and can’t think this way.  Young children live in the moment.  So in order to have transitions go smoothly and enjoyably, change your view so that each transition is an activity in its own right, with a beginning, a middle and an end.  Think of it as a structured activity like circle-time.  It doesn’t happen in a ring, but it’s a series of actions to be done together, with song and verse.  It should be just as structured and just as enjoyable for the kids.

              Here are the steps that I use to make a transition go smoothly:
             1. Get everything you need ready before you start, so that children can be in motion the entire time (no waiting).  So this means, get handwashing stuff ready before you start tidying up to come to a meal.  In fact, we get our end-of-meal handwashing ready before we even start cleaning up from free-play, so that it’s a smooth transition from play to eating to cleaning up from a meal.  Think ahead!

             2.      Use songs during transitions.  This makes a HUGE difference!  Songs are really useful because they let a child know what's coming, without all the talking.   You don't have to be a great singer for these, just use songs you remember from your childhood, or take the tunes of songs you know and add simple words.  To the tune of "Twinkle twinkle little star" you could sing, "Find your shoes and put them on, find your shoes and put them on."  You may use several songs, one for the start of the transition, and one for the end. It's useful to use the same song each time for the same task, so that kids really get the hang of what happens when a certain song is sung.

                 3. Give individual tasks.  Giving tasks that children can accomplish is important.  First of all it keeps children engaged in what's going on.  For instance, giving them something to carry out to the car when you’re going somewhere makes it much more likely that they'll walk straight to the car, instead of getting distracted on the way.  But even more important, it allows the child to contribute to the process.  It goes more smoothly because he’s helping you.  You’re doing it together.

             4.  Keep things moving.  Start the process with some sort of fun thing that gets your child moving (a little game, or putting something in its place), then keep them moving smoothly then entire time.  So, start with tidying up, but then move seamlessly into getting ready to go outside.  Don't stop and talk about it, just do it.  Children will be swept up in the movement of it and will most likely follow your lead.  Children do best when they're in motion, so think of the entire transition process as a dance where you walz from one thing to the next.  If you do things in this way, once you get a child to stop his play, you can tidy up, get a fresh diaper, change the laundry, and get out the door.  If you have each step prepared, involve him in each step (give him individual tasks), use song and verse, and keep things moving, it will probably go well.  Better than breaking him away from his play four separate times, by far!


An Example

              So, using all of these tricks, getting yourself and your toddler out the door in the morning might look like this:  While he’s eating breakfast, you get everything you’ll need to take with you and put it by the door.  You also put his hat and his jacket on a little changing chair.  When you see that he’s about done with breakfast you sing out, “Last little nibbles!”  Before you get him out of his high chair, you get a warm washcloth and sing, “Wipe wipe wipe!  Wipe your face.  Wipe wipe wipe! Wipe your hand.  Wipe wipe wipe! You are clean.”  Then you lift him down, and give him his bowl to take to the kitchen.  You lift him up so he can set it on the counter, then immediately let him know it’s time to go get shoes on by saying, “Cockadoodle doo, my dame has lost her shoe!  My master’s lost his fiddle-stick and knows not what to do!  Where are YOUR shoes?”  As he runs over to them (or as you carry him over, if he’s not cooperating), you repeat the nursery rhyme at least two more times as he sits down in the changing chair.  He knows how things go, so he immediately starts trying to put his hat on.  I usually do hat first, then shoes, then jacket last (if it’s wintertime, hat first, then snowpants, then boots, then mittens, then jacket.  If you put mittens on first, they’re nicely tucked into the jacket sleeves).  Then get your own shoes and jacket on, and pick up your bags.  Take out one thing and say, “We’re ready to go!  I’ll carry the diaper bag.  Will you carry this for me please?” and then you walk out together.  As you’re walking from the house to the door, you have another song that you sing: this one a railroad song.  “I’ve been working on the railroad, all the livelong day…”  This is a long song, and it lasts the entire time as you get him into his car-seat.

                   If you have everything ready to go before you start, if you keep moving from one activity to the next (finishing breakfast to putting on shoes to walking out the door), if you use song and verse as you go, and you give individual tasks, then you can have a smooth and easy transition.

Warmly,

Miss Faith

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Life As the Curriculum

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for my teleclass, Joyful Days with Toddlers!  The Sunday class is completely full, but there are still two slots in the Tuesday class if you're interested.  It starts this Tuesday, March 1st 2011, and calls are from 6:30-7:45pm Mountain Time.  Please email me if you'd like one of those two spots at faithrainbow@yahoo.com

 People often think they have to have a “curriculum” to be teaching the children things, or they feel guilty because they don't have a formal curriculum. Curriculum subjects I've seen have ranged from numbers, colors and letters, to subjects such as germs or pirates.  However, it seems to me that 'teaching' things like colors is silly, because they'll learn it anyhow, and subjects like germs and pirates don't relate to their lives at all.

What I am here to suggest is that young children really learn all they “should” be learning through their own play and through watching and participating in the daily tasks that go into running a household. Gross motor skills come from putting things on a shelf or rolling dough with a rolling pin; fine motor skills come from decorating bread with raisins or folding a washcloth. Sorting skills are developed unloading the silverware from the dishwasher, or sorting laundry. Vocabulary skills, taking directions, and working cooperatively are all developed listening to you as you help them master these skills.

However, I would even go a step further and suggest that using our daily tasks as the curriculum is MORE effective for teaching skills and ideas than designing a bunch of activities and games around a theme. There are several reasons for this.

Why Daily Tasks are Fulfilling to Children

I very firmly believe that everyone in this world wants to feel connected, to feel that they are competent, that they are contributing. When I think about my own life, all of the parts that feel the best revolve around me feeling connected, or feeling competent, or feeling like I'm contributing. In fact, that's why I love working in early childhood, because I get to do all three of those things simultaneously.

Think about your own life for a moment: what have been the highlights? What times have you felt the most alive, the most vibrant? And think about it through this lens I've given you. Were you feeling connected, competent, or like you were contributing, during those times? If not those things, what were you feeling that made them especially great?

Now think about the young children in your life. We all know how important it is for children to be connected: lots of research has been done on the importance of attachment. And children spend enormous amounts of time practicing being competent. As they learn to walk, they fall over and get up again and again and again. As soon as they learn to talk, the phrase “me do dat” is often the most common to come out of their mouths. We often don't let them try things for themselves as long as they'd wish, because we're in a hurry, or we can see that they won't be successful, but most of us understand and value their striving for competence. But how about the desire to contribute? That is not something that most of us think about in relation to young children, even though we can see how their faces light up when they are able to do so. Read this article from the science section of the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/science/01human.html?_r=1 ). Studies are showing that children may be born with an innate desire to help.

As parents and caretakers in our culture, it's easy for us to recognize the desire for connection, and we work very hard to develop it. In fact, we often work so hard at developing the connection piece of things that we sometimes unconsciously cut off our children's abilities to be competent and to contribute: we love them so much that we want to do everything for them. Our own desires to be competent and to contribute to them leave no room for them to be able to contribute in a meaningful way.

By consciously setting Life as the platform for children children to learn skills and ideas, we are giving them the chance to develop true competence, as we do these tasks day after day after day. As their skills develop, they know that they are really contributing to the household. And your gratitude for their help (especially as they get better at it!) helps you connect.

My article goes on to look at how we can do this effectively, with practical tips and suggestions.  During the conference call I will show video footage of children helping me with laundry, washing dishes, brushing hair, and baking bread.

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Storytelling with Toddlers

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I love telling stories to toddlers. Although I enjoy reading stories to toddlers as well, I find the act of telling a story much different from reading one. Reading a storybook is a nice cuddly activity, where children snuggle up with me on the couch and we look at the pictures together, and talk about what's going on (I rarely read the words). This is a great activity to do when the kids are tired and grouchy, or when they're wound up and need something to help them calm down. Telling a story, on the other hand, is a much different experience: I tell it from memory. I use the same words or very similar words each time. The children are watching me instead of looking at a picture. And these are the stories that show up in the children's play again and again. They are alive for the children in a way that picturebook stories never are.

The age of the group determines where I tell the story: if I have a group of one- and two-year-olds, I'll usually tell the story at the lunch table. I'll wait until the older children (who usually eat much faster than the little ones) start to finish up. I'll start a story, and the big ones sit and listen to me, while the little ones have all the time they need to eat as slowly as they do. Then we can all end the meal at the same time. For groups of older toddlers (two- and three-year-olds), I will tell simpler stories at the table, but save my real storytelling juice for either a puppet show (often done very simply on my lap) or acted out in our circle. Or I'll start a new story at the table, and tell it pretty much every day for several weeks. Then I'll take the story and do it as a puppet show or as a circle for several more weeks. I only change stories about once a month at the earliest; when I had only one- and two-year-olds, I would tell the same story for two to three months before changing.

If the idea of memorizing a story is scary for you, don't worry: toddlers are VERY forgiving! The more times you tell the story, the more regular the words will get for you. I've often started telling a story just trying to remember it from my own childhood, and over several days or even a week the words and cadences will cement themselves together.  There are two types of stories that go over really well with toddlers. The first are nature stories, and the second are simple fairy tales.

Nature Stories
Nature stories are simple stories about woodland creatures that the children might find in their backyards.  In the fall I tell one of the animals telling what they're grateful for (at Thanksgiving time), as winter comes I have a story of a mouse finding a warm home for the winter in a pumpkin. In the spring I tell the story of the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. A wonderful source for these stories is Suzanne Down of Juniper Tree puppets. She taught the puppetry portion of my LifeWays training in Wisconsin, and now is the organizer of the Rocky Mountain LifeWays training in Boulder, CO. She is a wonderful resource! You can check out her website at http://junipertreepuppets.com/ . She puts out a newsletter periodically that always has one of these simple nature stories that's appropriate for the season, with instructions on how to make simple table-puppets or lap-puppets if you wish to do it as a puppet show.

Simple Fairy Tales
The second type of story that toddlers love are fairy tales that have lots of repetition in them: The Three Little Pigs is my all-time most successful story, and is a great one to start with if you have never told a story before. You can even tell the Three Little Pigs for a month, then tell another story for a month, then tell the Three Little Pigs again. The children never tire of it; I am the only one who tires of it! Goldilocks and the Three Bears is a good one, but very long. If I can see that the children can't sit all the way through, I will truncate the part where the bears go through each activity and discover the destruction that Goldilocks has wrought. However, if I do it as a puppet show they can almost always sit through it. If I have a bit of an older toddler crowd, I will tell The Elves and the Shoemaker after Christmas.

A good story to tell at the table, that even little ones can enjoy, is the Grimm's tale Sweet Porridge. One year I had a little boy who was very demanding, so I changed the tale just a little bit so that the little girl must say to the pot “Please cook little pot, please cook.” Then when the little girl is gone, the mother forgets to say “please” when she's trying to stop the pot, and it won't stop. In my version she goes through various efforts to get the pot to stop before the little girl comes back and puts things to rights. The children LOVED it. Each time I say, “Do you think it stopped?” I look around expectantly and all of the children chorus, “No!”
Here is the version as I told it (or just google it for the original version; I know some people don't like any changes made to fairy tales):

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her mother. They were very poor, and one day they had nothing left to eat. So the little girl went out into the forest to see what she could find. While she was there she came across an old woman who gave her a magical pot. All she had to do was put the pot on the stove and say, “Please cook little pot, please cook,” and it would cook sweet porridge which they could eat to their hearts' content. When they were done, she would just say, “Please stop little pot, please stop,” and it would stop. The little girl thanked the old woman and ran home to her mother. “Look mother! We will never be hungry again,” she said, and so it was, for a long time.

One day, when the little girl had gone to town, the mother was hungry. She took out the pot and said, “Please cook little pot, please cook,” and she ate the sweet porridge to her heart's content. But when she was done eating, she forgot the words. She said, “Stop little pot, stop!” But do you think the pot stopped? No! It began to boil over the sides of the pot and onto the stove. The mother said, “Little pot, stop right now!” But do you think the pot stopped? No! The porridge began to boil off the stove and across the kitchen floor. The mother said, “Pot, stop-stop-stop-stop!” But do you think the pot stopped? No! It boiled out the door of the house and started going down the path. By the time the little girl came home, the porridge had filled every house in the town but one! The little girl ran home and said, “Please stop little pot, please stop,” and it did. But anyone who wanted to leave their house and go through the woods had to eat their way through the porridge.

If you have any questions or comments about storytelling with toddlers, don't hesitate to put it in the comments; others will surely appreciate it!


Warmly,
Miss Faith

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Dressing for Snow

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With snowy weather on the horizon or outside your door, the idea of getting kids dressed to play outside can be daunting. “Is it really worth it?” you wonder to yourself. “We'll probably end up spending more time dressing and undressing than we will outside. Maybe we'll just stay in today.”

Well, take it from me: IT'S WORTH IT!!!! If you think dressing one child, or even two children, to go outside it more than it's worth, just remember that I spent my first three years of teaching at Boulder Waldorf Kindergarten with EIGHT toddlers and one assistant. And going outside was always worth it. Even when it didn't seem like it would be worth it, it was always worth it. Even when it meant dressing eight 1- and 2-year-olds in a row, it was still worth it (although we'd usually split them up, and do four outside before lunch, and four outside after lunch).

Why do I think it's worth it? Here are my reasons:

1.    Children thrive on being outside. Although it can take them awhile to get used to cold or snowy weather, if you do it every day, they will get used to it and really learn to enjoy it.
2.    Being outdoors in the cold takes lots of energy. Using that energy has the dual benefit of helping a child grow hale and hearty, and it uses up a big portion of energy so they can be calm when they come in. When children have had the chance to play outside for a significant portion of time in the morning, the rest of the day goes so much more smoothly!

So, how did I have the patience to dress so many children for outside play in snowy weather each day? Well, a turning point came to me when I stopped viewing dressing for snow as a means to an end (getting outside), and started looking at it as an activity that could be a useful and even enjoyable; an activity in its own right. That new lens completely transformed my experience of getting ready to go outside. I stopped rushing and I slowed down. I looked at children learning to dress themselves as a real skill that was worth taking the time to learn. Look at all the gross-motor skills involved in putting on snowpants or a jacket! Look at all the fine-motor skills involved in zipping up a coat or putting on mittens. Look at how proud a child is when she is finally able to get her boots on all by herself!

If it takes twenty minutes to get ready to go outside, who cares? You don't mind if it takes twenty minutes to do an arts-and-crafts project, or to bake a cake. In fact, twenty minutes is a great amount of time for an activity! And children love it just as much as an arts-and-crafts activity, if you put the same sort of fun and delighted energy into it that you do into arts-and-crafts. They love all of the direct attention that you're giving them if you're watching and helping just as little as is needed to help them get to the next point. They love your encouragement as you watch them struggle to put on a boot and you say, “You can do it!” and they love the feeling of accomplishment when they can. So if it takes twenty minutes to dress for going outside, and then it's so chilly you can only play outside for fifteen minutes, that's OK, because while dressing warmly is necessary for going outside, it was a great activity in its own right.

There are a few things that can help dressing for snow become an enjoyable activity. The first one I already mentioned: Slow Down! In order to be able to slow down enough, make sure that you have a comfortable place to sit, on a stool or a cushion, or even a piece of carpet. Also, if you're going slowly, be sure to put your child's jacket on last (after boots and hats and even mittens, depending on the style) so they don't overheat. Another tip: as you change your attitude towards dressing for snow, and you're viewing it as a chance to let your child develop her gross-motor and fine-motor skills and to bond with you, consider putting your child's clothes on in the same order, and the same way, each time. Children learn through imitation, and when you do things in the same order and the same way each time, they can start to pick up each piece for themselves. My suggestion is for snowpants first, then boots, then hat, then mittens, then jacket. A way to make this routine fun can be to sing a little song or say a little rhyme for each part. For instance, one LifeWays provider I know tells a story of a train going through a tunnel for each leg going into a pair of snowpants. Each leg chug-chug-chugs as it goes through, then a triumphant Toot-toot! When it appears out the other side. And another teacher I know has a sweet yet informative song for putting on mittens: “Thumb in the thumb-hole, fingers all together. That's how we dress in cold and snowy weather,” she'll sing.

In fact, after you start dressing in this new way, your main problem may be that your child always wants to dress in this style, leading to upsets when you're in a rush and don't have twenty minutes to spend getting out the door. My suggestion for this is to have two styles of getting ready to go outside: the fun way, and the fast way. Let your child know which they can expect as you go over to the door. “Normally you love getting ready to go out the fun way, but today we're going to the doctor, so we'll get ready the fast way instead. You'll sit down on your little changing chair and I'll zip-zip-zip you right into everything.” Then, when you're dressing them as fast as you can, make fast zip-zip-zipping sounds with each movement, stopping every once in awhile to smile at them or give them a kiss.

So, give it a try, and do your best to get outside for at least a little while each day. If you get into this habit, you'll be amazed at the end of the winter how competent your little one can be.

Warmly (no pun intended!),
Miss Faith

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Making Your Own Rituals

You may have noticed that the children in your life love having things done exactly the same way every time. There is a good reason for this: when we do things the same way each time, it lets children develop competence. They are able to anticipate what will happen next, they know exactly how things go, and eventually they will be able to do it themselves. Children get a great deal of satisfaction in having things done the same way each time. As adults, this can sometimes drive us crazy, either because we're in a rush, or simply because we get bored of doing the same things over and over again. However, there is a way to do things the same way each time that feels fulfilling to both child and adult: to take our routines and transform them into rituals.

What is ritual? There are six definitions in my dictionary. One is, “Any practice or pattern of behavior regularly performed in a set manner.” If we use this definition, we engage in many, many rituals each day, whether we think of them that way or not. However, the term ritual often has connotations of ceremony, sometimes in connection with religious or spiritual practice. The set of actions is imbued with emotion or meaning. Think about the rituals that you remember as a child. Many people have fond memories of holiday rituals. Whether you are religious or not, holiday rituals often hold a special place because adults do their best to imbue them with specialness, with love and beauty.

When we take our day-to-day routines and imbue them with love and beauty, we transform the experience, and with it we transform our children's experience of the world. An easy place to start is eating and sleeping. How can you add some love and beauty into these routines? It can be simple, such as saying a grace or lighting a candle before a meal, or saying a certain nursery rhyme as you wipe their faces after meals. As you start to get inspired, your rituals can become more complex. For example, if you like to keep fresh-cut flowers in your dining room (which I highly recommend!), then you might have a little bud vase that stays by your child's bed. The bedtime routine could start with the child choosing one flower from the dining room arrangement, and taking it upstairs to put in his bud vase. He brushes teeth with you and gets pajamas on, then climbs into bed and you bring the vase over for him admire and smell the flower one last time before turning out the lights, and you sing softly while he falls asleep. Later, before you go to bed yourself, take the bud vase downstairs and set up a breakfast spot for your child: beautiful place-mat, bowl, cup, bib, and the bud vase with the flower, to wait for your child's awakening. After your child has eaten breakfast, you or he can put the flower back in the dining room flower arrangement, and you put the bud vase by his bed again, to wait for evening.

Incorporating these little pieces of beauty into your day can change things from being ho-hum to being a bit magical. My only word of warning is not to add too much too fast, and not to add so much that you get bogged down going through all of the steps every day. Remember, simpler is often better (notice that there was no story-reading in the bedtime ritual described above; the flower took its place). Try adding one thing at a time, and let everyone get used to it before you add the next piece. So you might start adding beauty to your meals first by getting fresh flowers for the table or sideboard. Then by getting nice place-mats. Then a candle to light at the meal. Thinking about how to add beauty and love to each portion of your day can help keep you inspired in your parenting and home-making.

You can also have rituals which only happen periodically. I knew one lovely woman who would pick up her young grandson from kindergarten every Friday and they would take the city bus to the library, choose one book, and bring it home. That one book would be read every time she saw him (she was a secondary caregiver) until the next Friday. To me, taking the city bus with a five-year-old sounds like torture, but she explained how taking the bus was an integral part of their experience together, and they both looked forward to it all week. So it's not so much WHAT you do, it's HOW you do it, and the life you breathe into it. Other periodic rituals can happen inside the home, such as baking bread or making cornmeal muffins on the same day each week, or having certain toys that only come out on rainy days, or singing the same song each time you go to a certain place (My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean each time you go to the lake, or Over the River and Through the Woods each time you go to Grandma's house, etc.). Giving these activities the regularity and the same-ness that you might not otherwise consider doing can turn them into rituals, and may be the ones that your children remember fondly when they have grown up.

New Experiences

Anyone who has spent any time around a toddler knows that young children love repetition. Children love hearing the same stories over and over, love playing the same games with you over and over, love hearing the same songs. The word “again!” is one of the first words a young child learns. With experiences, when things are done the same way each time, the child can relax into the rhythm of it. If each evening you you do things the same way, your child will anticipate each step as it comes. After tooth-brushing is done, she will be heading right to the bookcase to choose a book. After the lights went out, my mother used to light a candle near our bed, sing a lullaby, blow out the candle and sit quietly next to the bed as I drifted off. I can clearly remember this routine being relaxing and reassuring to me.

Why do children love and need routine so much? Here's an analogy that I think is apt: once I was invited by a Muslim friend to go to the mosque with her for the celebration of Eid, the end of Ramadan. I eagerly said yes, curious to see what it would be like. Once we got there, however, I was quite nervous. I wasn't used to wearing the head-scarf she had lent me. I didn't know what was going to happen, and what would be expected of me. Should I stand with them while they prayed, or should I watch? If I watched, where should I sit? There were no chairs. I had heard that in some cultures, showing the soles of your feet was rude. Was this one of them? I didn't know. I followed my friend around closely. She introduced me to the women in her community, some of whom kissed me on the cheeks, and some of whom touched their hearts and murmured phrases that I assumed meant “nice to meet you.” She showed me where I could sit during the prayers, which were all in Arabic and involved lots of movements and everyone did at the same time. I was glad to be watching. After, we socialized and ate strange and delicious foods, then went home. The whole thing lasted perhaps two hours, and I was exhausted.

I loved that glimpse into another culture, but I was glad to get home in the end, where I knew exactly where everything was, how things went, what was likely to happen, and how. Most of my daily interactions are just a small step out from being at home, because I've done them all hundreds of times. Toddlers, however, haven't done anything outside the home hundreds of times. I believe that the whole world outside the home is like that visit to the mosque, for these little people in our lives. They don't know how things go or what's appropriate. They don't have the skills to converse easily with others or do what others are doing. Even though they have someone who knows what's going on to show them around, it's still exhausting, like that visit was for me. If we can remember that, and limit the amount of exposure our children have to new experiences, then new experiences can be exciting, something to be anticipated beforehand, relished at the time, and talked about afterward.