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We had our first winter snow storm this past Friday and I am eager to get outside and explore the transformed landscape with the children. The whole world is new and the children’s play takes on the intensity of encountering the world for the first time. As we go outside, exploring the ice, snow and cold, playing with these elements and qualities, we encounter the geometry of snowflakes, the physical, sensual qualities of snow, the physics of frozen water, and the slipperiness of ice. With snow we can go sledding, sculpt snow figures, shovel, dig, build, roll around in the snow, and go on epic adventures. With ice we can poke around the river’s edge, suck on icicles, break it up into pieces, marvel at its many forms, and do experiments with water and ice. Walking, sliding, slipping, tumbling, falling, climbing, burrowing, sledding, skating; navigating ice, frozen earth, snow, and the winter woods, exploring the new visual geography of leafless trees alongside vivacious evergreens. We develop new scavenger hunt lists to help children look more closely at the world around us. We can be present to the world around us, decenter our own importance, and not live in a bubble of (dis) ease.

Winter is also an excellent time to investigate animal signage: tracks, scat, markings, kills, homes, etc. How can we get closer to all the animals with whom we share the earth by becoming aware of their presence and lives through their signs? What are animals doing during winter? How are they dealing with the cold, snow and ice. Bears give birth to their cubs during the winter and owls lay eggs that will hatch at the end of January and in early February. Many nature centers offer night time owl walks and  daytime lunch talks. What are the life cycles of different animals and how do they intersect with the seasons in general and the winter in particular? How do we humans adapt to the winter by dressing in appropriate clothes, eating different foods, “migrating” “hibernating,” storytelling, playing games around the table, making art, doing science, and creating cozy, inviting places, hearths, homes and schools?

The Full Wolf Moon is January 17th. Astronomy, the sky, space, the earth, the moon and the sun, sunrise and sunset, the lengthening day, the other planets, the stars, and the star dust that becomes the earth and all its creatures: all this makes for excellent “themes” to explore with the children as long as we follow their interests, questions and energies and make things as “hands on” as possible. We explore space, “new worlds, and new civilizations,” through dramatic play and building and blasting off rockets. We take advantage of more time inside by exploring chemistry and making crystals with salts and sugars, observing snowflakes, and reading about Wilson Bentley who spent his whole life studying snowflakes and figuring out how to photograph them. We can play with light and color. We can grow flowers or plants inside, which is a great way to create resonances with the evergreen life force always alive outside. We learned about the Japanese art of ikebana and made floral arrangements out of winter flowers. We can keep our bookshelves, science tables, wonder walls, and cabinets of curiosity stocked with new discoveries and invitations to inquiry. 

As we explore and celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday, we can look to him, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter Movement, the American Indian Movement, and the Woman’s Liberation movement among others, for strategies to engage with the challenges and problems of our times. How can we help children affirm and embrace multi-cultural communities and grow beyond racial and gender stereotypes to enjoin rich, complex, intersectional identities that allow each individual child to become the wonderful human person that they already are? We do this with stories, dramatic play, conversations, and practices of inclusion and loving-kindness. We help children express themselves, deal with difficult emotions and feel a part of a wider community where they are loved and valued. We do this by helping children learn about different cultures from their own, to be curious about one another and to be kind to each other. We teach children how to read the word and the world so that they can be active agents in their own lives and rewrite the future.

Schools are the decisive transition spaces between the relative insularity of the home and the ostensibly democratic spaces of the public sphere ( all three of these spheres operate within larger structural fields of economic, natural and spiritual forces). As parents, elders, caretakers, and teachers we can help children move from being the objects of other people’s words, to being articulate and eloquent subjects in their own right. We teach them about interdependence, the illusion of separateness, public spaces, marching, voting, civil disobedience, equality, liberty, mutual aid, and how to act from a place of peace, love and understanding. We do this by committing ourselves to the ongoing project of learning more about the history of education in the United States, and the history of progressive education movements in the United States and around the world.  We carve out time in your own lives to learn more about the role of education in both reproducing structures of inequality and providing opportunities for collective liberation and self actualization. 

We do mini-inquiry projects on areas of curriculum interest to ourselves and the children we work with. We tap into the local funds of knowledge of our families and the community. We take   neighborhood walks/marches in the neighborhood to get a lay of the land. Where does our food come from? Where does our water come from? Where does our energy come from? Who lives here? Where can children play? What access do children have to green spaces and public places? What problems and conflicts are there and how can we contribute to making our communities happier and healthier places to live? Do your own thing. Get in where you can fit in, start your own collectives. Join a group like reimagining our work https://www.childcareexchange.com/row/  Follow the Zinn Education Project at www.zinnedproject.org. What’s important is to put openness, curiosity, caring, play, inquiry, art, science, basic needs and community at the forefront of our lives.

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January in New England can remind us of hidden inner resources, strengths, and as of yet unknown powers that can help us through the long, cold, winter (and this frustratingly, recalcitrant Covid pandemic).  For us humans it is a time to unearth the stories that help us make sense of where we come from and where we are going. It is a time to play outside and cultivate our resourcefulness in interacting with difficult, challenging conditions. It is a time to face our history and move forward with a pragmatic, utopian optimism because we know how wonderful it is to be alive, to be human. We discover that “this life has many dangers/it is more fragile than a bubble blowing in the wind/It is a great marvel to have time to live/To breath in and out and to wake up from sleep.”Najaruna, Letter to a Friend