Si se puede! Yes we can!

Well we have had a lovely time learning about the workers in our neighborhood: the firefighters, the musicians, the bakers, the restaurant workers, the letter carriers and more. We closed our study with a little exploration on worker's rights and, for the oldest children, a play dealing with Mother Jones and a brief history of child labor in the United States. Heavy stuff made appropiate and accesible by our gifted Melissa through books, songs, puppetry, blocks and dramatic play.

We opened the worker's rights study with some readings of the picture books Si Se Puede and Side by Side. Si se puede is a stoty told from a young boy's point of view of his mother's life as an office janitor and her decision to be part of the big Janitor Strike; Side by Side chronicles Cesar Chavez's work organizing farm workers. Then Melissa did a puppet show for the three o'clockers dramatizing the union song "The Banks are Made of Marble" using materials from our very own block area.     

"I've traveled 'round this country

from shore to shining shore

It really made me wonder

the things I heard and saw

I saw the weary farmer

plowing sod and loam

l heard the auction hammer

just a-knocking down his home

But the banks are made of marble

with a guard at every door

and the vaults are stuffed with silver

that the farmer sweated for

I've seen the weary miner

scrubbing coal dust from his back

I heard his children cryin'

"Got no coal to heat the shack"

But the banks are made of marble

with a guard at every door

and the vaults are stuffed with silver

that the miner sweated for

I've seen my brothers working

throughout this mighty land

l prayed we'd get together

and together make a stand

Then we might own those banks of marble

with a guard at every door

and we might share those vaults of silver

that we have sweated for

 A few days later, we took aside the oldest group, Red,  to further explore some of these ideas of labor and equity. We talked about how many years ago when parents were unable to earn enough to take care of their families, children had to work. We looked at some stark and stunning images of children working and talked about the back breaking and dangerous conditions. We focused on farm work  reaping cotton and beets; "breaker boys" who sorted coal in the mines and children working in sewing mills.

Teachers set up a series of simple tableaux using blocks and fabric which depicted different work scenes.

Here is cotton growing in the fields.

As children played out these scenes not only did they gain access to complex ideas about economy, society and family but through these rich dramatic plays they strengthened their social skills by working together, communicating ideas and listening. In taking on pretend roles and using imaginary objects they engaged in deep self regulation as they restricted thier impulses to be part of this imaginary world and they engaged in creative and symbolic thought.   

For each work scene, Melissa wrote a chant for the children, e.g. "Lifting this cotton in a heavy sack, we're too small, they hurt our backs! These simple rhymes gave children a sense of the difficulties children underwent as well as gave them a rich language experience with poetic expression, rhymes and new vocabulary. Here they are lopping off the tops of beets with 'sharp tools.' And then they were "breaker boys" having to bend over and sort coal from a moving belt.

Those work conditions were dangerous! The children would pretend to get hurt lopping the tops off of beets with a sharp knife or sticking thier hands in a sewing machine to change a needle and the heartless bosses (played by the teachers with relish!) would tell the children to keep working. Then we did some reading and talking about Mother Jones and her march for children's rights.

Earlier a co-oper helped the children write signs based on the signs held by mill-working children on thier march with Mother Jones. Children practiced thier letters and sounds as they worked to craft these signs.

We ended the play with children marching and taking turns carrying signs. We chanted, "We want to play!" and "We want to go to school!" Our protest was successful! Afterwards the children were able to return to play in our lovely, little school!

As we say goodbye to a spirited study which took us to workers in our neighborhood both present and past, we look forward to returning to school in January. It will be lights out as we commence a study on Nighttime. From the stars in the sky to nocturnal friends likes owls and racoons to much anticipated pajama days, good and cozy times are ahead. Thank you to everyone who helped out with our Neighborhood study and we will see you soon for some star gazing. Love, ALG

Oh, who are the people in your neighborhood?

What does social studies look like at ALG? Well Social Studies is the study of people: how they live, how they work, how they play and how they shape and are shaped by their environment. The philosophy and practice at ALG begins with the idea that children are makers of meaning through their interactions in the human world. As such, social studies is really at the core of our interdisciplinary curriculum. Every moment, every day at school we are engaged in the study of human life as it presents itself from moment to moment, e.g., sharing, working together cooperatively, resolving conflicts; and with this study on "Our Neighborhood" we have been exploring the the connections and relationships necessary for our physical and psychological survival in the world around us. 

We began this unit with a study on firefighters and fire safety. We took a trip to the firehouse and met the brave people who are there to help us in an emergency. We practiced for several weeks how to Stop, Drop and Roll if our clothes catch and fire and used old, deactivated cell phones to practice calling 911. We talked about house fires and how you need a meeting place and a plan with your family. So we provided all these input rich experiences for children and they processed and assimilated those experiences through play. We sang songs about firefighters, read books, used flannel boards, wore dress ups, played with toy engines and made firehouses in the block area. 

On our trip we made plans ahead of time to take note of the different physical structures and shapes present in the firehouse so that we could come back to school and build a firehouse out of blocks. Using memory, imagination, photos and a dad with a knack for engineering children made a firehouse complete with retractable door as they had observed on their fieldtrip.

We wrote a Thank You letter to the firefighters at Engine 9 and read a book about the post office to learn how our letter would travel.

We even learned that you can have drummers in your neighborhood and that musicians and artists are an important part of our community too. Children loved making percussive music and at the end many agreed that they too could be a drummer when they grow up. (you can thank us later!) This is a thread we will pick up again when we create community art projects with found objects in the spring and explore the role of public art. 

From firefighters we moved to bakers and bread. Where does our food come from. Who makes it and how? Where and how can you buy it? We explored these questions and more as children got to take a "back of the house" tour of two local restaurants: Sticky Fingers and Potter's House. Children learned how it takes many people doing many actions to bring food from bags and bottles in the kitchen to warm food on your plate. We saw dishwashers, cashiers, cooks and more.We explored the science of baking as we played with vinegar and baking soda, as we added yeast to warm water and watched it bubble and, deliciously, as we ate warm, fresh bread. 

Potter’s House is a special place for ALG. Meade Hanna, the manager there, sent her three children to ALG and has been making bread with ALG children for many, many years now. Potter’s House serves the Adam’s Morgan community which is ALG’s original neighborhood. In school we talked about how while Potter’s house invites us to make bread, it invites all people to come and eat on Thanksgiving day and people without homes or family can come to the table and have a home cooked meal and company. We held a food drive where children could participate in helping their neighbors. The food itself was an academic resource too as children participated in sorting and classifying the food. We made patterns with the different cans at circle time and children worked on their emerging literacy as they drew pictures and labels. 

On a very blustery fall afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, we packed up the food in bags and children worked in partners to carry the bags to and from the bus stops.

At Potter's House children were given welcome and thanks. Children felt proud as they unloaded their bags and arranged the food. A teacher treated the children to, what else, wheat rolls fresh from the oven and we got to sit and eat before trooping back to school.

Our community walk has now taken a turn towards the post office. They begin to learn about national and local postal systems through our smaller and more comprehensible ALG mail.  At ALG we want children to understand reading and writing as founts for pleasure and purpose. When children draw a message for a friend, when they use their symbol to address a letter, when they start to sound out a few words, they are cementing the idea that writing is a means of communication, that marks on paper have can be storage units for ideas and information and that their brain, plus their hand, plus a pen and paper can make meaning.

So in our neighborhood we have firefighters, drummers, bakers, cashiers, dishwashers, letter carriers and more. Children have begun to really process the ideas that we are all in this community thing together and that they, though, young have important parts to play too.

 

Questions you can ask your child at home to further this study:

*Who are the people in your family and what do they do?

*How do you make and keep a friend?

*What are the jobs of people in our community?

*How do people earn and use money?

*What are things we can do do make our community stronger and happier?

Eat Your Greens!

Many parents wonder why we do what we do here at school. Why is my child running around in an apron pretending to be a baker or meowing like a cat? Why blank paper versus coloring book pages? Why are they chopping vegetables and cooking when they could be learning reading or math? Here we will tackle the last question and talk a bit about the value of cooking in the classroom.

For children to engage in intellectual work, such as math or reading, what is required of them? They need to move carefully, to work with focus, to follow sequential steps, to concentrate, to make intelligent choices and to persevere. All of that is learned through cooking.  

 In cooking children learn how to work in a group. They take turns and share limited space and materials as they work towards as common goal. They also work independently strengthening their growing hands as they chop carrots, slice kale and harvest baby lettuce from the greenhouse. As they use tools like knives, spoons and as they open and close jars and scoop flour they are making their hands and fingers stronger and more coordinated.

When we prepare foods at school, children are more adventurous about eating; crispy green kale chips, split pea soup thick with carrots and celery, pale green and purple lettuce are tried and enjoyed by most. Children learn to try new things, to take risks and to share the fruits of their cooking labor with their school community.

 When children cook we talk to them a lot about what they are doing. They are learning new words as we talk about leafy greens, stems, seeds, pitting, colanders, and more. They are scientists as they measure and mix; as they observe what happens when we add water to the flour. 

They learn comparative words as they measure items for a recipe and fill a pitcher with water. They develop problem solving skills through experimentation and observe cause and effect as they watch liquid batter sizzle in the hot pan. 

They learn how to approach the world with curiosity and a well earned sense of confidence in their abilities. When they share homemade soup with a friend or eat fresh warm bread with rosemary from our garden, they are participating in that most ancient and essential ritual of food and family. When a child has many experiences in these kinds of practical and rewarding work, they are gaining skills that will serve them in their academic life and well beyond. And that my friends is yummy stuff indeed!