"What grows?" we asked the children. "Hair, fish, frogs, toenails, armadillos, carrots, teeth" and more were some of the answers children generated those first few weeks as we invited each other to wonder a bit and to ponder what and later how living things grow and change. Before starting and then throughout the study, teachers wondered about the best ways to get children talking. A formal debate with a moderator? Sitting in a circle? After reading a book? In a hideout in the bushes? While playing with frog puppets? While scratching the rabbits ears? It turns out all of these, minus the formal debate, are the million rich opportunities that present themselves throughout the day for discussion. Teachers were ready with clip boards and scraps of paper, to document and then further provoke children's questions. Some children looked at the world around them and ventured the idea that babies grow in eggs too, like the chickens. Some explained why people start as babies with, "Well, you couldn't just Pchuuuu! [exploding sound] and have a kid. That would be weird." Indeed. At ALG we really try to cultivate the virtue of not knowing, of wondering, of hypothesizing. "Knowing the right answer requires no decisions, carries no risks, and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is thoughtless..In most classrooms it is the quick right answer that is appreciated. Knowledge of the answer ahead of time is, on the whole, more valued than ways of figuring it out." (Duckworth, 1996)

At ALG we are, if you couldn't already tell, much more about process than product; more about learning how to think, than learning what to think. "Certainly the material world is too diverse and too complex for a child to become familiar with all of it in the course of an elementary school career. The best one can do is to make such knowledge, such familiarity seem interesting and accessible to the child. That is, one can familiarize children with a few phenomena in such a way as to catch their interest, to let them raise and answer their own questions, to let them realize that their ideas are significant--so that they have the interest, the ability, and the self confidence to go on by themselves." (Duckworth, 1996) Furthermore, we want to give children all the time we can to be in the natural world. To know it as a place both filled with mystery, joy and magical potential and as a place that is as familiar to them as, well, their own backyard. Throughout this study, we were struck by how social, how connective this learning could be. Children would spontaneously gather, their heads leaning together as they shared a discovery: a worm, a caterpillar, an unhatched chicken. At other times, you would see a child on their own, rapt in quiet concentration as they watched ants crawling in and out of their hill.

While there was a lot of growing this year: tadpoles to frogs, caterpillars to butterflies and seeds to food, we also explored and quietly attended to our unhatched chickens. Holding dead chickens, like life itself, is not for the faint of heart. But children again and again demonstrated their curiosity, their reverence and sadness when something dies, and above all, their willingness to explore, to take closer looks.

 We all know that children learn best by experience, by using their senses to touch, taste, see, and feel. How then we pondered, could we give them the experience of hatching? After much thinking, and even a teacher trial run, we decided we would wrap them in paper, give them a knife (their egg tooth) and a cracker (their nourishing yolk) and have them hatch. We split the children into chicks and hens and then switched.

 The chicks were so delighted to be in their cozy egg and were also eager to wobble and then hatch, using their egg tooth to poke their way out. .

We did some lovely one to one correspondence counting as the momma hens flapped their wings 21 times to symbolize the passing of the 21 days until hatching. 

 We were struck by the real tenderness this play engendered as the momma hens took their care-taking responsibilities very seriously and there was lots of gentle hugging as the mommas ushered their babies into the world. Children demonstrated their scientific understandings of incubation, of growing and changing and of the roles and responsibilities of raising a baby.

There was much good work done on pattern, symmetry and design as children worked in many mediums to create butterflies. Children need, and so were given,  many and varied opportunities to approach  and re-approach ideas and skills. For example we cared for caterpillars and watched them make their chrysalis then we cared for and then released the butterflies. We read books about butterflies and then painted and drew pictures of them. We built butterflies out of blocks and we sang songs about butterflies and pretended that we were caterpillars and then turned into butterflies. All the while children are learning how to work together, how to solve problems and negotiate, how to represent and thus comprehend their experiences through dramatic play and visual arts. This was a lovely end to a lovely year and there has been much growing indeed. May we all go forth and hold a worm, or watch a bird gather sticks for it's nest. Now get out there and, fly butterfly fly!!