It's Springtime, It's Springtime and Mother Nature sings

We are having a particularly glorious spring this year in the Pacific Northwest.

When the flowers begin to bud and the ground begins to swell with warmth, an inner glow also becomes apparent in all of us. I was raised here in Seattle, and over time the winter months have become longer, with an added gray cloud cover that never seems to clear. But our weather reports this spring are unusual in that they refer to a strange phenomenon called: sun breaks.  So you see, sometimes we just begin to feel the expansion of moving out of our homes and dig our hands in the soil or just listen to the returning sweet song birds in the trees.

I too have been away from my computer and spending more of my time with several large projects that take me outside in the fresh air.

In my Living Wisdom Classroom we have covered several new units this spring and also rekindled our annual events, the Mother’s Day Tea and our Living Wisdom Joyathan.

It would take weeks to describe all our daily activities to you in detail.  That means I will have some nice events to write on this summer, when school is not in session.

(Double click on photo to see all the projects)

But for now, let me say that we began the month with flowers and frogs.

When you first look at this, it might seem like a patented preschool education prescription for teaching--focus on words that begin with “F”--but honestly, this didn’t occur to me at all.  I choose my own curriculum by the energy of the students, looking at what will uplift them, along with the rhythm of what is happening right outside our classroom window. All too often a typical Early Childhood curriculum talks only to the intellect.  It doesn’t take into an account the child’s feeling nature and physical components. Too often we talk, talk, and talk with young children, when what they need are need “direct experiences”.  I have found, by working spiritually with young children that they already know much of what I am trying to teach to them.  I have witnessed that learning is for many an act of remembering.  They already know almost everything you are educating them about. It is a profound truth for me, this an awakening of the young soul. It is an awakening and remembering from the past. I don’t like to purchase online curricula. What I want to share with the children in my classroom are truths that are a part of their everyday world.   Some subjects that will educate children for a lifetime include: how to be a true friend, how to work harmoniously with others, how to show compassion, how to be calm in a hectic world, and how to find true happiness within their own being. These are my goals as an Education for Life Teacher.

I chose to focus on flowers and frogs this month for the expansion that I sensed that these subjects could bring to a child’s soul. So often we see children picking dandelions in the grass and making a bouquet for their mothers, or witness their delight in finding new flowers that they have never seen before in the organic gardens at our Living Wisdom School.

When we studied frogs, we were able to go out and look for them in a nearby stream.  We made frog habitats, drew their life cycles, created three-dimensional models of frogs, painted original stories about frogs, and stimulated learning with acting out stories from the classic, Frog and Toad, tales about true friendship by Arnold Lobel. The time in my classroom is both teacher and child directed. Notice I didn’t mention anything about teaching letters. Children can learn these from their parents or grandparents in a family setting. The classroom activities are rich with play, art and creativity to uplift the child’s soul.

These simple truths open their hearts in love for the experience of harmony and build on the capacity to love that we try to cultivate through-out the year in our classroom. Isn’t this wonderful?  We often forget about the simple experiences of childhood.

Look at this one!

Here are some of the samples of our time together.

A child handing me a flower that they picked for me. 

True friendship holding hands and picking flowers together

I want to end with a thank you to all our children in my classroom this month.  We have had a memorable spring as Mother Nature sang to us through her beauty.