chicks and boomerangs...

This morning when I arrived on the CSS campus the students were excited about the "unzipping" of baby chicks. Two had hatched in the night and a third was busy pecking through its shell. Children taking part in such a miracle of nature is part of the hands-on, hearts engaged approach to education at the Clear Spring School. Their level of interest was off the charts. Do you remember when schools were to play their part in the development of reverence for all life? Susan E. Blow, in 1894 wrote about Kindergarten as follows:

"The care of animals and plants is important for its influence upon the intellect as well as for its influence upon character. It is needless to do more than allude to the fact that what the child cares for he will observe and study, and that hence gardens and living pets form the best possible introduction to botany and natural history. Many suggestions with regard to the transition from care-taking to observation, from observation to systematic study, are to be found scattered through Froebel's writings and should be carefully pondered."

Most schools, however are so fixated on standardized testing that they have little or no time anymore for such wonderful things.

Later the first, second and third grade students came to wood shop to finish their boomerangs, by painting them in the aboriginal Australian fashion, with small dots of paint. The boomerangs are part of their study of the continent and nation of Australia.

Make, fix and create...