Costumes and Loose parts
So this morning they piled out of the cars- princesses, superheroes, rock stars- we had a little bit of everything. There’s no real teaching in the wearing of costumes other than the confidence that it takes to walk into a classroom when you’re not dressed like the others. Or just the pure joy that you see on children’s faces as thethey they’re allowed to be little.
Most of you know that I am a child led program. That basically means that I do not push academics but I watch to see what the children are interested in and “carefully insert” my teaching that way. When we wrap up at the end of the day many days I ask the children “what would you like to do tomorrow?” Yesterday out of nowhere they all said we want to wear costumes. 😳 Well, OK – I guess there’s no reason NOT to wear costumes. I’ll let your parents know.
So today you all piled out of the cars. We had princesses, superheroes, and even rock stars.
There’s not any real learning in the wear it wearing a costume unless you take into account the confidence that it takes to walk into a room and looking like no one else. costume wearing is more about the absolute joy that it gives a child.
Miss Melissa has been cleaning up getting ready to move. Today she brought by a sack full of tiny loose parts. It was mainly magnets from vacation but there were also some small toys and rewards her boys got that they no longer wanted.
Those special necklace awards went great with our superhero costumes.
The girls managed to find a lot of small buildings from her travels like the Sears Tower or the Empire State building and begin building a little city.
Others were mesmerized by the snow globes they were included.
I figured – why have a costume party without cupcakes??? So we made lemon cupcakes
and we did not wait until lunch or snack to eat them – we had them in the middle of the morning.
Because we could –
We wore – costumes because we could
We explored Melissa‘s loose parts today because we could –
Many of those loose parts are coming home because they can🙈
I think in childhood we need to spend more time thinking about the things we can do and focusing less on the things we can’t do. Childhood is definitely a time of why not.
