Holes in the Playground

For the past few weeks in our classroom, we have been learning all about plants. Each day in our classroom, I am continually amazed with the child brain and its' cognitive abilities. We started off our plant unit by reading popular children's literature such as "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle and "From Seed to Plant" by Gail Gibbons. I had a long list of what I believe would be intriguing and hands-on activities for my kiddos. We planted tomatoes, onions, and peppers in our EarthBox Garden Container (Thank you Illinois Agriculture in the Classroom!!), marigolds, and of course we had to watch our window beans grow. We've made observations about our beans that led to identifying the parts of a plant. I added seeds and soil in our sensory table, gardening tools in our dramatic play, and have given them various plant-related scenarios to play off of in general during center time.

Today we went outside to recess, and students seemed bored and uninterested with the playground. The sandbox wasn't as appealing, and the slide just wasn't on their radar today. Lately students have been so excited to pull up plants (weeds) from the ground to look at the roots and identify the other parts. They make collections and even take them home to their parents to show them! I love seeing them so excited. Today, a student was fumbling around on the playground looking for weeds and decided he wanted to make a garden. He started putting his hands in the muddy ground and "planting" the pulled up weeds. He eventually had a nice little section of the playground planted. My first thought, was "Oh my goodness. His hands are messy. He is getting dirt everywhere. He is digging (small) holes in the playground. He's getting dirty. He might get hurt or dirty. What if he throws the dirt? He needs to stop." THAT is the elementary educator in me; however, I began to observe him and realized that nearly HALF of the class came over to see what he was doing. They immediately joined in and I could hear them saying "plant the roots! They suck up the food and water!! It will die if you don't!", or "Miss Sirach! We need water! The plants will die without water!!" They were even throwing out terms that I didn't think they would remember such as: minerals, nutrients, shoot, seedling, etc!

How could I stop them from this?

In no way was this hindering their learning at all... but ENHANCING it completely. This play was so appopriate. They were so engaged, excited and proud of their "gardening" work. Sure, they were digging (small) holes in the playground and they were getting their hands a little dirty... but I couldn't stop them from this. As I reflected back on this throughout the day, I was reminded of everything that I have learned this year. I was so used to such a high-level of control... but with early childhood, you must have an entirely different mindset. I'm currently reading Moral Classrooms, Moral Children: Creating a Constructivist Approach in Early Education (thank you, Dr. McIntyre!). Today's incident immediately reminded me of many things I've read in this book, but specifically this: "Consider some characteristics of most prisons that also characterize most schools. Liberty is suppressed. There is no possibility of demanding rights from authorities. Inmates and children are EXCLUDED from power in decision/making. Rewards are manipulated as exchange for compliance with authorities. Punishments are decided bureaucratically, sometimes for minor infractions of petty rules. Let us not force our children to be imprisoned in school."


While the elementary educator with a high-level of control within me was saying, "DIGGING HOLES IN THE PLAYGROUND? GETTING YOUR HANDS DIRTY?" the other part of me was saying this was completely ok because they were so engaged in their learning... and it was amazing. They are excited about learning. Rarely is that a trend past kindergarten anymore... and I want to change that. I don't have the whole teaching thing down perfect... and I never will, but I love learning new things that shape my teaching philosophy. I love learning things that help me understand my students. 


And I love seeing my students love learning.