Story 1
When my daughter was 2 ½, she asked that we take all of the blue crayons from our new 96 Crayola pack out of the box. She then asked that we color little blue swatches on blank paper, and she asked me to name each color as we examined each swatch. I had no idea the reason why. This activity continued for about 3 days. A few weeks later, she was playing outside in the early evening. I called for her and told her that it was time to come in and get ready for bed (sleeping was her least favorite activity). She told me that it was not time to come in or go to sleep yet because the sky had not turned cerulean. Cerulean? I was at first taken back. What was she talking about? I looked up at the sky and she prompted me to wait a bit and watch. She assured me that the sky was going to change a variety of colors before it finally turned cerulean. Then, as she noted, it would soon be dark and in fact, time for bed. She was a creative little girl with an artistic flair. And she was curious about the various colors of the sky. Who knew? And learning the names of the shades of blue helped her to solve a time problem and perhaps manipulate a bit. I have never forgotten that story. I tell it often for many reasons. Usually, to remind people to take notice of the small details of our natural world. In this case, I tell the story to remind us how children learn, how everyone learns. Learning is a natural process that comes from observation and desire to know.
Story 2
When my daughter was little we purchased several cardboard books, the durable kind that are child friendly so little hands could learn to turn pages. By the time my son came along, all books were still in good shape. I had been warned that having a boy was different. He would be more rambunctious, more active, even maybe more destructive. He wasn’t any of those things but I remember distinctly being disappointed one day to find some of the books had been torn at the binding. After all, without instruction, my daughter had learned the purpose of the book, to look at the content. She learned how to turn the pages in the right order and would sit and pretend to read just as I had modeled for her hundreds of times. So why was the boy destroying the books? I had taught him the same; didn’t I? So I watched him one day intently. What I discovered was that my son although still interested in the content had become curious about the construction of the book. He was trying to understand how the book was together. Part of it was secured and closed. But the other side was open and could move. He was so intrigued by this simple concept. And here it had never occurred to me that the construction of a simple object like a book could be so interesting. I am not sure what exactly he learned about the construction of the book through his discovery activity of tearing it apart, but he was curious, mystified and wanted to understand, wanted to learn, wanted to know. By watching young children explore their world, we can see the natural learning, sometimes incidental, sometimes purposeful, always meaningful.
We, adults, have much to learn ourselves.
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