Building Community

The teachers have been looking for ways to share the idea of Mid-Pacific Institute's "100 years in Manoa” with the children. As we mentioned before, the children are not developmentally ready to embrace the concept of "place," so discussing "Manoa,"  "community," and "100 years" is challenging! We want to share a few ideas about how to help your children understand these concepts that are developing in the Bumblebee’s classroom



Since young children learn best through their senses, we took a field trip to Manoa Marketplace to show the children some of the things that are in our community called Manoa. Although we know the children are familiar with shopping areas because you take them with you to the supermarket, to the drugstore, or to restaurants, we were interested in helping the children explore the notion that Manoa Marketplace is part of the Manoa community, as is MPI. Wouldn't the children be able to make sense of the relationship between themselves and the marketplace? Or the relationship between MPI and the marketplace?  We asked about their favorite part of the marketplace, and nearly all the children responded, “The cookie shop!" (Safeway gave us cookies.) But the children weren't quite ready to move beyond this sensory connection.

As the children share their summer/winter journals, we notice how much they all enjoy sharing about their own family with each other.  The children can recognize and relate to events in others' lives, which is an important developmental achievement when children can move beyond a sense of “me” to an appreciation for “we."

Self-centeredness or "egocentrism" is part of a three-year-old's cognitive and social development. The world revolves around them. It is hard for them to understand another person's point-of-view, let alone that people live in different communities!  However, the children can appreciate the notion of "family" because "family" is a lived experience and the strongest component of their environment. Thus, we acknowledge that their working understanding of "community" is "family."

So we decided to go smaller. We thought it would be interesting to combine the sharing of the journals with the concept of community (as well as all the art media the children have been exploring). As a provocation to the children, we have created these little houses. We would like you to provide special little objects for the children to collage on their house, such as photo copies of your family, pets, favorite stuffed animal or small objects that can be glued onto the house to make it uniquely their own. We will be providing a bumblebee and a symbol of some sort to represent MPI Preschool. Take a look at the houses so you know the size of photos and treasures to collect with your child. The children will be painting the houses tomorrow and start gluing some time next week. Think about things that are unique to your child so the houses really show their special personality.

Carrie (Samantha) came in to help us bake lemon cookies. The children helped measure and mix the batter. They helped form balls from the dough, then smash it into cookies. A group of children took the cookies down to the “big kids school” (Scudder dining hall) to bake the cookies in their oven. The group talked about how the dining hall and kitchen were part of our school and part of our Mid-Pacific community. We welcome any volunteers to help us cook with the children. Let us know what and when you’d like to share a favorite recipe with us. We are thinking of making a Bumblebee Cookbook, if we get enough recipes — a great way to create our own preschool community. Most of these children will be together for the next fourteen years!!! Let's start building strong relationships amongst the children, our families, and MPI now!

We are looking forward to see what develops. Recipe books, houses, friendships, ohana!

Posted on February 13, 2008 8:05 AM | Permalink