“Wow!”

A group of us walked to the woods with a class of two-year-olds from the Stekkjaras preschool here in Reykjavik, Iceland where I am participating in the annual Play Iceland conference. Most of them already already knew the protocol: they could run ahead but were expected to stop at certain predetermined points to allow the adults and less energetic children to catch up. These were the more experienced children, the ones who knew to anticipate the forest that lay ahead, but there were a few who were new to the school. These tended to be the dawdlers, the ones inclined to stop to smell the roses, or rather, pick up sticks, tug on tufts of fall grasses, and generally study the motes from which the world is made.

One boy in particular seemed disinclined to rush through the process. Occasionally, he would run with the others, his sort legs working as hard as those of his classmates’, but with the effect of moving forward at a pace not much greater than a walk. Frequently, he stooped to examine the ground. Regularly, he veered off the path. Often, he turned around and started to head back toward school, completely unaware of the general direction of our group.

We had been warned that this would be a long process, getting the little ones to the woods, and it was, but finally we arrived in the place that those of us who live where trees grow tall might not identify as a forest, but stands as one here in a land of wind and cold stunted trees. The leading mass of children stopped right there at the edge, suddenly no longer in a hurry now that they were at their destination. The dawdling boy didn’t bring up the rear, that role was left to another new child who simply seemed unenthused by the long walk, a common circumstance for children new to the school, the teachers assured us, “In a few weeks, he’ll be running with the others.”

I lost track of the dawdling boy for a bit while I observed the other children as they engaged with the trees and shrubs. They had declared their goal for the morning was to find animals and a dead bird, something that had happened on a recent trip. Along the way, many of them had stopped to collect small snails that they had picked out of the grass, so they were already halfway to completing their self-selected mission. I don’t think they were actively seeking out a dead bird as they played, although maybe they were, I don’t speak Icelandic, but it seemed that they were now simply enjoying their cold, breezy morning together under a lacework of barren autumn branches through which we spied a cloudy sky.

I would not be the first to describe the landscape here as “austere” although it seemed far from that as the children ran and climbed and foraged and bubbled over with observations, ideas, and discussion. Here, with the children, it was as rich and full and alive as any natural place on earth. 

After a bit, the mass of children headed off into a clutch of trees, following a path that they seemed to already know. This is when I discovered the dawdler again, completely uninterested in following the others. After a few steps into the trees he stopped to examine a trunk, patting it with his hand. He said, “Wow!” We could still see the others, but they were so far ahead of us that we could no longer hear their voices. I wondered if I should hurry him along, but decided to instead leave that job to his teachers. From patting the trunk, he turned to a stump that emerged from the carpet of decaying leaves and grass upon which we stood. He have it a good kick, again saying, “Wow!” He was not necessarily including me in his exploration, but I was there. He found a low hanging branch upon which some brown leaves still clung. Once more saying, “Wow!” he rustled the leaves with his hands. This is when he turned to look over his shoulder at me, including me for the first time. He pointed at the sky, drawing my attention up into the sparse canopy. “Wow!” He then returned to the tree trunk and patted it, making sounds like words, although if they were they were in a language I don’t understand. He then kicked the stump again before rustling the leaves and drawing my attention to the sky. For the next several minutes, he repeated the pattern again and again, varying it only slightly. 

By now, the others were quite a way ahead of us. I could see one of the teachers lingering outside the thicket, not too far away. I figured if he needed to catch up, she would let him know. I stood with this boy as he repeated his cycle again and again. I found myself speculating about why, about what he was trying to figure out, about what he was learning. It had to do with trunks and stumps and leaves and branches. At one point, while patting the trunk, he broke off a bit of bark, stopped for a quick study, then went back to his work. I was expecting him to move on any moment now, perhaps not after his classmates, but at least in some new direction, but after a time decided that I myself would move on, leaving him to the teacher who waited not too far away. 

I dodged past him, ducking and weaving to follow the child-sized path. I turned to check on the boy one last time to find that he was following me. I stopped to allow him to catch up. When he again stood beside me, he looked me in the face, pointing into the treetops and said, “Wow!” That’s when I realized that he had not been dawdling at all: he had been trying to teach me, this slightly dense, dawdling foreigner with whom he’d found himself in the woods. 

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Pausing To Reflect

I knew that we were going to be spreading a new layer of wood chips over the surface of our junkyard playground at some point this summer, but it surprised me when I arrived at school yesterday. My first emotion was one of disappointment, because while it does freshen the place up, giving it a pleasing scent of cedar, I knew that it had also buried a lot of our smaller bits and baubles, things that might not re-surface for months, if ever. On second blush, however, I remembered that the kids have been kicking up quite a cloud of unpleasant dust here in the dog days, something with which this new layer of chips would definitely help.

As the children arrived they likewise had mixed feelings about the changes to their space. One boy hopped on a swing and immediately started bawling, "The swings are too low now! They're for little kids and I'm a big kid!" And he was right, the thick layer of chips under the swings left precious little room for his legs to hang. After his initial reaction, however, he got to work digging out a new hole deep enough to accommodate a full pumping of the legs.

Meanwhile, another group joyfully grabbed shovels and immediately began a digging project, searching for the bare earth below.

But, over all, the new surface was simply remarked upon, then forgotten as the kids settled into the rhythm of their play.

After awhile, I began to hear the diggers discussing the prospect of a hole that penetrated to the center of the earth, perhaps even going all the way through to the other side. The older boy on the swing overheard them and said in a voice of authority, "You better not dig too deep because then you might get to the lava and it will erupt on us."

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that this was exactly what they were going to do, dig to the molten core to release the lava. They dug out a circle of bare dirt, informing one and all to be careful because if they fell in they would be "burned up."

Before long a team of ninja fighters roved into the area, posing fiercely, boasting of their powers, and thereby (from what I could tell) defeating bad guys. The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their pools of lava (by now they had several) were actually bad guy traps. They informed me that as a good guy, I was immune to the lava, and no longer needed to worry about falling in. The lava would only burn bad guys.

It was around this time that a loud wail went up on the other side of the swing set, a boy suddenly bursting into tears as if injured. As I approached, the crying boy pointed at another boy who was standing some distance away, "He hit me!" At this, the accused, behaving very much like a guilty party, took off for a distant corner of the playground. As I consoled the crying boy, I learned that he hadn't actually been hit, but rather had been told that he was going to be hit "a lot of times" and it had, naturally, frightened him. I asked, "What can he do to make you feel better," to which he replied, "I don't think he'll tell me he's sorry." I asked, "Would that make you feel better?" When he answered that it would, I suggested that we at least talk to him.

By now the tears had ended. He took my hand as we started down the hill, looking for his nemesis, but didn't immediately spy him. I said, "It's like he disappeared," to which the boy replied, "Maybe he's a ghost," a joke that let me know he was no longer harboring a grudge. We made spooky ghost noises together for a minute, then he released my hand and returned to his play.

Back at the bad guy lava traps, I was informed that they had, in my absence, trapped several bad guys who had hit people "a lot of times."

Not long after that, the boy who had earlier been crying was running toward us, his face flushed with joy. He was being chased by the boy who had threatened to hit him a lot of times. "Help! Help! I'm being chased by a ghost!" And behind him, the ghost wailed and moaned in mock ghostly misery. They had obviously made amends, racing away in their game of chase.

The diggers paused to reflect on that, then decided amongst themselves that their bad buy traps were actually ghost traps. "The ghosts fall into the lava and get dead."

The older boy on the swing informed them that ghosts were already dead.

The diggers reflected on that, then decided that their lava traps made the ghosts "extra dead." Then they went back to their project of digging in the new wood chips.

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This Is Probably True

Yesterday a small group of us spent the morning at the  Steinahlíð preschool in Reykjavik as part of our participation in the annual Play Iceland Conference taking place this week in and around the nation's capital. The city's original preschool, housed in what appears to be an old farmhouse and one other somewhat newer building, is, enviably, located amidst several acres of forest and field.

When we arrived, we were invited to join an expedition to check on a dead mouse that the children had discovered some weeks ago. They had decided to not bury it as they normally would, opting instead to simply put it under a rock in a distant corner of the property where they had been regularly visiting it ever since. I understood that this was both a scientific and spiritual endeavor.

When children lead, even the simplest of outings can be an epic saga, one with the destination always in mind, but only accomplished via detour, diversion, and daring. Our adventure began, the children spontaneously holding hands, at the small crop of hearty kale that continues to thrive despite the freezing temperatures. As I understand things, the land was originally donated to the trust that now owns it under the condition that it always be used for children and that it always be used, at least in part, to teach them how their food grows. We fortified ourselves on greens amidst a veritable orchard of now bare berry bushes, where I imagine these lucky children forage joyfully during warmer months.

From there we continued on trails between the trees, worn by generations of little feet. Our way was criss-crossed by similar paths, but the children knew exactly where they were going. First, however, we stopped to examine ice we found in a nearby tire swing hung from the branch of a tree. The teacher warned the children not to eat the ice, but they, in the spirit of adventure, nevertheless tasted it the moment her back was turned, giggling together as co-conspirators.

We wound our way to a small, steep, and grassy hill that seemed to rise from nowhere. Naturally, we stopped for a frolic.

Back in the woods we came upon a tent-like structure made from colorful fabric, damp now and dripping in the moist wintery air. All along the way, the children had been collecting small bits of garbage (plastic bags, food containers, beverage, etc.) that had inevitably found its way onto their land from the surrounding city. No one told them to do this; it simply appeared to be what one did. There was some confusion, however, about the things found in the tent, much of which turned out to be toys that other children had made from recycled materials. Together with their teacher they determined what would stay and what they would pack out.

The children tended to stick together, and even when one of them detoured she would stop before getting too far away to call out to the others who more often than not followed, ducking into natural evergreen hideouts or gathering around to examine motes. Proceeding in this manner we eventually came to our destination at the farthest corner of this epic place, dropping to their knees around the rock under which they had left the dead mouse, heads together. Carefully, they lifted the rock to find that the mouse was gone! They huddled together for some time discussing this great mystery. They rejected the notion that it had been eaten by some scavenger, agreeing among themselves that the mouse had somehow moved itself. They did find a small bit that they thought might be the tail or a leg, but one boy pointed out that he saw no blood, so how could that be part of the mouse? Clearly, it had moved itself, and he dropped the "tail" unceremoniously into the leaves and moss underfoot.

The adventure home, in the spirit of all the great sagas, was even longer than our outbound journey. We stopped at the "magic tree," we saw faces in both stone and wood. We discovered a shopping cart that some mischief maker must have tossed over the fence. We stopped at the "fairies' rock." The story is that when the new pedestrian/bicycle roadway was built along this side of the property, the fairies who called this rock home didn't want to be left outside the fence, so a crane had lifted it into its current place. In this land in which some 80 percent of the population claims to believe in the existence of the "hidden people," and where it is common to design buildings around certain rocks so as not to offend the trolls, it was no surprise when their teacher told us with a straight face that the fairy story was "probably true."

When we came to the fields we played chasing games. When we came to a thicket of trees, we made the sounds of police sirens (something learned not from the reality of Reykjavik where crime is rare, but rather from television) and the children took turns being arrested and placed in a jail of trees. And whenever we came to ice, they secretly tasted it.

We tend to misuse the word "myth," I think, using it most often as a synonym for "false," when in fact mythology is really all about truth, or at least the quest for truth. Those ancient sagas tell of humans exploring, discovering, and striving to make sense of the world. It is therefore "probably true" that there are fairies and trolls, just as it is "probably true" that the mouse moved itself. Of course, these truths may not be confirmed by our modern scientific understanding, but that doesn't mean that our myths do not likewise reveal a perspective on truth that eludes the scientific method. This is probably true.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you! 

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Dead Butterflies

This is going to freak some of you out, but you really must watch this:



One of the truths about every cooperative preschool is that, as a school, you're strong where your parents are strong and this year our 3-5's school blog is one of our strengths. It's only accessible to members of our class, written by the woman known to us around the internet as Floor Pie. (Please click over, it's worth it, I'll wait. She also made me aware of this video.)

We released our butterflies last week and Floor Pie chronicled it there, winding up with this paragraph:

“I hope a bird doesn’t eat them,” Teacher Tom remarked matter-of-factly, absolutely rattling my misplaced maternal instinct for our newly released “babies.” But the children took it in stride, discussing the food chain for a minute before moving on to watch the other butterflies in the garden. All part of the life cycle.

One of our painted ladies was fluttering away from our garden, the first of our small colony that once numbered 13 to do so, tasting innocent, unlimited freedom for what was likely to be only a matter of minutes given the gang of city crows that lives in the trees around our school. That's when I said it.

I've always spoken matter-of-factly around preschoolers about death. Trying to keep the truth as simple as I can make it, not muddying it up with dogma -- that's the business of the families. My job is to report the facts, and my hope about that butterfly's fate was a fact.

We were releasing our butterflies, frankly, to a certain death. Three of them had already died in our "viewing chambers," leaving us with 10 geriatric "babies" by the time we finally got around to releasing them. They had given the better part of their 3 week lives to science and we were setting them free in a world of predators and temperatures likely to be too cold for survival beyond sunset.

On Tuesday, after releasing the living specimens, I put our 3 carcasses on a low surface, along with the chrysalis husks, and one whole one from which the pupae had not emerged, directly on the poster we'd used to talk about the life cycle, which I only realize now doesn't cover the death part. I guess that's why they call it the life cycle.

These are mostly young 3-year-olds by now, so like the girl from the video they had to touch. I used the word "dead" and the admonishment "gentle" quite a bit, and mentioned a few times that I wanted the dead butterflies to stay on the table, but otherwise I either hovered, listening in, or just left them alone with their meditations and conversations. From the outside, they appeared to maintain a scientific matter-of-factness, an attitude I've found almost universal among the youngest preschoolers.

I heard many of them use the word "dead" in their conversations amongst themselves. One of the children mentioned that butterflies don't fly when they're dead. Another blew on them and when they moved, fluttering, claimed they were alive again. Then dead again. I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not. At one point one of the girls handed me a wing. At our closing circle time at the end of the day, Charlotte informed me that she'd put them back in the "cage," which is where I found two of them on Wednesday morning: two very tattered, dead butterflies.

I did the same thing in our 3-5's class yesterday, with the two remaining carcasses, but no one gave the dead butterflies much attention. A few of them fingered the filter paper upon which the chrysalid husks remained connected and discussed the ones we'd released, perhaps already taking a more "grown up" approach to the life cycle by concentrating on the "life" part. Of course, they'd already demonstrated their facility with the topic of death in the context of the food chain earlier in the week. None of them asked me questions. Maybe they initiated conversations about death at home. 

Or maybe, for the time being, that's all our preschoolers need to know about dead insects.