A Numb Butt Makes A Numb Mind

I spent all day yesterday renewing my first aid and CPR certification. It's been a long time since I've sat in a chair, facing the front of a room, paying attention. We got a one hour break for lunch and we did spend about an hour practicing on the CPR dummies, but otherwise we pretty much sat for 6 hours, alternating between watching a video and listening to our instructor Michelle talk.

Man that was hard. I'd planned enough in advance to bring along a small pad of paper and a pen, not for note taking, but rather for doodling. It wasn't enough. I don't remember having a particularly hard time sitting through class as a boy, I must have been better conditioned for just sitting, but yesterday was brutal. I tried to sit still, I really did, but 5 minutes was about as long as I could manage any one position before my butt or my back or my legs started barking at me to fidget. I leaned forward, I leaned backward, I slouched, I sat bolt straight, I twisted around sideways, I tucked a leg under me, I bounced my leg up and down, I propped my chin in my hands, I sat on my hands, I put my hands in my pockets, and I doodled. As my doodle page became more crowded with tiny pictures, I challenged myself to stick with only one sheet of  4"X3" paper.

Here is the product of my 6 hours of effort:

It looks a lot like my notebook covers looked in high school. In first grade I made a single piece of doodle paper last the entire school year. 

Yes, I did refresh my knowledge of CPR and first aid. They've made it all simpler than it used to be, because as Michelle explained, the simpler they make the instructions, the more lives get saved. Apparently, the Seattle area has the highest rate of CPR/first aid training in the world, with survival rates to prove its worth doing.

I didn't notice any of my 30 or so classmates fidgeting like I was. But I did catch some dozing, especially when the lights were turned off for watching the video. And the teacher and parent educator (who shall remain unnamed, Matt and Elizabeth) sitting behind me, lured me into a bit of under-the-breath wise cracking. And as the session rolled on, more and more people raised their hands to ask questions, often running far afield of the subject at hand. It was a lot like the classes I remember growing up, sitting at desks, trying our best to be "good," doing whatever we could to stay awake, stay focused, and stay one step ahead of our barking body parts.

I've been taking these classes every 2 years for 12 years. We used to spend a lot of time practicing things like splinting, bandaging, and properly moving injured people. That was fun. I got so I would choose who I would sit beside based upon my desire to pretend they had blood gushing from a head injury. There was always a lot of laughing and silliness, but also a heaping helping of hands-on learning.

But apparently, according to Michelle who I spoke with after class, they've discovered that they were over-training we lay people. It seems that if we can just re-start the breathing and stop the bleeding, we've done pretty much all we need to do in the Seattle metropolitan area before the EMTs arrive to take over. So instead of an 8 hour course crammed with details of what to do in every emergency, it was 8 hours of repeating the same things over and over. I like that the training is now more effective than in the past, and I like that the stuff we need to know is so straight forward and simple that I now feel like I could teach the course myself.

Oh, but it was a painful learning process. I couldn't wait to walk the dogs, listen to the radio, and breath in the cool, damp fall air awaiting me outside.

There were 6 of us there from Woodland Park. On our Pre-K days we will now have 4 CPR/first aid certified adults in the room with our 9 boys. Holy cow!

It was such a welcome change of pace to walk out of that classroom at North Seattle Community College to find a wet, cold, windy afternoon, where Jarin and Isak, there with their dad Craig, were waiting for their mom Leslie. The boys were grinning and flushed, Jarin's 6-year-old smile missing all four of his upper center teeth. "Dad let us ride the elevators by ourselves!" They were alive and excited and while Leslie admitted that she didn't think she would have let them have that adventure, she suddenly looked alive and excited too.

We'd emerged from a one-dimensional classroom into an infinitely rich, impromptu learning environment, on our feet, all our senses engaged. There was no fidgeting, no struggle to stay awake, no wise cracking in the back row, no talking just to hear ourselves talk. I have no doubt that those boys with their father had learned as much in their 15 minutes of waiting in the rain as we had in 8 hours of sitting.

During our lunch break I picked up a copy of the Sunday edition of The Seattle Times because I'd noticed the Parade magazine section contained an interview with Bill Gates entitled, "What I've Learned About Great Teachers." Like most Parade pieces it turned out to be so fluffy that there was no there there, but I did sit up and take note when Bill was asked, "You and Melinda have three school-aged kids. Are you involved in their education?"

This unquestionably intelligent man, this famous college drop-out, this man whose foundation has spent over $4 billion on various education projects, answered, "Last year our family traveled for three months, and we did some homeschooling . . . We went to the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator in Switzerland. We went to a toilet-paper factory, a garbage dump, an aircraft carrier, and a coal plant . . ."

Most of us can't travel for 3 months and a giant particle accelerator may not be on the agenda, but I happen to know that the Gates family travels with their own security team. His kids can't ride the elevators by themselves at NSCC on a rainy weekend. It's all education. It's not about who has more money, it's about seeking out experiences in the real world, while never forgetting that a numb butt makes a numb mind. 

"I Am A Powerpuff Girl!"

By now it's common knowledge here in the U.S. that of all our holidays only Christmas surpasses Halloween in terms of retail sales. I'm glad it's become so popular. I love the ancient "pagan" holidays (e.g., winter and summer solstice, the equinoxes, May Day, etc.) because they’re secular, fun for both kids and adults, and based on observable scientific fact. People sometimes try to attach Halloween to Christianity, but it predates the birth of Christ by thousands of years. Several years ago I went to a fantastic Pacific Science Center Planetarium show in which they detailed the astrological phenomenon that likely prompted ancient peoples across Europe to celebrate what we now call Halloween. Like all pagan celebrations it was a pre-scientific attempt to make sense of the physical world that ancient people observed around them. It was a magnificent exercise in imagination, one so powerful we still enjoy it today.

Our school’s “high holidays" come during the January-February run of Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Chinese New Year, and Valentine’s Day. It’s a feverish rush from one celebration to the next culminating in a classroom decorated with rainbow people, dragons, and pink hearts.

In contrast, the build-up to Halloween is a long, steady march that begins somewhere around October 1 and culminates in an evening costume party to which the children bring their families.

I know it's time to get started on our Halloween curriculum when the kids start waylaying me with detailed descriptions of their Halloween costumes. When this starts happening, I get out my clipboard at circle time and ask the children to raise their hands and tell us what they were going to be, then compile a comprehensive list.

I love this exercise. We run down this list at almost every circle time during the month of October. It's a great way to get everyone participating. I’ll read their names and their proposed costumes. Some children stick doggedly to their original designs, while others treat it as a creative exercise, changing their minds right up to the big day itself.

I often see parents rolling their eyes at their child’s latest iteration, especially when it switches to “alligator” two days before Halloween after a month of wanting to be a "ghost." Some parents scramble to help their child fulfill his preschool wish, but I like to remind them that our school discussion about costumes is a separate discussion from the one they have at home.

This process can lead to some imaginative solutions. For instance, during my first year teaching, a boy named Jace announced day-after-day that he was going to be a "Power Puff Girl." He always pronounced it boldly with his fist held over his head. When he arrived at our party, however, he was dressed in what was clearly a lion costume.

I said, "I thought you were going to be a Power Puff Girl." Behind him his mother Rena was frantically making gestures telling me to shut up. Evidently, there had been some creative negotiations at home.

Jace didn’t miss a beat. He threw both arms over his head and answered, "I am a Powerpuff Girl!" And, indeed, he was.

(Reposted with revisions from October 4, 2009)

Ghost Mud

I don't think we need a lot of words for this one: twenty-four rolls of discount toilet paper, nine 4-year-old boys, and instructions that we need to get all the paper off of all those cardboard tubes.

We tried rolling them down ramps we built with blocks, unfurling them on rhythm sticks we used as spools, throwing them across the room, working as a team, releasing it from the top of the loft, but just holding it in our hands and turning it was by far the most popular.

When we were done -- or rather when Teacher Tom decided it was time to move on, because it was becoming increasingly clear that we weren't going to be done with this until everyone was crying and the TP was in itty-bitty pieces -- we worked together to move it into the sensory table.

This is where we performed the "experiment" of adding small scoops of Ivory Snow and water, then mixing it until we had "clean mud," better known during the Halloween season as "ghost mud."

We've done this for 9 straight years. It's always fun to make, a process we stretch out over 2 days and at least 2.5 classroom hours, but once it's there in the sensory table, all slippery, gooey, and smelling of good wholesome soap, the kids abandon it, most of them saying, "It's too messy." They never abandon real mud. 

Kids!

At Least They Still Need Me

Our daughter Josephine was born on October 30, the day before Halloween, arguably the second most popular holiday on the American calendar. She didn't particularly mind that her birthday party theme was pretty much forced upon her, and as she got older our annual birthday bash grew each year, culminating in a 6th grade costume dance party for 60+ of her friends. That was the year I turned our lawn into a graveyard featuring tombstone-party favors personalized with the death of each of our guests.

But the true glory of these parties -- in my humble opinion -- were the dozens of jack-o-lanterns I would carve each year. It started when she turned 2 with 10 cute little sugar pumpkins lined up on our mantle piece, each with a unique facial expression, an annual menagerie that grew over the years to some 40 squash that came to litter the lawn, line the driveway, crowd onto the balcony, and even nestle in the branches of trees.

My jack carving carried over into the classroom where I've typically taken a knife to 10 pumpkins each year, letting the children chose the faces (e.g., sad, happy, angry) and the shapes of the facial features (e.g., triangle, circle, square). I'm a fast carver, capable of producing a completed jack at a pace of about one every 10 minutes during my assembly line efforts. I'm a big fan of those cheap little pumpkin saws they sell in the supermarkets around this time of year.

They really hasten things along, although they're not the sturdiest of tools, the blades often snapping off inside the pumpkins when I got carried away with my need for speed. I'd typically go through a half dozen or so during each carving season.

But in class we took our time, considering what might be inside, handling the seeds and pith, and generally carrying on a conversation. It's one of my favorite annual activities, carving those jacks for the kids, which were then displayed, fully lit, in our garden during the Halloween party.

I got started last week with the Pre-3 class. They speculated that we would find popcorn inside. As I carved, however, I found myself noticing just how dull the blades on those saws are. They cut the pumpkins just fine, but try as I might, I was unable to break my own skin with them. That's when I realized that this was something the children ought to be doing themselves.

That poor jack is getting stabbed repeatedly. I've done that

before -- very gratifying.

For the last two days, the 3-5's have turned our workbench into a pumpkin carving station. Most of them have needed some adult assistance, but they were all able to achieve some level of competence, and no one hurt herself, even when more than one kid was working on the same jack. As Violet said, "I got cut a little, but it didn't even hurt or bleed."

We then fed our pith and seeds to the worms. Charlotte said, "The pumpkin will be their dessert."

A few of the kids also tried out hammering 4" nails into a pumpkin.

But the real excitement was around the carving. Many of our 8 jacks wound up with multiple faces.

I'm particularly fond of this tiny face, one that clearly needed no adult assistance.

Josephine hasn't celebrated her birthday with a Halloween party for the last two years, and because of the way our house is situated, we won't even get any trick-or-treaters, so there has been no call for me to employ by prodigious carving skills. Last year I employed them exclusively at the preschool.

This year, I've turned even that job over to the kids, although I saved one last one for myself which I will carve today for the 2-year-olds. At least they still need me.

Pumpkin Recipes

A couple days ago I shared a few things we've been cooking up with pumpkins during the Halloween season, like painting with them, rolling them down gutters, and counting dinosaur skeletons, but really, I wonder why we aren't serving these versatile squash all year round. They go with anything.

For instance, they're a fantastic way to spice up every day play dough.

And there is nothing like a few mini pumpkins to add that extra "something" to plain old building and balancing.

Hey, they can even make water into a special treat that will have your guests begging for the recipe . . .

. . . especially with just a pinch of eyeballs. That's the secret ingredient.

The kids discovered that they stick to the damp pumpkin surface.

They're delightful al fresco, straight from the vine . . .

. . . or stuffed with baby pumpkins.

Of course, they also can add that little something to your more exotic dishes, like manufacturing patterns . . .

. . . where rolling and lifting helps build strong muscles 5 different ways!

And if you really want to impress your guests, how about trying them out with your giant silver hands?

I'm sure there are other things to do with pumpkins, but we're all out of time for today. Tune in tomorrow for another episode of Cooking Up Play With the Children of Woodland Park.