People are too apt to use children as counters in a game, to be moved hither and thither according to the whim of the moment. Our crying need to-day is less for a better method of education than for an adequate conception of children,––children, merely as human beings, whether brilliant or dull, precocious or backward. CM vol 6 ch 5
The second big idea was getting out of the way of ideas and the children. I know these things! But I desperately need to be reminded of them. The conference is rejuvenating for me every year in so many ways. For school but also for me spiritually. All these big ideas change me as a person as well.
"We hold that the child's mind is no mere sac to hold ideas but is rather, if the figure may be allowed, a 'spiritual organism' with an appetite for all knowledge. This is its proper diet with which it is prepared to deal and what it is able to digest and assimilate as the body does food-stuffs."
"Such a doctrine as the Herbartian, that the mind is a receptacle, lays the stress of education, the preparation of food in enticing morsels, duly ordered, upon the teacher. Children taught on this principle are in danger of receiving much teaching but little knowledge; the teacher's axiom being 'what a child learns matters less than how he learns it.'" CM vol 1 ch 7
I have been greatly enjoying a new water color set I bought for myself. It is a travel set and I can keep it in my purse or a backpack. I have done so many more dry brush paintings in my nature journal. I am slowly getting better. I would like to find one just a wee bit smaller for each of the children.
Here is mine
This is the one I am thinking about for the children
I am finding that having good quality supplies is so important to the way we not only feel about our work, but also how the children see that they are perceived. They feel valued and that I see their work as important when they have quality supplies. We also value their work more and are careful with it and save it. What treasures we are building!
