Guest post - The Great shed roll to create a tea house.

One of the first blogs I came across was Takoma Park Cooperative Nursery School's. I have enjoyed following this wonderful blog & watching their outdoor play space develop & change. I am so delighted to have Lesley Romanoff Director at TPCNS write a guest post this week for my blog. This is a post about how the 'can do' spirit of cooperative schooling shines through. It is thanks to Lesley that I introduced parent volunteers to my classroom this year. So sit back & read this post & enjoy the video of the shed roll.

The finished tea room

Our playground’s story is a chapter book. The first chapter doesn’t even take place at our current location. That chapter takes place at our much-loved location and is filled with more examples of the forward-thinking nature of our parent community. They renovated the playground there; specifically researching and purchasing only play structures that could be moved. Before long, that is exactly what happened. We found out exactly how much a flat bed could hold and how deep to dig to plant a slide, a seesaw, etc.

When we landed at our new site, our primary focus was the interior spaces. The bungalow had not been used as a residence for years. In the late 80s and 90s, it was a daycare. We gutted it for its current iteration for our parent cooperative school. And when I say “we,” I mean, parents and staff. We only hired a handful of professionals and the rest was dogged determination and elbow grease, or rather spackle.

We brought the playground up to speed and settled in knowing that the playground would be the next thing we would tackle. A student’s grandfather worked with me to develop a plan for the playground. It involved destinations and pathways as well as height and texture in the form of key plantings. Then Phase 1, or the next chapter was written. The sandpit, the campsite, the tubes (purchased for the old school, but not installed), and the seesaw were installed or rearranged. The dirt was moved from the new sandpit to create a berm and these are two of the best features of the playground.

The dust cleared and settled, but there was one destination/component from the playground plan left to be created and it was a playhouse. We couldn’t really figure out where it would go once everything was “planted.” So this chapter begins with two moments in time.

The first moment, a parent asked me why our storage shed wasn’t painted like the school (we are keen on the bright and saturated colors). I didn’t have a real answer. The only thing I could come up with is that I just didn’t acknowledge the shed’s existence. In fact when I went through the hundreds of photos we have of our outdoor space I couldn’t find a reasonable photo of the shed or a view that included the place that would become the Children’s Teahouse and Rock Garden.

The second moment came soon after on a brutal hot day during our summer art camp. I was sitting on one of the sandpit’s boulders (you get to do this with mixed-age classes) while looking at the Montessori Services catalog. I looked up at the shed (grump) and then wondered about a rock garden and how to heave ho the shed to create a playhouse, without actually losing the shed.

And there you have it. Well, except for the HOURS of labor moving the shed to the back of the yard (here is the video and HOURS of fundraising and HOURS of digging, building, and moving rocks! Those hours will be traded, joyfully, for HOURS of play, imagination, and collaboration. As always, this beauty was pulled off with the help of the parents and the children. The parents are modeling community involvement and the children adopt it in a very real way. 

Stay tuned as we create our next playground feature takes shape…a dry creek bed!

The children breaking the ground for the dry creek bed project

Outdoor Play Link up - Take time to just be!

We have heard people say that times flies, especially as you get older & I think once you have children at school or are a teacher then the year seems to go by even quicker!
I have now been teaching in the same school for 10 years & have seen the bumps become babies & the babies become my pupils and now those bumps are getting ready to leave primary school.
If I have any advice for parents and educators of young children it's to slow down & enjoy this precious time before it's too late. Celebrate all the achievements even if your heart is in your mouth as they climb or bring your a creepy crawly!

Go for a walk & joy seeing the world through the eyes of a child, just amble along with no set agenda except to maybe feed the ducks.

I am a natural optimist but also believe that you can't possibly spend any time around a 3 or 4 year old child and not become infected with their zest for life.

I had so many favourites in this link up party but if I have to choose one it's from Lyndsay over at Our Feminist Playschool. I just love that her little boy had the opportunity to get into the mud & really experience it.

How did your kids play outdoors this week?

Share your ideas for outdoor play activities with us every other week! The linky goes live every second Friday at 12:01 GMT+1. Here are just a few guidelines for sharing:

• Any kind of children's outdoor play-related posts are welcome!
• 
  If you'd like us to further share your post (e.g., on Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest), please just include a link back to this post (either in your post or sidebar) to help us spread the word about the importance (and fun!) of outdoor play! Each time we will feature an activity from the previous party. By contributing you are giving permission for an image and link to your post to be republished. (If you have been featured, please feel free to grab the 'featured' button from the sidebar.)
•  Please feel free to grab the Outdoor Play Party button from the sidebar and/or include a text link back.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Hope everyone has a wonderfully relaxing Christmas, if you celebrate it, and that that 2012 is a great year for everyone. I have had such fun this year since starting this blog & can't wait to see where it takes me next year!
Thanks to everyone who has visited & commented & shared since January. 

I am taking a blogging break for the next week or so - see you in 2012 :)

Primary 6 Christmas Art

My colleague in Primary 6 (9-10 year olds) has passed on these fab photos of some of their Christmas art. We saw these fabulous Carol Singers made from cardboard spools at the Play Resource Centre in Belfast.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 5

Step 6

I think you'll agree they look great! Thanks to Mrs Creggan, Mr Campbell & Primary 6 for sharing.

10 Things I learned about Turkey (the place not the food)

I was lucky to get a chance to visit Şarkışla in Turkey this month through the British Council's Comenius Scheme. This was a preparatory meeting between schools in Poland, Greece, Romania, Spain, Turkey & N.Ireland who want to establish a 2 year project together.
I had no concept at all of Turkey, the culture or the people, so went with a complete open/blank mind. All I can say is that I fell in love with this wonderful country and it's people, who were more than hospitable. I hope that this project goes ahead & I get the opportunity to try and repay them for their kindness & I get a chance to return in a few years time. 

So here are the 10 things I learned about this beautiful country & region:
1. The people are so friendly - I was met at the airport with flowers!
2. They love to socialise as much as me - chocolate & tea/coffee at every opportunity
3. The food - amazing & delicious

4. The history is fascinating & inspriring
5. The language is very soft & soothing to listen to
6. The men are excellent dancers!
7. Turkish women are very slim
8. The men like to grow moustaches!
9. Real Turkish delight is gorgeous
10. Turkish toilets are very different to European ones!

But to me number 1 is the most important - I made friends for life in a few short days.

With special thanks to Mehmet, Saliha, Erkan & Fatma.

Who knew - I'm polar bear educator

I found some brilliant blogs this year & made some new friends along the way. There is no doubt that my teaching has been refreshed through the 'blogosphere'. It is always incredible to make instant connections with others around the world. I have even now gained a new term for my teaching approach - I'm a Polar bear educator. Read the fabulous post here from Russell where I first saw the term used.

It takes practice to be able to climb up & down again.

I also loved this post on risky play, from Aunt Annie's Childcare it really reminded me of my class during outdoor play. I attended a conference a few years ago on developing your outdoor area & the speaker said "Unless you can think of 3 good reasons (apart from safety) why a child shouldn't do something, don't stop them" and she stressed that "It'll take me ages to clean that up, it'll be too messy, it looks like it might be risky" were not good enough reasons. I have adopted this in my teaching and luckily all my staff are in agreement with this too. I have also added "If they can get up, they can get down" to a rule on climbing things, and my favourite "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than seek permission" - this last one comes in when we paint the walls/fence outside etc. I am so fortunate to have always had principals who trusted me in this approach - they know that I am not putting children in danger I am challenging them and they are not too precious about the appearance of the place.

I was stunned when a photo of a child standing on 3 milk crates pouring water down a gutter pipe received a collective gasp of astonishment & horror at a recent course of nursery educators. To me it could have been any day in my playground and it also made me realise that not all children are getting the same opportunities as the children in my class are.
We play with sticks, we dig with metal shovels, we climb UP slides and if we didn't we would missed out on all these learning opportunities.

So I will continue to allow children to push the bounderies & challenge themselves in the safe, secure space of the playground or our local woodland classroom or the wonderful sensory garden at a neighbouring school. I hope I am creating fantastic memories for these children of a time when they felt empowered to try new things that made them feel like they had conquered Mount Everest!

Linked to: Kreative Resources

The education system in N.Ireland

I am very conscious that when I am talking about 'my school' most people don't know much of anything about the education system in Northern Ireland where I teach. Like most things about N.I it is complicated & if you are as confused at the end as you were before, then I have done my job correctly!

Stormont, N.I Parliament Building.

N.I is under British rule but at present we have our own government that sits in Stormont, outside Belfast, so have our own Department of Education (DENI) & Minister for Education.
Traditionally there have always been 2 main communities in N.Ireland - Protestants & Catholics - and so these each have their own education sectors; The Controlled and Maintained sectors. All schools up until the early 1980's fell into one of these 2 categories & it was quite usual (and still is today) for someone to be educated just within their 'own' community. The teacher training colleges were also separate so many teachers have not only attended religiously segregated schools but also university before going back to teach in one of the 2 sectors upon graduation.
However at the height of the conflict in N.I. groups of parents came together to establish schools that were neither controlled or maintained and therefore neither Protestant or Catholic. The ethos of these integrated schools was to be Christian. These new schools came under the wing of an organisation called Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education or NICIE.
Originally all these schools were self-funding however since 1989 DENI funds all established integrated schools the same as the other 2 sectors.
In recent years Irish Language schools have also been established. 

Windmill was established in 1988

I teach within the integrated sector, the photo above is of the new school building we moved into in 2006. Children attend our school from the age of 3 until 11, then they move onto the secondary level.
The preschool system is also not straightforward - there are 3 different types of settings and a child is entitled to a free preschool place for one year before starting formal learning at the age of 4. This free place is for 5 days a week and can range from 12.5 hours to 25 a week. As I said there are 3 types; statutory, voluntary & private. (Even within the former there are 2 types - a stand alone nursery school with a teaching principal and a unit within a primary school.) There are only teachers in the statutory sector working with an assistant in classes of 26 children. Many leaders and assistants in the voluntary sector are educated to degree standard but do not have a teaching qualification. the staff/child ratio is lower in the voluntary sector. The private sector is usually daycare or creches run as a business.

As a nursery teacher I am also qualified to teach other age groups - I do sometimes have to remind primary colleagues that 'yes I am a qualified teacher, and no I don't just play all day'. I am also paid the same as my colleagues who teach in the primary & secondary settings. This is not the case in other countries as I have come to realise and for this I am grateful. However, sometimes I do wonder if  it would be better to be paid a little less and have an another assistant? 
Children attend preschool the year they turn 4 on or after the 2nd of July. This means you can have a child who is 3 and 2 months in the same class as a child who is 4 and 2 months. They do not have to attend but most parents choose to take up their free place and in recent years there has been a shortage of places for those who want to attend.  

As an integrated school we have children attending from the 2 main communities - in fact the school must have an equal percentage of each 40% with 20% left for 'others'. Originally intended for people of other faiths but now more recently these 'other' places are taken up by children whose parents do not wish them to be labelled as being either Protestant or Catholic. Staff and management are also drawn from the 2 different backgrounds. 

Traditionally controlled schools would reflect a British identity and the maintained an Irish one. As an integrated school we can reflect both. We teach our children to respect both communities and their flags and sports teams. We can celebrate the Queen's Jubilee and a win for the local GAA football team.

The Queen

Tyrone winning an All-Ireland

One thing an integrated school is not is 'neutral', some parents think that their child will taught no religion or hear no talk of cultural identity, but this is not the case. The chair of our Board of Governors stresses at new parent induction evenings that if they want a neutral space they need to look elsewhere. Instead it is hoped that those who attend and work in integrated schools will have a better understanding of the 'other' community and be less likely to feel threatened or intimidated by them. I am proud of my Irish heritage but more importantly I hope I am making a difference in the lives of the citizens of the world of tomorrow.