Children Should Be Seen and Also Heard

Children Should Be Seen and Also Heard

Spontaneous expressions of young children recorded over fifty years. Children’s literature is written by adults trying to get into the child’s mind. What if the children chose the subject and the treatment?

By Margery Baumgartner

A series of short books about and by children as authors.

The Children Speak

Three Young Poets

How Young Children Develop Understanding

The Young Child Experiences Life

The World Adventure

The World of Mankind

Emergent Literacy

In a newspaper column some years ago, Luis Rodriguez wrote: What is it about our society that de-appreciates the language arts, where the natural poetry in children is virtually lost? Hear how they connect ideas to things, to concepts, use metaphors. They do so because a major quality that distinguishes human beings from the rest of the animal world is our ability to be creative, expressive and to communicate. Yet soon after we begin our social obligations - school and work - few continue to be artists. In other cultures poetry is honored. What is it about our schools that take the poetry out of children?

From the 1962 Lecture of Nothrup Frye in The Educated Imagination (Indiana University Press): Poetry is the most direct means of expressing oneself in words, Prose is a less natural way. Listen to small children's chanting and singsong. Poetry is close to dance and song.

From Writing the Australian Crawl (University of Michigan Press): Poet William Safford was once asked "When did you decide to become a poet?" he said, "A person starts life by discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is - why did other people stop?"

"It's not hard to make poems. It's hard to get someone to listen to them."

Randall Jarrel, in The Bat Poet

THE CHILDREN SPEAK

Childhood is a fairly recent invention. As we see in paintings of royal families, children were dressed and treated as just small adults, to be seen and not heard. A couple of centuries ago a few people really started looking at them. And the art and science of child development was born.

Books for children are written by adults trying to get into the child's frame of mind. What if the subject and treatment were chosen by the target audience, the kids?

Children speak about what catches their interest. The more experience they have the more they have to talk about. Children in the country seem to have livelier perceptions than urban children, because they live closer to nature.

Creative language comes as naturally as speech. Children use simile, metaphor, repetition, personification, inversion, and onomatopoeia, unaware they are doing so. When they draw on their inner thoughts, expression may take on an innate sense of form, although the structure and climax are not deliberate. There is often a lilt, a lyrical cadence.

Here are the works of the very youngest, collected over 50 years by one person with a pencil at the ready. These expressions originated in direct experience, rarely "emotion recollected in tranquility." Some were dictated as stories, most were overheard during play.

In two graduate years at the Pennsylvania School of Social Work I learned to record interviews from memory after the fact. When I returned for another graduate year at the Bank Street College of Education my student teaching assignment was the Young Twos (the next group was the Old Twos.) I soon learned that 2 years 8 months requires a different curriculum than 2 years 3 months - they grow so fast !Now my new clients - "students" - not in the least embarrassed by the sight of a pencil. What a relief! I could now record verbatim on the spot. We were low tech in 1941; the tape recorder, even its predecessor, the wire recorder, was not in use; I was addicted to pencil and notebook and never changed.

The Charlestown Play House near Phoenixville, Pennsylvania was a rural preschool serving suburban and country children with access to woodland, fields and streams, where we could cut our Christmas tree in the woods and visit real farms with real animals. I had only to listen to children experiencing life.

Do today's urban children have vivid first-hand experiences? Is their language shaped by incessant input? Is imagination nurtured or stifled with Disney and television telling them exactly what Cinderella wore to the ball?

Unlike literature for children by adults, these expressions are all spontaneous reactions to their own interests, in their own vocabulary - and grammar.

People may think these were special children in a special situation. They came from west coast suburbia, Hell's Kitchen New York City, a research clinic, a university laboratory school, an experimental summer camp, a progressive private school and a country community cooperative. As a social worker, I had all remedial work. To work on the preventive side I turned to early childhood education, and that has made all the difference. Years ago, a teacher in England wrote: The children listen but they don’t hear. Background noises from the radio are now supplemented by background vision from the television. “They don’t hear” has become “they don’t see”. They are unaware of texture, shape, vibration. Their writing lacks the vigor which springs from intense observation.

Teachers need to be aware of the importance of the senses in the learning process. In 1941 the first assignment in Lucy Spraque Mitchell’s class at Bank Street College was to go out to look, listen, smell, taste and respond to kinesthetic sensations. When we began to focus attention, take time to concentrate on sense perceptions, the heightened responsiveness opened us to a new respect for the child’s freshness of vision.

Until the television age transmitted our uniform culture there was a genre called Sidewalk Games which scholars (the Opies) could collect and publish. Sad to say, these have been superseded by Disneyized literature that all of today’s children share, not necessarily richer than what they created themselves.

Children Are the Folk.

Folklore is often thought of as originating away back in time or away back in space, but there is a primitive group living right under our noses, if not under our feet, with a rich culture of song and speech, rhythmic and vivid, spontaneous and certainly untutored. That uncivilized tribe, the very young children, especially those too young to have absorbed our traditional clichés, have been creating their own vigorous chants, stories, songs, poems, along with the original turns of phrase characteristic of the folk everywhere.

The world has become so homogenized that an anthropologist can't find an untouched civilization, but here is a gold mine. As the bookseller said of the same old classics, "Ah yes; but the children are always new." They have new ways of expressing the same old experiences because they have not yet learned our culture's one and only right way. Still the experiences are essentially the same, and this gives their utterances the universality which enables us to identify with their feelings. They will sing of wonder, joy, fear, hurt, anger, loneliness - - the basic experiences of mankind. Their style will necessarily be simple and unsophisticated, and it will be direct and true.

Folk poetry is the kind you cannot imagine anyone sitting down to compose deliberately - - it springs to life of itself; often under conditions of extreme tribulation as in the trenches in World War I or in slavery - or among children.

Childhood approximates the conditions in which folk poetry began. No one understands how the ballad arose; the best the scholars can say is "The people speak." It must have been the expression of overpowering emotion, losing the barnacles as it was passed on, until, worn down like a pebble on the beach, it became elemental.

Fifty years among the youngest - - what joy! Karin, 4, visiting me, asked “Why is your house so neat?” I replied “It’s because I have no children.” She volunteered “I will be your children.” And they were.

THREE YOUNG POETS

(65 years since I first knew Wilma, I am still in touch with these three.)

The Little Duck

Wilma, 3

There was a duck swimming in the water.

He forgot about things that were hard to bite

And he bit some water. It didn’t taste so good.

It made him gurgle it up again.

He swim too far down, and cried and cried

Because he didn’t know how to swim up.

He was too little.

Along came the mother duck flying.

She flied up the water and took him home

And put some dry clothes on him.

It’s no good for a little duck

To stay down in the water

Waiting for his mother.

He get too cold.

Now he’s grown up; he’s as big as his mother.

He knows how to fly.

The Storm that Didn’t Come

Wilma, 3 yrs 1 mo.

Today we have a storm.

When the storm came and the rain came,

Why, there wasn’t any moon.

We had our orange juice and cereal,

We didn’t have any dinner

‘cause there was a storm.

We came down when it was all dark.

When the storm came we watched the storm

And it didn’t come.

And I saw some lightning out my winda.

I thought: that storm is coming in my winda.

But it wasn’t. And so I thought,

Well, goodness sakes,

The storm didn’t get in my winda.

And the storm went away again.

I was in the bedroom when the storm came.

I got up – went downstairs –

Storm wasn’t there any more.

Such Terrible Work to do

Wilma, 3 yrs 6 mo.

Oh, such terrible work to do:

I was up all morning doing work.

I clean my den all alone –

O, long, long time ago –

I clean it up again this morning . . . .

I have to wash my paint brushes . . .

It makes me trouble – tired . . .. . . . .

Oh gee, I wish you’d dress me.

My hands are getting chapped

‘cause I’ve been working with blocks

And working with trucks

And working with wagons

And those paintings

And those smocks

That’s why my hands are getting so chapped, see?

Chappedy chappedy chips

The Dark

Eva, 3

If it wasn’t sunny day, then it must be dark.

When the dark is coming, the dark we see.

The moon just moves like this; way down in the sky.

Faster it goes, to the dark, when it stops.

Slowly the moon does like this: just moves.

When we go in the house it’s really dark.

Yesterday there was the moon outside

And there were stars moving.

We were tired and we came home

And I tucked you in your little bed.

This is the night and this is the light.

And watch the dark.

Lover-poemer

Eva, 3 yrs 9 mo.

Poem of you, poem of you –

And will you love it and send it back?

And who will know that I said that?

I’m a lover-poemer.

Don’t run me out of poems.

Poems are little songs.

Stars, stay out there

And I’ll think of you in my dreams.

I’ll think of all my poems.

Faraway Mountains

Eva, 3

Look at that little bird there,

Just flying on his way.

It's nice to stand here and look

At the faraway mountains.

Look at those gray ones way way back.

You can’t see the houses, just bumps.

I see what looks like a king’s castle.

I love to go everywhere, travel near and far.

I want to go to the forest again,

I found a little man on the floor,

Big as a candle.

I found something else too,

A pretty flower.

Talk to the Animals

Eva, 3 yrs 10 mo.

Little bird, where are you going?

I’m going to fly over the sea.

I’m going to my eggs.

Little ducklings, where are you going?

I’m going to the pond where the beautiful things are.

Fireflies, go away! Will you come back then?

The butterfly flies over the forest.

Will you fly away, fly away?

I was born. I want to be a baby

And turn into a butterfly and fly away.

Could I turn into a butterfly when I’m born?

Fly all over the room, up above the top,

Or anywhere.

Frogs, jump away, jump away

And go somewhere

Where nobody can find you,

Where nobody can see you.

Frogs, play hide and seek for me

And I’ll try to find you.

Night Thoughts

Eva, 3 yrs 10 mo. & 4 yrs 2 mo.

Look, mama, the moon! Oh, the beauty moon –

The color of white.

The moon, the moon,

The shiny bright moon.

You know why the moon is full?

All full of love the moon is.

It has yellow from the sun.

The moon seems to be a crescent moon

Inside of the full moon.

I like it when you take me out at night

To see the moon and the star.

I think I see flashy stars already.

They look white in the nice black sky.

Black and white look nice together

And sometimes in the nighttime

I think in my dream

That the white is inside and outside

And the black in the middle.

I really like the moon

Whether it can be a full moon,

A round moon, a half moon

or a crescent moon.

Go to sleep, bunny rabbit

Go to sleep, little coyotes.

When the moon’s in the sky,

What about the Indians?

They must go to sleep

From working so hard.

Bumblebees stay all night up.

They know how to get all the honey.

They don’t have a school to study.

They use their tiny mind.

They don’t have much to think of –

their honey is their mind.

I had a dream.

I called to it gently in my sleep

and it came without waking you up.

It feeled warm inside and warm outside.

Inside it made me happy. So now you know

What made me to fall asleep.

Sun come up, sun come up. I love you so much.

Winter

Eva, 3 yrs 10 mo.

It’s getting to be winter, my dear. We’ll have to wear coats.

We’ll have to get all cuddly ‘cause you see the snow.

If you take a dip of it with your little hand

you see that the snow is very cold.

You play in the sleds, you close the windows up,

you put the heater in and take your coats off an you’re all warm.

Spring

Eva, 4

Little garden stay there. I’ll help you grow.

I’ll get some water and pour it in you.

Flower, why are you growing?

I’m growing ‘cause I love being big.

That’s why, that’s why, that’s why.

Little grass, grow and grow,

grow bigger and bigger and bigger

until I can fall down on you.

The Fireplace

Eva, 5

This is how the fire looked. I have it in my mind.

A little flame of orange fire behind the piece of wood,

the light coming out of the corner,

Smoke coming out of the side.

Work

Eva, 4 yrs 8 mo.

Mom works all the days

Dad works all the days

Eva sometimes works, sometimes plays.

Poems

Eva, 5

Sparkling eyes, sparkling feet,

sparkling everything, nice and neat.

Poems are little songs –

they sound like that.

Volcano

Eva, 10

From the window I could see

straight and tall and proud,

gift of snow on its head,

wise old Popo, mountain that erupts.

Necklace of clouds

around its snow-white collar –

who could it be but my friend,

Popocateptl?

Birds

Carl, 2 yrs 3 mo.

Birds fly up – jus’ lak a b’loon.

Curfew

Carl, 3 yrs 2 mo.

Sometimes I like to go to sleep

And then I only peep peep peep.

I put my jammies on and then

I like to go to sleep –

In the dark, dark darktime.

The night-night horns are up in the air.

I go to sleep and then they blow

And say – Good night, children.

The big children and the little children.

The grownups and those little growndowns.

Band Instruments

Carl, 3 yrs 2 mo.

I want to go to the parade again

And see the big loud noise—

All those trombones, those, tubas,

Those piccolos, and all those big drums.

I’ll show you how they banged

Real loud, beat beat.

And what are those little pans

That go up in the air and say Tchweess!

Short little pans with cute little holders on?

Dark

Carl 3 yr, 6 mo.

Dark, dark the night is dark.

Night, night, by moon it’s bright.

Oh, get up! The sun! I like the sun.

Autumn

Carl, 5 yrs 4 mo.

Leaves are falling here and there, here and there

Just like a rug. You only hear

Squish squash, squish squash—teeny spikes of mud.

Winter

Carl, 5

I’m going to shoot a big black bear

To keep me warm as warm

For when I tramp out in the winter cold,

The frosty winter,

When I walk out in the snow.

The Day That Jesus Was Born

Carl, 5 yrs 6 mos

I am the donkey

I let Mary sit on my back

And carried her far to Bethlehem

I saw the Kings. One had a crown

The shepherd came and brought a lamb

For baby Jesus.

We were lying down quietly, donkey and cow.

The cow and donkey are friends.

We talked with each other before we went to sleep at night time.

The hay was sticky-

Like pins and needles but not so sharp.

When I feeled my whole bunch of hay

It feeled smooth and good on my tummy.

I saw a great star and it was very shiny.

The star seemed like it really walked around.

It was showing everybody the way to baby Jesus.

The star started around the stable

And showed it was still silver and gold.

The star was all telling of baby Jesus.

HOW YOUNG CHILDREN DEVELOP UNDERSTANDING

Language is usually considered a tool of communication. Man can no longer live without communication, at least he thinks he can not. But language is also a tool of thought and understanding. It is possible that man cannot think at all without this tool.

Jonathan Leer, professor of philosophy, University of Chicago, speaks of playful inquiry “Children are born with no sense of the ideas that give life meaning and no language to formulate a thought. People are philosophizing from the age of three about the meaning of things, why things mean what they mean, what this world is about.”

Communication with oneself

Some forms of psychotherapy are based on holding up the mirror (or rather the sounding board) to let a person find out what he believes through hearing what he says. A tenet of pedagogy (probably suspect, since it discounts intuition) is that we do not really know what we know until we can put it into words.

Language then is needed not only for communication with others but also with communication with ourselves. Some form of language is essential to the development of the human mind. Simians are handicapped by the lack of it. Being the last medium of expression to develop, it is the highest and most complex.

Language and concepts develop

The infant must develop both understanding and language, and not only simultaneously but connectedly. When he wants food the sight of the bottle is reassuring only because he has learned it is the symbol for food. The next step in concept formation is a difficult one; since the bottle itself is only a symbol, the word “bottle” is a symbol of a symbol!! Meanings must be defined gradually as experience progresses.

An unanticipated emergency arose: After the sudden shock of Pearl Harbor in 1941, it was feared New York might be blitzed like London, where parents were sending their children to the country or even overseas to live with American families for the duration of the war. An attempt was made to determine how group care of preschoolers out of the city could be arranged if evacuation proved necessary.

I worked with four two- year- olds at “Bank Street in the country”. What was learned from this summer experiment that had not been observed in the English children translated separately to selected American homes? Our children thrived because they were moved as a whole school with their own teachers and classmates and familiar procedures. All they needed to get used to was a new (and delightful) environment and 24-hr days away from family except the family of their known peer group. London children who slept in the subway with their mothers seemed less traumatized than some who escaped bombing but endured separation and changed relationships and culture.

How concepts are formed and refined

The characters: two Young Two’s, Scott and Craig, both 2 yrs 3 months, and two Old Two’s, Dick and Lee, both 2 yrs 10 months. The scene: the country- although to the boys, the country was synonymous with the outdoors. After nap Dick would say “I want to go out in the country.” The two little boys became great friends, calling each other Baby and kissing each other’s hurts.

They were much impressed with the animals. Lee knew animals from picture books, but strictly as second-hand. I heard him say at nap time, “What does the cow say? Moo/or galloping? No, the horsie says galloping.”

Dick as a toddler had called all animals ‘goggies’. Later he noticed that some feathered, clucked, two-legged dogs can be differentiated, that his parents called these chickens and roosters. Thenceforth, birds and fowls were “goosters” and the term dog was reserved for horses and other mammals. Vocabulary and concepts are interdependent, growing together as the child learns to distinguish the specific from the generic, until at a surprisingly young age he is able to identify more planes and cars than his parents, if his interests and training leaned in this direction.

For some reason frogs were the most fascinating to my four angels and Dick referred to all miscellaneous small beasties as frogs – even ants. He always referred to the cats as “my friend’.

Scott, lying on his cot, scooped imaginary frogs from the floor. When I tucked him under one arm to carry him off, face down, arms and legs flying, he chuckled, “Frog me!” Craig, who called to flies, “Chase fly away” and to robins, “come back again” often clamored, “Go see frog.” Scott joined the chorus, “Frog see” On the uneven terrain in the woods Craig chanted, “running down, running up, running down” as if muscles, thought, and speech were all one. Scott, chunky and coordinated, ran down the hill chortling, “Frog see!”

On seeing the bear’s picture in Ask Mr. Bear, he asked intensely, “Pig? Frog?? Elk??” He had seen Lee, the picture book sophisticate, playing elk by running around with his sweater on backwards and arms outstretched.

Lee said his favorite animal was the atterbatic that lives in the woods. Of the sheep he said prosaically, “He opens his mouth wide and makes noise.” “We don’t like maa goats, we just like baa sheeps.” He handed Craig the toy calf and said, “Here’s your lamb.” Craig looked at it and said “Dat’s s’eep.” After getting acquainted with real horse and dog Craig identified pictures, “Like a Muggins. Like a shep.”

Scott called catfish fishcat and nosedrops dropnose. In the woods he tested the texture of the leaves and the ferns without comment. Craig liked to see motion rings in the water. “Make a bubbles” he said, throwing pebbles into the lake. “Soap, soap” cried Craig on discovering foam at the water’s edge on a windy day. I said, “Listen! The wind.” He asked, “Where is it?” Teacher: “You can’t see it.” Lee: “You can only hear it.” Teacher: “You can see what it does. Look.” The boys looked in silence at the grass and trees bowing to the wind. A little later Lee said, “What makes the wind go blowy every day? The wind is far away, higher than the t’under.” Then he looked in the fireplace and asked “What makes the fire come?” He blew on it and said “Fire doesn’t go out, it makes the fire too burny.”

Organizing knowledge - relating to previous concepts

Lee was organizing his knowledge while crossing a bridge:

“That’s where the boats swim

and there’s where the fish swim

and here’s boards like a bridge.

No – the boats float,

and the fish swim underneath –

underneath the water.”

Craig listened, then nodded and said, “Boats can fim in the water. It floats. Yes.” To him both words were acceptable, while Lee had already edited one out as not specific enough. Craig then inquired serially whether horses, cows, dogs, cars go in the water, and rehearsed this information as if memorizing a lesson.

This is how young children cut out their own daily assignments and work on them. No one knows better than the questioning child himself how much he has to learn about the world every day. One child will ask, “Why don’t the fog horns come and blow the fog away?” While another explains to himself, hopefully, a frog jumped into the sky and that’s why it’s a “froggy day”.

Craig had taken in more than he could assimilate when he prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, wing awound a wosie. Pray the lord. Amen.” Craig’s prayer, unconsciously, invokes the very plea for prayer that was actually used during medieval plagues: “rosy” was a symptom, “pocket full of posies”, a remedy, “all fall down” an outcome.

Inside

Eva, 3 yrs, 10 mo.

There’s something wiggling inside of me

And I don’t know what it is – way back.

If I lived inside of myself

I could see what it was.

But I don’t want to be made of bones and blood.

I’m made of myself.

Babies

Eva, 5

Somebody’s baby is born today – somebody’s tomorrow.

And after that, and after that, the life goes on like that.

The longer it goes, the farther the world goes.

All kinds of babies turn out to be

And they pick out what they want to do.

I want to be in an orchestra

And play a harp.

Wondering

Eva, 5

Little girls wonder about things. I wonder everything.

But God doesn’t. God knows everything.

I wonder how it feels to know everything!

I wonder about God a lot.

God knows that He’s inside of everything that’s alive.

When the wind comes, the leaves move by theirself.

God moves too ‘cause He’s inside of the trees.

God’s inside of the washing machine

‘cause the handle moves all by itself.

That’s funny! Is that right?

God’s inside the refrigerator,

It tells when it’s out of motor.

It’s funny, but it’s true.

I wonder if God’s inside of teeth:

They move by theirself when they’re loose enough.

Life knows everything.

Thinking

Carl 4 yr, 10 mo.

I know my eyes weren’t sewed; how were they made?

How did I get started? First some blood was running,

Then a seed popped out of the blood and that was I.

How is a seed planted to make something like me?

Carl, 6

Sing that song at my mind.

I saw a very nice picture.

Sometimes I throw pictures out of my mind.

But they’re hard to get away.

I thought I had one long enough.

It didn’t look good to me then…

There isn’t a pull –

There’s a wave around the earth that lock us in.

The sky isn’t attached to the earth,

It’s up above the earth.

I still think the sky holds you in.

In the age when the world was started,

Gravity was started.

And as many years passed

It grew bigger, and bigger, and bigger.

And the world never ends.

And all the world stays alive.

The Story of Evolution

Carl, age 7 years 4 mo.

The Greeks would say that a god emptied his pocket and then he took a tiny little bit of mud and made it stay together. He held it in his hands for a while. Then he took his jackknife and cut a little hole down to where Gravity is and took it to a pond and filled it up with water. He flew out, way into space. He formed his hands into a cup and put it into the little cup he’d made, then he dropped it lightly down and noticed that it whirled around in space very fast.

This is our way: One day God decided that He should put somebody on the earth. He thought and he thought, for one whole week, and then he said, “I got it, I got it, I got it!” as he was jumping up and down and He started - - with dinosaurs. He let that go for two thousand years. He didn’t start Man till they were through. Then He put down mammals. He let them go for three hundred years. Then - - He put down Man.

And this is how Man kept himself alive:

At first Man had to find a house, and the closest thing to one was a cave. Next he needed light. “Now this is hard,” he said to himself. The first way to do it was when a lightening storm came, he would keep light from some lightning for a long time. After a while he found that flint and steel chipped together would make light too. After that he learned that rubbing sticks together very fast will make light.

And especially he needed food. Well. One day Man was walking around outside, and he all of a sudden found a strange black sort of rock. He snatched a rock that was nearby, and wrote on it, you might say, and discovered it was lead. After a while he made a shape like an arrow and discovered he could cut it with another stone. How could he make string by spearing a deer and twisting its hide, when he was making his first weapon? He took some bark of a tree and twisted it to make a string - - took a straight piece of wood, and with the arrowhead he had made, tied it onto it. He wanted to see how it would work. He hid behind a bush and when a bear went by he threw it at him and hit the bear. He ran closer to him and saw that he was dead. Now that he knew it was sharp, he made a knife the same way to skin it with. After he skinned it he of course ate it.

What else would he need? He skinned one of his deerskins and made himself a kind of clothing out of it. He might get cold sometimes. In the night it would be really chilly. And this happened in the century Blank Blank Blank. The End.

P.S. I guess this is how Man really started. There was a cell. Thousands of cells piled onto each other, lightly, and after a while it was washed up on land, and God gave it life to move for itself and think for itself.

Space

Carl 9 yr, 9 mo.

I understand now the reason for everlasting space.

To mortal minds it must be that it goes on- and a wall;

On and a wall, and on and on. But then there would have

To be an end, we think. But then there can’t be;

With all those walls, what would be beyond?

There would have to be more nothingness - - more space!

So that’s the reason.

Five year olds – Working outdoors

This is God’s world. We’re making it beautiful.

From here it looks as if the sky is round –

But where’s the other half?

Our World

Blair, 6

I know we started with streams and lakes, then came the moon and sun, stars and clouds, dry earth and one seed. After we planted that first seed, a flower sparkled and shined and filled the land with other seeds, for this flower had the magic and the strength to create the world.

Then it tapped the moon and told it when to come out at night and tapped the sun and told him to come out in the day. He told the stars too. He told the clouds he would put power in them to rain sometimes. He told the whole world how to live and hunt. He put everything in their place.

But now we came along and took away this beautiful island. We didn’t let this beautiful flower grow. And now look what we’ve done to this world. The birds go with the skies but we’ve taken the skies away from the birds with airplanes and pollution, not treated like things were.

Why did we come here? It was a beautiful place until we did.

Living

Blair, 6

I like to be me, because I was made to be me,

And I don’t want to change. It’d be too much trouble.

You have your own feelings.

People know themselves so well,

They can’t change to another person.

Some people are hardly ever in a good mood.

It wouldn’t be good to be happy all the time –

Or mad all the time.

After I had a fit for a few days of thinking

I don’t want to die,

I thought animals might have feelings too.

They might be people that are dead.

I started feeling sad for the animals

and didn’t eat my meat for a few nights.

Four and Five year olds.

If I die someone has to take you to the doctor.

The doctor can’t help you;

Your whole life will be over.

Will God make you all over again?

You already lived. You only get one chance.

Jesus didn’t get only one chance!

Dana, under age 4

As long as you’re learning you’re alive,

and when you don’t you must be dead.

I finally figured out your bones and all

those things you don’t need any more go into the ground,

and the good feelings are what go to heaven.

Roots of Things

Arlen, 5

I’d like to be an ant ‘cause I like to go underground.

I would keep working like ants do.

I wouldn’t eat bugs but I’d take what people give me.

I’d like to see what it looks like underground.

And see the root of things.

Left Alone

6 yr old

When I lose someone I love it’s a strange time for me – a very special feeling. I don’t have them anymore. I felt left alone. I was ready to cry. Being very, very sad doesn’t feel very, very comfortable. Whenever I think or talk about him it makes me feel that very special, sad feeling. It feels like you’re going to melt away quickly too. I had him for a very long time and I enjoyed him while I had. I felt good about him. Never in my life will I forget him. When you go up to heaven, your heart is dead, but your spirit is alive.

THE LISTENING EAR

Learning to observe accurately and develop a scientific attitude is a science experience for children in a true sense; and the expression of ideas and feelings in a pleasing form has elements of art. The crude but apt works of that primitive, the young child, can have directness and honesty, spontaneity and rhythm, grace and power.

The child’s natural speech has some of the elements of poetry: imagination, pattern, imagery of the senses, play of sound, rhythm, cadence, repetition, metaphor, and above all the sense of wonder which is the true essence of poetry.

Often the expression is so meaningful as to make the adult wonder, “Why didn’t I think of saying it that way?” It is easy for children, because they are not handicapped by trying. Adults think it is necessary to shift into another gear to compose a poem. We have grown up with the idea that poetry is something special – about the stars. The child simply observes in his own way. This is what makes artists, said Sir Osbert Sitwell in a television interview, “The artist begins his work almost at birth.” But all children are “born” artists and all must see the world at first through their own eyes; the culture cannot be transmitted fast enough to stifle all originality of vision (commonly labeled “mistakes”). It seems creativeness is progressively lost as education is gained.

The importance of a child’s utterances lies less in the validity of the product than in the values the child has experienced in the effort to understand and express his feelings and ideas. Adults are not equipped to interpret the sayings or paintings of children, but anyone can appreciate and enjoy them, make an effort to understand what the children are saying, and take the cues they offer.

We may err on the side of seeing in children’s compositions more than they have said. This is better than not hearing or understanding. We interpret Shakespeare in ways that might surprise him. Robert Frost said that a poet is entitled to any meaning the reader can find in his work. The psychologist is expected to understand the significance of the child’s words and feeling, better then he does himself.

The happy phrase, like the flowing cadence, comes naturally to the very young, because their vision is fresh and new, unobscured by our accustomed clichés of thought and expression. The infant sees everything for the first time, it is always the dawn of history as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

It is not the vocabulary which is striking. Children use ordinary words to express big ideas. To the hearer “an old sleigh for years and years” has a more interesting history then one which is merely many years old. To say the water is deep, conveys information, but not feeling; there is mystery and fascination in three year old Peter’s description “Down deep was the water - - a big tall swimming place.”

In the atmosphere of appreciation children bring forth what is in them, sometimes of a depth and beauty we would not have believed. They take us for a moment into their world, a world we adults have lost. In the permissive and loving atmosphere I worked in they were free to develop the curriculum which was suggested by the exceptionally rich and free environment.

If one person can pick up this much while teaching a group, what could a research team with no responsibilities but observation hear? But perhaps some of these things would not happen if one were not in there participating at the strategic moment.

Since children are not handicapped by the “right” way to do and say things, they are still able to think freshly for themselves without clichés. They use original locutions - - “creative mistakes” - - which you can hear at any time by training yourself to listen.

I grew up knowing a child who (when such objects were still in use) called a handkerchief “honkondix” and petticoat “gobbydub” (she got the rhythm right). Washcloth was wofclof and the bananas were bernaners. Four year olds gave me “I’m all sparry” (perspiring) and the useful “plain ol”, as in strawberry, chocolate, and plain ol’. (So many things can be plain ol’).

Teachers are accustomed to watching for creativity in painting, dance, blocks, woodwork, clay, finger painting, collage, use of instruments, original songs, or any plastic medium. Even those children who do not express themselves so easily in the more fluid media may come up with an apt epithet now and then in ordinary conversation. Children kindergarten age say:

“You know how the sun goes down? It squeezes.”

“Does this seashell have any hear in it?”

“A big bouquet, from arm to arm.”

“The Dragonfly is as blue as a match.”

Adults dip into memory rather than imagination for their figures of speech, and said what has been said before. A new generation’s vision is new. There are even new experiences to be had in the present age, and the universal experiences happen for the first time in each person’s life. The adult with sensitive ears may find again the reality we have lost through familiarity.

It is disturbing to adults to find children having dark thoughts and feelings which our culture seeks to deny. The sense of tragedy is a tabooed emotion in America. But the repressed feelings do not cease to exist by being removed from sight. Verbal expression helps the child gain control of his impulses by making him conscious of what his feelings are, enabling him not only to drain them off but to enrich his emotional life by accepting and expressing experiences. If the parent can bear to help him admit what he is experiencing, the need to carry impulses over into action will be lessened.

Three year old Gavrick was whispering to himself on his cot about something pursuing him. Carefully protected from gross fears of monsters, his free floating anxiety had attached itself to a fierce butterfly!

The creative individual affirms emotion. The value of an emotion is determined by the degree to which one accepts it as a part of oneself. By learning to feel what he feels, when he feels it, the child gains the courage of himself.

Language is first used for pleasure, for the sheer joy of sound, before it is used for understanding. We tend to ignore children’s talk as meaningless because we are looking for purpose and meaning.

Listen without criticism. We do not say to a child, observe this, but what do you observe? We don’t ask what are you going to paint? So we shouldn’t ask what is your story going to be about? Avoid even tactful criticism. Flora Arnstein in her book Adventure into Poetry (Standford Press) says children are only too quick to agree that what they have done is no good. Fear because of previous failure can keep even three-year-olds from talking. Shared experience like taking a listening walk can give individuals something to talk about.

It is not the educator’s task to “teach” the child who comes up with a story to tell, but to listen with acceptance and encourage the expression.

Seeing a cattail for the first time a three-year-old asked “Is it asparagus? Are there bones inside?” Allowed to tear it apart, he inspected the inside and said “Oh - - lettuce!” – satisfied. That was as much information as he needed at that lesson. Children must not only amass information, they have to decide where to file it away.

The adult guide’s role is to facilitate children’s initiating their own activities. We can provide them with materials to add further experience to enrich their concepts and associations, revitalize lagging interest, encourage exploration, and then follow through with related activities until they have drained all the good from an experience. Once we try to bring out what is in the child there is no harm in adding enrichment. Lucky is the child who finds an adult to share the enchantment in life.

Much of what we hear now may be derivative. My observations were made in the Twentieth Century. In the Twenty-first, when television has killed conversation and the cell phone has killed letter writing, children have so much input with no output expected that it’s a surprise if they still have something to communicate.

Parents, teachers, anyone who is with young children can learn to listen, keep a sensitive ear to catch literature in the making.

Creative learning and creative teaching are easy. All it takes is: inward aliveness, awareness, insight, responsiveness, imagination, sensitivity, sympathy, liveliness, energy, flexibility, initiative, serenity, cheerfulness, courage, judgment, a sense of form and beauty………

THE BIRDS

Language is our indispensable means of communication, as we learn at birth, or soon after. We concentrate on perfecting this convenient vehicle for the transmission of information and rarely (unless we are poets) think of any other use for language.

Young children, however, know a wonderful secret that we have forgotten: Language is a medium of art. It is in fact the only one which is entirely available to all. The very young, who still have their own way of seeing and their own way of expressing what they see, have something to teach us about improving even the communication aspect through a truly free and vivid kind of speech.

Outside the kindergarten door, a nest has been under daily observation and discussion. "The baby birds were pink, but now they're big they really are black. Their eyes are open and they have feathers. They have hair on -- fuzz. Their tails are woolier than their bodies. On their heads they don't got any fur, just a little."

We should have been satisfied with the word feathers, but the children who went on to call those quasi-feathers hair, fuzz, wool, and fur really convey the picture more adequately.

Five-year-old Freddy was considered a "slow learner", but how competent he is in his own field of expertise! "Every place I look now I see a pheasant. One day I took a walk and I saw 800 pheasants. They all flew out of the hay field. They went quok quok. They had two points up in the air on the side of their heads -- pieces of hair. They have green hair on their faces, yellow all around their wings, and a blue tail. And this is how the story hooks on to the story about the pheasants, about a peacock. His color is green and his neck is blue, toward his head. He has a beak on his head. When they say a funny noise they squeak. They put their feathers up. It looks as if he's going to an evening party. It goes from one side of his pen to the other side. He broke some of his feathers. He knocked them against the screen. I didn't like the back of him. He has ugly-looking feet. He can't fly."

All the kindergarten children were pitilessly naturalistic. "Baby squabs are real little. They have a long neck, a real little head and little black eyes. You can see their ears: they stick out a little, just like they're cut out, and their noses go up in a little hump. They still have yellow hair on them. You can see their skin. Their heads have the most yellow when they're getting big." This description is by Johnnie, who was mentioned in Claudia Lewis' book, Writing for Young Children, as being disturbed when a teacher told him he had sharp eyes. "My eyes don't have points on them!" he protested. His observation was sharp, and so was his use of language -- precise as a scientist's, and as literal. Figures of speech mean nothing to him. But with his basic English vocabulary he communicates the naked birdlings with their humped noses.

Exposition has a social value when a story is offered for its effect on the group. As the kindergarten year progresses, the children learn to talk to and for one another and not just to the teacher. The growing ability to listen opens up the possibility of conversation with real give-and-take, and a sufficiently sensational tale finds a ready audience.

Spippee Bird

Peggy, 5

We saw a little spippee bird, brown and black. It has a long sharp bill in him. Lice gets in our little spippee's nest. Rats sleep in it at night. Little round nest, just squeeze. Mommy took it down, got all the little pieces of hay out, then she put it back, and they come in it every day. Tweet-a-tweet: little robins come and talk to 'em.

Within the intellectual function of language is an important use mentioned by Shakespeare in The Tempest: "Before I gave thee words thou hadst no thoughts." We use words to talk out our problems in order to find out what we really think. As children develop their concepts, they use words to work out what they are learning and to organize knowledge into relationships they can grasp. Two-year-old Carl sitting in his bath suddenly said, "Birds fly up -- jus' lak a b'loon." You could hear the wheels go around as Don, almost four years old, on his first visit to a henhouse said:

"The chickens make eggs inside 'em

and they lay them in them round holes.

We got some eggs, but not from chickens.

We got them at the store…

You get everything from somebody."

Although the adult may remember only the intellectual, utilitarian values of language, the creative values are the first to be discovered by the child, who begins by enjoying sound for its own sake before he can articulate our words. The toddler makes his own joyful chants, and with a proper appreciation of the place of fantasy he uses language in the development of imagination.

A young two-year-old, peering into an overturned crate, said "Bird in there." Billy trotted over, just turning two years old and so earnest that I feared he would be disappointed to find it was only make-believe. He looked in, straightened up and nodded gravely, "Two bird."

The kindergarten child who tells this story knows that nonsense has its own sense; “Once there was a little duck. He saw some flowers and picked them all up. He took them to his house and his mother said, "Good little duck! You are going to be a little duck for years and years till you are a big man."

In the following example, three-year-old Philip identifies himself with the little creatures of his concern and develops passionate convictions about their protection. A live bird had been caught by a teacher and he wanted to be sure it had not been shot:

"These birds don't have to get all shooten up an' eat! Darn good bird, that little bird! Little birds won't get eaten. And no rabbits. No little baby rabbits. And no birds what are just little baby and can't fly. All the little birds go in so they won't get cold -- so they won't get rained on. And all the big birds stay out."

He Danced So Merrily

4-year-old group

One day,

That crow that I saw,

He took our paintbrush, put it in his mouth,

Flew up in the air and then he dropped it.

He opened his mouth and it fell out --

And then he flied away.

He danced so merrily --

He went up the tree and crawled up another branch

And got on a leaf.

Billy put some wooded sticks so it would hold him.

That's how he danced, on the wooden sticks.

He looked shiny black.

He has two yellow bands on his foot --

Has to have bands or he won't come back.

Even he almost burst in a hole in two of those trees

But he couldn't get in -- it was too tight.

He made a hole with his paws.

He lived in it and closed the door.

When he was on the tree he looked big.

Sometimes he went on the bars and things.

I climbed on a ladder -- he flew to the trees.

He just came very close to my leg.

He walked around, and looked around.

He made a sound -- he said Caw, caw.

Margaret, a motherless four-year-old raised by her grandmother in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, went to the country for two weeks with her settlement play group. When a letter came from home she would not have it read to her, but instead kept it under her pillow. Too tough to cry, she expressed her feelings in play, chanting to herself:

Homesick Song

Margaret, 4

Bird, bird, bird, bird,

Pidge, pidge, pigeon, pidge,

He's in the cage, he's in the cage,

And maybe he's going to climb out.

Oh, I don't care, he's shut.

Birds, birds, birds, birds,

All the birds have real eyes:

Teeny teeny teeny beady ones.

They got teeny teeny teeny little nose

And teeny teeny teeny little tail.

Bird, bird, bird,

He's - in - the cage.

I think he's chopped up.

I don't know is he chopped or not.

You haven't got no mommy --

Has no father or mommy --

Because he's lost.

'Cause I think his cage was open.

I think he have to go sleep in the street.

He's cryin' for his mama.

Bird, bird,

Your mommy will come back.

I don't know will your mommy come or not.

Goodbye, goodbye.

I hope you take care of yourself.

Your mommy be right back.

Birdie --

I hope you ain't cryin'.

You ain't cryin'. I know you ain't cryin'…

But I hope you ain't cryin'.

Goodbye.

Margaret, away from home for the first time, dictated this letter:

“I am fine in the country. I sleep in that house all alone.” Away from home she felt all alone. After bathing in the lake, she said, (cheerfully enough) “I drowned in that water and nobody even saw me.” Her insecurities show in her empathy with small creatures.

(In recording you may not know what you have until you read it back. I could never understand how Margaret hit unconsciously on the repetition of “bird,” “bird,” in diminishing numbers.)

THE DEAD BIRD

One morning just as school was starting two yellow-breasted warblers, deceived by the large plate glass windows of our classroom, flew into them with a thump that seemed to rock the building. We ran outside and found one bird merely stunned but the other dead. The one that recovered flew away and we took the dead one, looked at it, and passed it around, still limp and warm. All but one or two of the four-year-olds seemed to feel a warm sympathy and close identification with the beautiful little thing rather than any strangeness.

Gwennie patted the yellow breast, saying, "Looks like yellow pudding." Then after a long silence, "Droopy, droopy head." Everyone stayed gathered around, quiet and subdued, not frightened or disturbed so far as we could see, but visibly moved. It was a genuine and meaningful experience, and they were going to need a long time to assimilate it. The entire morning went into it. Everything we did was centered on what was most on our minds. And it was perhaps because we had plenty of time and space that everyone did work it out satisfactorily.

We may be reluctant to expose children to something we ourselves find difficult. The task of the adult is to focus on the children and encourage the expression of their feelings. We hope they will grow up with sympathy, caring, tenderness. We listen as they struggle with a new experience.

"Everybody come here, there's a dead bird. Oh, poor little birdie. Oh. Dead. Who could have killed him? Yeah, who? Are those birds dead? Maybe they're sleeping. If they were resting they'd have their eyes open. Hey, birdie, get up. I told you they're dead. I got a suggestion. Let's put some clean paper under them and leave them there. Leave them there and make them suffer? Are you crazy? You can't throw them out so soon. God could fix them. Who God? The God up in heaven, he could make them better. If they're better they'll fly away. How could they get better if they're dead? God could come and get them. We could bury them. Bury them? Why should we bury them so soon? Bury them like a man and woman. You know what happened to Walter's dog? He died and God wouldn't take him and they had to bury him. Why wouldn't God take him? Because God is too high up. Someone has to climb up on the Empire State Building. Hey, look at his little tail feathers. I see him breathing. How could they breathe if they're dead? We could keep them for two days and then bury them. How did they get dead? Maybe they were flying around and hit something. Too old. Fighting for food. Let's bury them in the sand. You have to call God. Gee -- ever' thing is God? God knows everything. I'm going to buy a little grave box for the bird and put her name on it. He'll never be alive again. He'll be alive up in heaven. Let's dig a hole, put him in, put sand over and a flower on top of him. Let's put a cross on top of him. Let's wrap him up here. Don't make fun of the bird, it's not funny. Easy now, easy, let's put him in."

Three quarters of an hour had passed before David thought of burying the bird. I had recently seen a similar incident in a back yard where the mother had disposed of the whole matter within three minutes. The burial took most of our morning, and even afterwards the children had to dramatize the whole story all over again, flying, falling, and being incarcerated in an enclosure of outdoor blocks while David, with his hands together like a deacon, delivered a singsong funeral oration of his own composition. One child was too anxious to go inside the ring of blocks when the children chose her to be the bird of honor, but she was willing to be the one who flew away. The others seemed more thoughtful than worried about the experience. We felt they must have needed to go over it again and again to try to comprehend it, since it kept fifteen children busy for three hours. They thought, felt it with hands and with emotions, did something about it muscularly in digging for the burial, discussed, played it out dramatically, then related it all to the music teacher and worked it out again in dance form, and finally heard Margaret Wise Brown's story about The Dead Bird to give them some feeling that this is a universal experience.

When David suggested a funeral, the teachers helped them to work things out for themselves, seeing that they found shovels, reached an agreement on a burial place, and took turns holding the bird when everyone wanted it at once. Many such happenings over the course of the year had enabled them to lengthen their attention span and learn the value of persistent work to accomplish an end result. They were given plenty of time to think, to bring forth jumbled, half-hidden ideas for airing out.

David and his best friend Wilma dug a hole, exchanging implements: "You loosen the dirt and I'll take it out." They worked steadily for a long time prying out roots. Johnnie, still struggling with the language, asked, "Why do you ground the bird?" Elsa volunteered the belief, "It has to be buried deep so that when it comes alive it can fly." None of the others expected the bird to fly again. Since we did not know what the country Sunday School might have taught Elsa about immortality, we refrained from confusing her further, hoping she might clarify her views by thinking aloud. She said, "We can undig there." Not being sure what this word meant, we made a mental note to expect some of the children to disinter the bird the next day, but it never happened.

The children lined the hole with large leaves of the bloodroot they had transplanted from the woods, laid the bird on the leaves and covered the grave with blossoms. 4 ½ -year-old Gwennie spontaneously chanted this dirge to an original haunting and elusive melody.

Dirge

Gwennie, 4 yrs 6 mo.

Oh poor little birdie,

He flew so hard and was just dead. He died, perfectly dead.

We dug a big hole and put leaves in there.

Put the bird in, dirt and flowers on top,

And we sang a song to it:

Hush, my birdie, I will hush you to sleep.

You will go to sleep, you will, you will.

You're dead, my honey hill.

You knocked your head against a window

And you will go to sleep in your grave.

Because you're dead, and you won't ever get alive, ever again.

Oh you will go to sleep, oh you will go to sleep

Oh you will go to sleep and miss your peep.

And you miss your other bird. You will never wake up,

You will never live, you will never live, hiv, you will never twee,

You will never peep and fly ay-round.

Your neck is broken, you can't fly.

You went to sleep at day;

You will never wake up the next morning.

Mourning Dove

Prudence, 6

Our coo-dove sits at the top of the tree

That doesn't have any leaves,

And he squeaks when he flies.

Late at night sometimes when I'm in bed

He comes and says coo, coo -- and I fall asleep.

He sings me to sleep.

Anna was a stolid girl who lived in a primitive cabin with a practical and unimaginative family, and her language was usually earthy and ungrammatical. Yet, unexpressive as she was, she saw the young robins sensitively, kinesthetically:

As Easy as Sand

Anna, 6

The babies flew out of the robin house.

There was a door where you could go out

As easy as sand --

As fast as your shovel can go in sand.

White

Sigrid, 6

Down by the sea I sat and watched

The seagulls flying up and down.

They were so white all over.

All their eyes were blue.

The swans are beautiful, so white.

They swim and swim in the water.

The water is green and blue.

The swans' beaks are orange.

The wind blows the swans on the water.

As they open up their feathers

It seems like a sail to me

Because they spread out so beautiful

As the wind blows through the trees.

Flying

Paul, 5

Birds, birds in the dark, fly on the branch

And then stop.

A butterfly flies on my hand.

I can feel his wings…

How soft they are.

Fly, flying fish,

Before the eagle gets you!

ANIMAL TALES

Caterpillar

Carl, 4

Looks so stripey – orange. He curls in a funny way.

They have funny faces, they have little eyes.

Have lots of legs, feels ticklish, have fur, skinny fur,

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, they crawl along the ground.

They really have two legs – no, thirteen.

Their two legs push ‘em – no, 21 legs.

Has one feet and really sticky part on the bottom.

Snail

Carl, 4

He’s always curled up, he’s always round and round.

He sticks his head in and out. He has black teeny eyes.

I wonder how he can see by just black in his eyes.

People have a little rim around the blue or brown.

Worm

Carl 4yr, 10 mo.

It’s nice to hold a worm. They feel - - ticklish.

They’re gardeners, that’s what they are.

I’d like to go down in the ground

And have a friend for a worm.

Weasel

Clarice, 5

A weasel got one of our chickens;

My mother killed it with a butcher knife.

It had a little short neck. Skin was black.

It had a long body. It had a long tail

It had a little bit of fur on it.

The head was a little bone. The body was a long bone,

The tail was not very big.

It looked like meat when you opened it

Like on his eye part and on his head part,

The blow was open.

That’s what reminded me it might have meat in it.

Like chickens – they have meat in it, don’t they?

Sure they do.

And that’s no lie, I mean it, ‘cause I really seen it.

James

Elliot, 5 yrs 6 mo.

James is a nice Siamese cat.

I took him to bed-

And the doctor said not to take him to bed –

And he was nice and warm.

I cuddled him all up,

Sometime till ten and sometimes all night:

Put him under my arm.

It felt nice and warm,

And he cuddled up next to me.

We used to get way down in the covers and look around.

James and I was pretending we was under leaves.

The Donkey

Elliot, 5 yrs 6 mo.

I saw a little donkey

With ears that never bend down

And they stand up straight.

Frogs

Sharon, 5

The frogs like to stay

in the green tall grass at night.

The frogs like to lay

Under the grass with leaves on top.

The frogs like to jump

Onto green lily pads –

And jump into the water.

Deer

Carl, 5

Deer, deer, on your light fall,

I see you leaping high.

When you walk on the silent leaves

You never make a crumpled sound.

The Deer

Heather, 5

One time in our car we were going through a tunnel in the woods, trees with those big openings down at the bottoms. A deer was walking along. Suddenly he saw us and walked right over. The window was open all the way and the deer stuck his head in the window and sniffed on everybody. I laughed. He wasn’t even shy and his eyes were brown, the same color as mine.

Baby Goat

Clarice, 5

We bought some nipples for our baby goat.

We’ll find some bottles around there for it, I hope.

So now I guess I’ll have to tend to it.

It’s a pure white.

I always feel like hugging it to bed some night.

He went and got some weeds, to eat it up.

When it jumps it don’t jump up in the middle.

He just squeezes things between those horns.

I hope he gets into a big baby goat.

Two Baby Goats

Arlen, 5

Oh sugar, we never talked about my having those goats!

We just had ‘em today.

When daddy came home at four o’clock and went out –

No baby.

In the morning Grandpop went out to the shed.

He came back and got Mother and me:

Two baby goats!

My goat made a clean place for her babies

So they wouldn’t get cold.

They don’t look pretty, cause they’re wet yet.

That’s all, but she has a nest now.

We have to milk her now.

The Turtle

Randy, 7

The turtle catches flies

And catches mosquitoes too

As it climbs over rocks

And you can watch them too.

Sometimes the turtle hibernates

As he goes to sleep in his hole.

As the turtle goes to sleep,

Christmas is here for us.

Turtle

Amy, 6

I wish I were a turtle.

I would walk real slow

And go into the ocean

Because it is cool.

I like to swim in the water

even in a pool.

I like to go out in the rain

So I get wet on my shell

And nowhere else.

I would get clean and fresh.

Crabs

Beth, 6

Spider crabs have plants and other animals growing on their backs. Crabs pinch! They have ten legs. They walk on their legs. They don't walk straight up like we do. They are just the way they are. They use their joints to walk also. They have to bend their legs. They aren't people. They are crabs! They live in the sea or maybe sometimes in the bay. Sometimes they eat other fish, small fish because they only have small things to catch them with. They eat them with their claws because they can't just reach out, because they have no hands. When the fish are still swimming they reach out.

I’m A Farmer Now

Arlen, 5

I’m a farmer now:

I got baby kitty cat

And a dog

And three goats.

Only that much, and I’m a farmer now, huh?

And I got a chicken

And two banties.

We got too many chickens:

hatch, hatch, hatch –

every minute a peepie hatched

A Mouse

Ingrid, 6 yrs 5 mo.

I found a mouse

Running thru the house,

His eyes black

As the dark night.

His ears soft

As a moth’s wing.

He squeaks as loud

As a bike squeaking.

I could call him Fur Ball.

Squirrel

Gregory ,5 yr. 2 mo

There’s a squirrel in my yard, and he digs straight down deep - - straight! He sure digs straight. Wow! Wasn’t that a deeper! Deeper than a world.

A Seahorse

Lisa, 7

A seahorse

Pushes off from the seaweed

When he wants to race away

Because a shark is following him

The water pushes him away

Like somebody else is doing it.

When the shark turns the other way

The seahorse

Grabs onto the seaweed

And stops immediately.

He is very relieved, and relaxes

and takes a nap.

Insects

Blair, 6

Butterflies: why do you fly with your wings supported?

Because you are gaily like a princess?

Crickets chirping in the night,

Why do you chirp so clear, free, and together?

Do You Know Me?

Blair, 7

Do you know me?

I am a bee.

And I know where the honey is.

Where - - would you find the honey?

Look at me now, I’ll dance it out.

Bzz, bzz, Bzz.

Those are my wings vibrating.

You may think I’m going to sting.

I’m not.

If we don’t make our wings flap we’ll fall down.

I take the nectar from the trees.

I take the nectar from the flowers.

We chew it up, we swallow it,

Get it back in our throats.

Bring it back to the honeycomb and spit it out.

Workers get the honey.

The Queen can’t get the honey.

When the bees won’t go

The drones kick them out of their house.

If you find some honey and tell somebody else

There’s a whole stampede following right behind you.

One day I flew off and found the greatest flowers.

I flew back and told the bees with a little dance – wiggle, wiggle, 1, 2, 3.

I saw some flowers way over there – mountains of them.

Oh man, they’re full of big giant gobs of honey.

The bees followed me down the hills, up the hills and out.

An Animal

Lisa, 7

You have to obey an animal

‘cause he’s the king of you.

He’s smarter than you ‘cause he never fusses

About himself.

So always obey an animal

And never say no to him;

‘cause someday there will be none of you

And that will be your sorrow.

WIND AND WEATHER

Way Up

Paul, 3

What makes the wind go blowy every day?

The wind is far away, higher than the t'under.

Way, way up. It's far, far away.

Star Rise

Philip, 3

The dark brings the stars up.

Trees

Anonymous, 4

Trees are very nice friends for us.

They let us climb their branches.

Deers are camouflaged; they don't want to be sawn.

If we didn't have trees we wouldn't have air.

This world is like cooperating:

We help the trees, and the trees help us.

By breathing out our bad air,

They think it's good air.

That's how we get good air to breathe.

If we get more trees, we'll have more air.

I'm so glad we have trees.

Even bushes.

Whispering

Janet, 4

I hear a leaf falling down,

The leaves come down like little birds – flapping their wings.

Morning

Meredith, 4

Way early in the morning the sun comes up,

I lie in bed. I feel it - big, round, and yellow.

Winter

Eva 3 yr, 10 mo.

It’s getting to be winter, my dear. We’ll have to wear coats.

We’ll have to get all cuddly ‘cause you see the snow.

If you take a dip of it with your little hand

You see that the snow is very cold.

You play in the sleds, you close the windows up

You put the heater in and take your coats off and you’re all warm.

Winter

Carl 5

I’m going to shoot a big black bear to keep me warm as warm

For when I tramp out in the winter cold, the frosty winter,

when I walk out in the snow.

Autumn

Carl 5 yr, 4 mo.

Leaves are falling here and there, here and there

Just like a rug. You only hear.

Squish, squash, squish, squash – tiny spikes of mud.

The Breeze

5-year-old

The leaves blow lightly, the leaves blow smoothly,

The wind breezes, the birds tweet.

Don’t you wish you could lie in the grass?

Look up in the trees and see the breeze?

The birds are singing a song for me.

The daisies have little eyes in the center.

Flowers are peeking out between - -

Whatever the green stuff is called.

The breeze makes the daisies say

Yes - - no - - goodbye - - hello.

Can’t Blow Me

Beth, 5

Windy, Windy, Windy days.

The wind blows the flowers,

The wind blows the leaves,

The wind blows the sun right into the breeze.

The wind makes you sneeze!

But the wind can’t blow me.

Rippling Grain

Carl, 5

The wind looks like water going over the rye.

The top looks like a bird's flying over the sea.

It goes in different directions

So the rye looks like wings of a bird.

A Gusty Night

Beth, 6

Once we stopped at a campground late, late at night. All the people were already sleeping. We were uneasy and scared as we watched the stars roll across the sky and as the wind moaned -- ooh -- and as we laid in the dark. It was a big gust and it was cold and I had very thin clothes. Mommy told us to stay next to the car. I had no intention to go on that dark campground! I could hardly see the trees that were near. I was afraid I would crash into a tree. I thought the wind would be strong enough to pick up a car. It was shaking. It was hard to go to sleep with the wind moaning. I had never heard the wind moan. I was very cold and I shivered in the dark underneath the stars.

Wind and Storm

Amy, 7

Out in the wind

Out in the storm

The clouds come moving

The wind blows strong

Making a whistle song.

In the desert

Grass dies.

Tumbleweeds roll on the roads

All night and day.

Out in the wind

Out in the shadow

The birds fly and the wolf howls.

Wind Thoughts

5 year old

The wind is going all around the world.

He says he's going to blow even the grass out.

When it's a real big wind it might blow you away!

Every time it blows you away,

You will be in the wind's house.

The Sun

Cathy, 5

What's it like when the sun comes out?

The clouds separate,

And there's music for the birds and crickets

And it's hard to get your breath

'cause the air goes out

and you have to get the other air back in.

The rainbow is saying I love you.

Flowers taste this water from the rain.

Sun, sun, what are you doing?

I am sun.

Moon, moon, where have you gone?

I have gone down to the forest.

The sun, the sun is a fireball.

The moon, the moon is a star.

The moon, thee moon is a kitten.

The sun, the sun is a cat.

A Sunny Day

Lisa, 7

The sun was sparkling high in the sky,

Dew on the grass.

The butterflies were flying around

And the wind was blowing swiftly.

The trees were blowing back and forth

And the birds were chirping sweetly.

I sat down in the chair and listened

To the beautiful noise.

Why Angels Cry

Jeffrey, 6

When the winds blow, the trees bow

Angels cry, the wind gets in their eyes.

Bouncing Raindrops

Anna, 6

When it hits the ground

The rain goes up like little steeples.

GROUP STORIES, FIVE YEAR OLDS

Rainstorm

Yesterday night I was out in the rain,

In the terrific rainstorm.

There was a hard wind. It sure tore those flowers up.

It bent ' em over like anything.

I thought some trees fell down.

The lightning looked like lights in the sky.

All our lights went out. We have lamps to light

And every time the door opened the light went off!

When the lights went off it was dark like a closet!

Big Storm

Five year olds

Do you remember the night it thundered? It shook the windows. White lightning came down. It lighted up the whole sky. It made the whole sky turn white. At our house it was blue. The lightning turned the TV off. It looked yellow, like zigzag, psst, then it was gone. Then it started pouring down rain. When I was inside I shut the curtains. We're not used to that weather. The door opened up because the wind blew it. It almost shook everything down. It's comfortable when you hear those teeny raindrops falling from the sky. I like sleeping at night when the rain comes down pitty-pat.

Hail

There's a storm today.

It doesn't rain, it rains hail!

First it was raining hard,

Then it was raining soft.

Hail's real hard -- it's ice.

Water makes it hail.

It gets so cold up there it’s ice:

Little balls of ice water.

It makes crack-down crackety-crack:

Popcorn's falling!

Popcorn!

Ray!

It's burning my fingers, freezing them.

It's so cold, that's why it feels hot.

It melts in your hand like ice cream

I saw the big ice cubes. It looks like diamonds, ice.

I saw the little glass bridges.

It had some holes in it, square.

It sounded like stones falling down.

I covered my face. I said it was sticks.

The rain was making the sticks fall down.

I picked some up. Mine melted on the floor.

What was left? Water ice.

We all rubbed 'em up our arms

'cause it felt good --

So cold!

I was outside eating ice.

Once I found a hoptoad in the hail.

He felt cold and he felt sick --

He felt dead I mean.

Forest Fires

The winds blew a power line down and it started a fire. It burned up lots of houses. We packed up some stuff in case we had to evacuate. We looked down in a canyon with binoculars and it looked like orange spots -- the fire. It was flaming way up, about to go over the mountain. We watched the flame of it. Great big flames popped up, almost like firecrackers. The smoke was in the way and you couldn't see it. The ashes were in front of it, falling down too much. I caught some in my hair. The wind blew dirt and ashes in people's eyes and I couldn't breathe. I can smell it. I got sick of the smoke. I saw red light. The fire got red sun. It was red and orange and pink, blood color. The fire engines were all full of firemen.

Fire

Down the canyon, over the mountain

Flames popped up like firecrackers.

Through the smoke, black like dirt,

Little dots of fire,

Orangey gray, blood color.

The orange light was the sun.

The Waves

5-year-old

We jumped over the big big waves,

Little tiny waves, midsize waves

Big as the ceiling too,

We wiggled our toes and got our feet sandy.

We dug holes and the water rolled in them,

Blue and white and dark green

With different lines when the water went out.

When the Hailstorm Started

Joey, 5

I was on the roof when the hailstorm started.

I was getting apples. I took them in the house:

I grabbed the other apple and run out in the screen

And jumped in the house through the window.

The rabbit got scared to death when the hailstorm started.

He was hopping up and down in the cage.

I didn't want the hailstorm to hit him

So I run down and got him.

You got to run all over to catch 'm

Makes you all out of breath. Yeah, him too.

I snuck up in back of him and grabbed 'm

And took some stuff in for him.

Soon as it started I caught one. One came down on my hand.

It scared me when it dropped in my hand.

I didn't know it started.

Both started at the same time:

The rain started when the hail started.

Yes, and the snow started --

Snow and everything fell on my hand.

I felt it all.

I didn't know what happened. I thought it was the rain.

The rain and snow and hailstorm came down,

The whole thing all together.

The snow beat the rain and the hailstorm down.

So soon as I felt that first one,

I ran in the house, before I felt them all!

I got a cup and I went out and got some of 'em.

My mother wanted some ice, the iceman didn't come,

So I ran out and got some hails of ice.

Ho-ly! It was comin' down like a horse.

It was knocking the apples down and all.

The yard was filled with it. Piles of it.

They filled the ditch up on the other side of the road.

We had to get some hay in the barn and cover it up.

Then it all melted. The hay melted too, from the water.

It was a deep as the house.

You oughta saw thee hoptoads over in the ditch.

One wanted to get a ride,

So he just kept hoppin' on the hails.

He hopped in the other hail and he hopped in the other hail:

He just kept hoppin' up in the air on the hails!

Adults have been trained to slough off experience. We pull our insulation about us and walk through the rain without feeling it. Not Joey; he really gets soaked. This happily neglected five-year-old was allowed to run out, hot and overexcited, into the rain and hail, come in through the window, dripping wet, bringing his rabbit into the house. At school he was given the time and opportunity to monopolize the teacher's attention, to relate the whole experience in deplorable grammar and wild exaggerations (snow in summer is an outright fib). As a result of this freedom to live keenly, Joey can say as few of us can, "I felt it all!"

RHYTHM

The Joy of Sound, the Sound of Joy

Creative language begins with sound play

One of the infant’s earliest pleasures is in sound, the sound he hears and the sounds he can make himself at will. “By the time the child is 18 months old he has been responding to music, pictures and rhymes for many months, but his creative expressions are still very limited, with the exception of rhythmic expressions and sound play which may come in the first year of life” (Gesell). Long before any meaning has attached to his laryngeal activity, he babbles for the sheer joy of it. Adults expect language to make sense, but the child, even after he comes to see the usefulness of speech for communication, continues to enjoy sound for its own sake, regardless of sense.

Accompaniment for body movements

1. Paul, 2 years 3 months, stamps about chanting;

Chan chan chan ho – brum brum brum brum –

Hi lee lo – run run run –

Pop down – la de – etc. ad in fin.

(There is a certain subtlety of form in the way he drops one syllable at a time.)

2. Scott, 2 years 8 months, sings his Train Song;

Nema nomma noma no,

ginga gonga go.

3. David, 3 years 1 month, marches about the house to his own accompaniment in the same way, but his nonsense bears some resemblance to the workday language, just as if it meant something… and perhaps it does!;

Rule the whole ree roke, crooked crockadoodles.

here we go round the foo de for,

floo de for, flag en harm,

row an creen, shrick an shreenk, my shun you an toast,

row de punket, row de sink, hi ho, de nu de did it.

Looks like a little biting lion, Mrs. Dashubope.

From birth the infant hears his native language with its characteristic rhythm, singsongs, or clicks. So we should not be surprised that the two-year-old who cannot yet form words and sentences uses sounds like English in his made-up songs and chants.

Rhythm and Rhyme

Eva, 5

I love the sound of birds singing in the sky.

I love to look – know why?

I love to look at shiny cars, I like the way they run.

I love their shiny sparkly spots. That’s all – that’s fun.

Feather fan, kether can, nether man, vether van

mather nether run ran, nenner nan gen, vimey vimmy lan

jimmy geely lan, viney vimmy ban; pectoran.

The young child succeeds in making a poem largely because he does not set out to do so. His natural speech rhythms have the ease and grace that give poetic quality to his spontaneous expression of thought. His rhythms are his own; genuineness makes him a poet. Most of us quickly take on the accents of our mechanized world, but the small child seems to retain the pulse of nature for several years. Rhythm is exactly as natural as breathing, or the heartbeat; they are synonymous. Without an organic sense of rhythm we should never learn to walk. In 1942 Ruth Faison Shaw told me of an interesting observation she had made in finger painting with children: little girls are likely to move in waltz time, while little boys move in march time!

The infant learns to babble after hearing human speech (deaf children have trouble learning to talk). He responds to rhythms almost as soon as he is old enough to move at will; babies bounce to music in a canvas swing before they are able to sit alone. In nursery school the teacher finds it preferable to provide musical accompaniment to their activities rather than asking them to suit their movement to given music, or to the stylized rhythm of traditional children’s games. Some children find it natural to accompany their strong bodily rhythms with chant or song. The literature of those chants, which exists in all countries, originated in this way.

Meredith’s playground chant: “Up the ladder, down the ladder we – have – fun!” was adopted by the four-year-olds as a proper accompaniment to any kind of active play. When offered drums, they orchestrated the song, and played it on any provocation. In contrast to this heightening of consciousness of muscle and music, Larry seemed not to know he was making a song as he played with a friend on the boxes and barrels and boards outdoors: “Into the woods, across the woods, up to the woods, off to the woods. This is the woods, we’re in the woods. We’re farmers, aren’t we?” -- finishing the sound better than the sense. When I mentioned that his conversation sounded like a song, he tried to make a tune for it on the tone bells.

Hearing Rhythms

Although the adult may not hear the subtle rhythms of a child’s natural speech without writing them down and reading back, the child will hear rhythms in our speech which we did not know were there. Skipper, 3, asked me the name of his book. I replied “The Little Woman Who Wanted Some Noise.” He replied in a sing-song tone, “The LIT-tle WO-man who WANTS some NOISE.” Again, I innocently told 4-year-old Tina, “The Threes and you may get the juice and bring it to the tree.” She went off singing “The Threes – and me – can get – the juice – and bring – it to – the tree.” It would be ideal if adults could learn to speak as rhythmically, and as vividly as children; and the teacher who is sensitive to language will try to speak to children in a tongue they understand naturally. These children translated my prose into their verse.

Natural speech rhythms of children

Children often have a singing cadence, sense of form, and vivid freshness of expression. Sometimes their words pattern themselves into poetry. The child whose spontaneity has not been crushed will have enough ease of expression to speak in graceful rhythms.

Inventiveness

One thing that convulses young children is silly language, often combined with “naughty” words and imaginative bragging. The four-year-old is the real expert on this, and his neologisms may be so useful that the family adopts them. Tina saw me reach for a match to light the gas stove and asked “Are you going to smatch that to hot the baby’s bottle?” Bruce, rowing a boat, suggested “Let’s go fronting over that way” – a logical opposite to backing.

The four-year-old, though a past master, does not hold a monopoly on outrageous language, for all children enjoy the shock value of language pushed out of bounds. Stephanie, 4, insults her friend by declaring “You’re not the nice girl in the whole wide world.”

Imagination builds language: having something new to say calls for a new way of saying it. Conversely, a command of language can also help to develop the imagination. We need thoughts for speaking and words for thinking. At 4 Carl said, "My imagination helps me with my thinking. What I’m not I can be in my dreams.”

Form

The child’s natural expression often shows remarkable form. Donnie, 3 years 8 months, told a story with a beginning, a middle and a real ending:

Once there was a great – big – man:

and she ungrowed,

and ungrowned,

and unned and unned,

until she was just little.

Unconscious structure

Barbi, an architect’s two-year-old daughter, often used as many as 200 blocks in her constructions, stretching all the way across the room. She never looked over her shoulder at what she had already built, and yet the finished “dog jail,” or whatever it was to her had an organic wholeness, which was completely satisfying. Its effect did not depend on symmetry or repetition of elements; it had its own inner architecture and fundamental unity.

Some children’s poems likewise have balance from within. Margaret’s Bird Song breaks down into stanzas of approximately equal length, beginning in a similar but not identical way. The form is too subtle for the hearer to catch, but after the whole poem is written down it is apparent to the eye. Separated by four or five lines each time, we find

Bird, bird, bird, bird –

Bird, bird, bird –

Bird, bird –

Birdie –

Another instance of unconscious form was noticed after recording the rhythmic play of two six year olds watching a turtle. The strict meter was definitely intended, but the boys could not have known how well their stanzas would look on the page:

Two Boys Watch a Turtle

Arlen, 5 & Alston, 6

Open – open – open – open

Out —out —out —out

Wider —wider —wider –wider

And out comes the head!

Crawl – crawl – crawl – crawl

Turn – down – there

Turn – down – the road

Oh – oh – turtle

He’s always turning round!

Oh – shut – shut

Open – open – shut shut shut

Move – move – moved your head

Ouch! He scratched my finger!

And walk

walk

he goes.

Jessica, 6, had a college examination book labeled Blue Book and used it to write:

Blue Book

Jessica, 6

The sky is blue

The ground is blue

Everything is blue.

Blue is the sky

Blue on the ground

and on me.

Blue is a cooling color,

makes you want to settle down.

Your face turns blue

when you hold your breath.

A blue bird flies in the blue sky

and then it eats blueberries.

In the winter

the ice is blue and

the water is blue

it gets so cold

it shivers you.

Oh, I like blue.

The sky is always blue

In the night it’s kind of black-blue.

1, 2, the sky is blue

1, 2, the ground is blue

1, 2, I am blue

The End

Green Goblins, Yellow Ghosts and the Blue Witches

Wendy, 5

The green ghosts are by the farm in the kitchen

And the goblins go Whee – ee!

Let the wind blow the goblins

Let the wind blow the ghosts

Let the wind blow the witches

The witches cast spells

Let the goblins scare the kids

While the ghosts take the candy

They eat it, while the children scream.

The parents call their children

But they never come back.

Peggy was listening to Vachel Lindsay’s “The Proud Mysterious cat” with her head in my lap under a tree beside Pickering Creek. As soon as I finished the reading she carried on the rhythm with this song:

Song by the Creek

Peggy, 4

I see a berry – I see a thistle.

I see a cow and a thistle.

I see a crick and a thistle.

I see a fly and a cricket.

I see a thistle – I see a bug.

I see a thistle and a bug in a crick.

I see a tree and a locust on.

Locust on a tree.

Hurray for the Rabbit

Blair, 6

Hurray for the rabbit … the rabbity, rabbity rabbit.

He’s soft and nice and he doesn’t even bite.

Hurray for the rabbit … the rabbity, rabbity rabbit:

He takes the food we give him

and then he nibbles it soft.

Hurray for the rabbit … the rabbity, rabbity rabbit.

Every time he stays there

so I can give it a carrot.

Hurray for the rabbit … the rabbity, rabbity rabbit.

Sleepy Head

5-year-old

Petals are falling on my eyes –

Sleep petals, rose petals, violet petals

Seven of each combined

Turn into a tired mind

And dance me to sleep.

Rocking Bird

Anna, 5

Rocking bird, rocking all the day

Singing all the day as he rocks

Rocking bird sitting on a fence

Rocking himself to sleep

His baby bird to sleep.

Home Sweet Home - - song

Ernie, 4

Ernie sang with descending tune A F E D to each line

Home sweet world

I been listening

I want everything

Some love music

Music sweet home

I been listening

Forever, keep

Singing along

I been thinking

Home sweet home...

Button Chant

Ernie chanted in response to offer of help with a button:

I don’t want no one

I don’t want no one today – o

Day-o

I don’t want no one today.

Oh oh I gotcha now

Button, button, button.

I - - gotcha that time.

Next time……

DISCUSSIONS

How Does Lichen Feel?

4-year-olds

It feels fuzzy, furry

Hairy and round

Hard and dry,

Flat and straight

Bouncy and rubbery

Spongy and tangled

Stiff and wirey

Bushy and prickly

Squishy and raggedy

Mushy and bumpy.

It feels like a broom

Like wire

Like a scrub brush

Like a tumbleweed.

We found it on the ground

To be round on the ground

To be found on the ground

And to be held…

At first we did not know what it was

But now we found out it’s like fuzz

And that’s what it was

Then we found it lived on a tree

With a bunch of bees

that we see

We looked down on the ground

we found it green

but now it’s turning brown.

What Breaks

4-year-olds

GRASS is bumpity and bends

SAND can only be little rocks

It can’t crack or bend

It can roll.

Little ROCK could crack by big rock

Big rock could crack a little tree

If it’s so big you could roll it

It would squish all the trees.

The seeds would be underground

You won’t have the idea of where they are.

CLOTH could tear and wood can’t

WOOD can roll –

Trees sawed down you cut them in little pieces

Sometimes wood fall against the BRICKS.

And breaks to pieces.

CARDBOARD could break if it’s broken by wood.

PAPER can burn and tear

Into big shreds and lines.

FIRE can burn trees up and makes the leaves brown.

Fire could burn down houses.

WATER could make big waves if it has fast wind.

I saw AIR going out of the hose.

I saw waves of air, it was bumpity.

Air could blow leaves off

At winter when it’s cold.

Air could blow trees over

And even wind could.

Like your breath it’s air.

Bulb could break faster than wood could be sawed.

That’s because wood is harder.

Bulbs are made of glass.

And wood aren’t.

What Grows?

Tommie, 5 & Robbie Joe, 5

The seeds grow under the ground.

When the rain comes they grow

Into a big tree like an apple tree.

When there wasn’t any rain the seed wouldn’t grow.

I could have a pine tree, a tomato tree

An apricot tree if I planted an apricot seed

A pineapple seed, a carrot seed –

And a raisin tree grows raisins

Are there any shell seeds?

Would a rock tree grow?

We don’t have any rock trees.

There’s no such thing as rocks growing out of trees.

If you planted one it wouldn’t grow.

It’s not a seed, they’re not supposed to grow.

Chairs don’t grow

Plastic don’t grow.

Steel don’t grow.

Sinks don’t grow.

Glasses don’t grow.

Watches don’t grow.

People grow

Fishes grow

Whales grow – no, they’re too big

Snails grow

Bees grow on honey

And bugs. Crickets grow

Trees grow. Bushes grow. Grass grows.

Hair grows. Arms grow.

The hair on your arm grows.

Little baby horses grow, and big horses.

Baby frogs and big frogs.

And birds. There wings grow.

Their whole self grow.

Sheep grow and baby lambs.

Billy goats grow.

Eagles grow – baby eagles grow.

The flowers out there grew from seeds.

All the things that are real would grow.

Everything grows and everything doesn’t

If it’s not alive it can’t grow.

It never can grow if it’s not alive.

What is the Quietest Thing in the World?

5-year-olds

Birds flying through the air

Turtle walking

Grass growing

Soft wind blowing

Leaves falling off a tree.

A jelly-fish under water.

A shark out at sea.

A piece of paper floating away

Air is the quietest thing.

A hole in the wall

A fluffy kitten sleeping

A snake rolling along.

A duck going in water.

Someone smelling a flower.

Caterpillar climbing up a sunflower

Dropping a feather.

baby eagles hatching.

A balloon floating

Rain sprinkling

Snowing

Bubbles

Hair growing

A glider.

Deer running.

A parachute

Going to sleep quiet as clay.

The quietest thing in the world is nothing.

What is a Library?

6 & 7 year-olds

A library is a world of books –

A wonderful exciting journey to books.

A place where you can read books in peace,

And learn about things where it’s quiet and so peaceful.

A selection of books all around you, on different subjects;

Picture books, poems, science – about volcanos or fishes;

Ideas for making a painting or taking care of farms

Arithmetic: books that lead to adventure.

You ask the librarian where the type you want is.

You can take a card and write your name and be proud of yourself.

You can see things, get copies made, borrow nice little paintings.

It’s nice ‘cause you don’t have to buy the books. You can

borrow them for a week, two weeks, a month.

If you go alone you get scared because there are so many books.

I have fun with books.

I have luck with books.

I get so carried away I feel I’m inside the story.

What is a Poem?

7-year-olds

Putting words together to sound good,

To make a beautiful story, - usually exciting –

…something is happening.

Good poets have the ability of lots of words.

It doesn’t have to have meaning, or rhyme.

Poems are soft, float with words.

They tell you lots of things in a short sentence.

You use your mind.

It makes you believe more than it tells you.

CONVERSATIONS

The conversation of a preschool child is not conspicuously characterized by mutual give and take, but I have not found two way communication so rare as Piaget would lead one to expect (he found that 30% of a six-year-old’s speech consists of collective monologue to which the other person is not expected to attend).

Children over three grow rapidly in the ability to see and hear one another, at least in an environment which encourages such appreciation. A typical five-year-old conversation shows children picking up each other’s cues with no intervention from a teacher, unless she sees an opportunity to develop powers of observation or expression.

Joey: Member the night we went to see those sheep and we got a ride home?”

Bobby: “They’re real nice sheep, they don’t hurt you.

Johnny: “I like to help lambs.’

George: “They won’t bite nobody, will they?”

Bobby: “Pigs are buggers, aren’t they?”

Anna: “The sheep nibbled my hand and it feeled ticklish and I don’t like ticklish.”

George: “We feeled their fur.”

Gail: “It feeled real good and soft.”

Prudie: “I got close to a cow once and patted its nose. It was sandy and wet.”

George: “We saw them un-connect the horses.”

Anna: “The men jumped on them and rode them to the barn.”

George: “Like cowboys have to hold their shoes up (i.e. stirrups), they didn’t have that because the horses had a horse wagon.”

Johnny: “When the tar was soft the horses stepped on the tar.”

Teacher: “You could see…”

Children: “Horse mark tracks, hoof tracks, shoe tracks, tar tracks, metal tracks.”

Complex Sentence Structure:

Carl, 2 yrs 8 mos: “Do you know, when someone was passing, Angie got a little glass and I got a big glass, and Beth, who was sitting next to Angie on the other side, got a glass almost as big as mine.” (8 months earlier this child’s best output was “I see p’ane, p’ane go up…”, but two-weeks later he said, “I see the milkman horse go round a corners.”)

Barbie, 3: “There’s flowers on the big tree that’s before the gate where we go in when we go down where the swing is.”

Linny 3 yr 10 mos: “I saw a Navy boat that had spots all over it, so you couldn’t see from a distance just where it was.”

Candle

Skip, 2

Reaching for the right word, Skip, peeling off candle drippings:

They over - - they over - - they always burn out and drop candle on they backs.

A Dream

Skip, 3

I was lying in my bed and I heard tinkling music

A little fairy came in the door

I jumped out of bed and flew away high in the sky over her

And then I flew back again on my own wings.

She broke her wings when she came down the chimney.

I fixed her wings up with scotch tape.

Wagon

Skip, 3

When you pull a wagon it goes zingo! Over the mountains.

When there’s nobody in the wagon it’s not hard, but when you pull somebody in the wagon it certainly is hard.

Spressage! I have a package for you.

It’s some kind of monument for your garden.

Do you like ‘em laughing

Or having a mad face?

3-year-olds:

Barbie: Wilmy fell off the bike.

Wilma: Don’t talk to me!

Barbie: Wilmy fell off the damn bike.

Wilma looks at her, laughs, both laugh.

They run off together.

Lynn, 3 ½, learned at Sunday school: Jesus said, “Where are the kids? We need more kids.” (The Bible for three-year-olds!).

4 year olds:

What’s inside the snail’s shell? Its own self.

Watching a turtle turn over he has to stand on his nose. Observing orange markings on its back: It looks like music he has on his back.

Observing knots in a plank ceiling, Nancy said, “I see footsteps of an upside down doggie.”

The kittens are milking from their mommy. The pigs eat under the mother.

You’re going to bake me for a biscuit. I have flour on the outside and a raisin on the inside.

Why is the ground drier at noon than it is in the morning? The sun is hot, the sun dries the ground. It has electricity in it, draws it up to the sun.

Diane politely refusing an addition one of the boys offers to her precious handful of squirming caterpillars: I don’t need any more, thank you. I have some at home. Give that one to Ellen. Ellen, skeptically: Is he prickly?

A five year old has a toad named Tom. Nicky, 4 asks: Is he a mother? Yes. Tells two-year-olds: Be careful, he’s a mother.

Wilma at home sick, missing her school chum: “Oh if only I could have a little bit of David.”

Mysterious Math:

Bobby: We’re going to Washington.

Andrew: That’s three thousand miles!

Bobby: Well it won’t if we go by plane.

Nikola, 4: My friend already had her birthday; maybe I don’t eat enough vegetables.

Nikola, 4 years, 10 months: How do skeletons get inside us? How is it some are human, some are grass, trees, toasters?

A four year old: Thinking about the drip drip drip of the rain out there on those leaves out there; the shiny drips, the bright drips.

Dana: You know what a friend is for? A best friend is to tell your bursting feelings to, when you don’t want to tell your mother.

Scott: Isn’t this a cracky place? Dry leaves make it cracky.

Wilma: The road has metal in it, it’s metal out of stones. I know what I’m talking about: You never see the metal though, they make them that way. The put the cement on and flatten it down.

Teacher says: “Listen to the waterfall. Let’s get close to see it. “

Wilma, joking: Is it a sea?

Johnny helping lift chairs onto tables after school. I’m strong for my age, aren’t I?

Teacher: Just right.

Johnny: Maybe too strong.

Teacher: I don’t think you’re too anything. You’re my idea of a mighty fine boy.

Johnny: And you’re my idea of a mighty fine teacher.

Teacher: You’re very kind to say so.

Johnny: And you’re very kind to say….

Anthony 5: Picasso did all that? How long did he live?

A 4 year old: If I were a little man what do you think I would do? I would sit on the back of a butterfly and I would fly away. And I’d get down and take a rest. I would sit on a little pebble, get a clump of grass for a pillow, and when I got everything ready I’d lay back and go to sleep.

Carl: (Reading about playing the hose on a fire)

Playing? That would be pretty serious playing, I never heard of serious playing.

Carl: Sitting on a rock as high as the Entire State Building and flat as a bobcat’s tail.

Carl: Why do crickets stay up all night, and are they in the dark?

D bumps into S with a doll

D – I’m sorry

S – That’s all right. You didn’t mean to do it, did you? It was the doll’s fault, wasn’t it?

Pretend the doll says I’m sorry.

D – (in a tiny voice) I’m sorry

S – That’s ok, little baby

Dawn: Mary & Jesus

Amy: Who’s Mary?,

Dawn: Jesus’ mother! She’s dead now.

Amy: She is? What’d she die of?

Dawn: I don’t know, I guess old age.

Amy: She might come alive again.

Dawn: She will.

Deb led group taking Jim to jail on sled – Sally objected, wanted to use the sled; finally Deb said sweetly ‘Ok Sally, you can have the sled.” When Sally took possession, Debbie led her group elsewhere to continue the play and Sally was left alone with the sled, a Pyrrhic victory.

Young 5’s

- Oh, I forgot to tell you, I have a wedding today.

- You’re not getting married?

- I’m 16.

- Aren’t you still going to be my little girl?

- I’ll still be the baby of the family, just move to another house. I’ll come and visit you Mama, I’m going to marry my boyfriend.

- But aren’t you still going to love me?

- And you can come to my wedding. We’re going to celebrate a big cake. Little drinks like we have in church for communion, and matzos.

- First you have breakfast.

Science Lesson - - Milking Demonstration:

He washed the bucket out. He washed his hands so the milk won’t get dirty. He had to pour the milkbucket water into the strainer, to make it clean and keep the germs out - - things that make the cow sick - - little dirt. He washed the cow. He put a little bit of milk in the strainer thing to see if it’s rotten. He squeezed the little milker things, and pulls, and pulls. First he did one, then two. Splash! Pssss – like air coming out of a tire. Then it goes slow and slower. The milk stops, ‘cause no more in. He takes it into the milk room, pours it into the milk can, strains the dirt out. Then he puts it into the icebox. He takes it out and pours some in a milk bottle, puts the cap on. We drove it over here, poured it into cups, and ate it.

Jerry is pushing blocks with a toy train, very noisily.

Norman: It’s putting away time. Don’t push them - - make a pile

Jerry pays no attention.

Teacher: What did Norm say, Jerry? Tell him again, Norm.

Norman: Make a soft pile of blocks on the floor and Bill will come and take them to the shelf. (And it works.)

Kathie: This is my rabbit. You can’t - - -

She catches Teacher’s warning look, and starts to smile.

At the same time Ellen succeeds in grabbing the disputed rabbit. That’s mine, I - -

Teacher: Talk about it, you don’t have to grab, just talk.

Ellen: I had it in my house.

Kathie: Yes. I know.

Ellen: You could play with it. Could I play with this?

Kathie: Yes. They smile, and peace reigns again.

Beautiful Ugly Things

Lisa, 7

I love most everything that is in the ocean

Because they are beautiful.

Except the ugly things.

I like the ugly things too.

They’re beautiful in a way.

They can turn theirself any color.

They can change into a ball of fire,

Into a sun,

Into a black cloud.

An octopus can wave around

Real pretty, graceful.

Seaweed looks ugly but it moves so nice.

When it sticks onto you

It feels like it’s hugging you.

Sometimes it hugs too hard.

Bamboo

Lisa, 7

This morning I felt the bamboo with my fingers.

It felt very thin.

When I touched it I poked my finger through it.

I said Ouch!

I felt it and I said I was sorry - -

And he forgave me.

Auspicious People

Zachariah, 5 yr 9 mo

Is it all right if we go out and look for auspicious people and write them down? We’ll take them home and ‘spicion them.

(And he hadn’t read Much Ado About Nothing: “Our watch has comprehended two auspicious persons. Get the learned writer to set down our excommunication.”)

Bird’s Song

6 yr old

Every part of the bird’s song fits right in.

It’s light and soft and flows in the wind.

A bird is like a beautiful instrument, it never goes out of tune.

STORIES

Imagination in children’s speech appears in their original way of seeing the world and in the extravagant play and exaggerations on which their humorous stories are based. The stories the children produce to be laughed at (as opposed to their unconscious humor) are appreciated by their peers though not necessarily by grownups.

Carl at 6 made a story, meant as conscious humor, about his second tooth growing “sitting by the blood stream until it was all made.” It is important to recognize whether the child is serious or joking, because it is not good manners to smile at unconscious humor. Nothing is more destructive to the ego than to be laughed at when one is earnest.

A Nonsense Story

Philip, 3

My teddy climbed up a tree.

A mouse ran up and licked him.

Teddy smiled, and a tree fell down,

And we all fell down, like cutting wood.

And he just smiled….

Building the Road

Carl, 3 yr 5 mo

We saw the highway they made. They knocked the highway down. The steamshovel and everything did it. What else was in it? Yeah, crane. It went crash! When everyone was in a safe place they did the great big dynamiting. I didn’t go near. It went oooh – boom! First the big boom! Came bang and all the pebbles came rushin’. After, another thing came that was a great big steam shovel going swing swing round round and picked up all the pebbles – twist! The bulldozed threw out lot of pebbles, pushed them aside. The man sits on the seat of the ‘ment mixer. They still did a lot more work, just the same work and a lot more.

The Baby’s Christmas

Carl, 3 yrs 6 mo.

Did you hear about the baby’s Christmas?

The baby who lived on Morn Street.

He didn’t break his toys.

He hung up his own stocking.

(The ceiling didn’t touch the sky.)

And that time he saw –

What?

You know –

A star.

It was a red one.

An orange one.

He had two stars on the tippy top.

And when he looked on the Christmas tree,

No toys were on.

Then when he reached in his stocking,

What was that the baby find?

A toy pig,

And when you turn the handle,

He walks all.

He walks all over the ‘noleum floor.

He pulled out two things:

A toy ducky.

So they hang those two on the tree.

Clk! He found a toy squirrel.

Clk! He pulled a bunny out.

And they hanged those ones on it.

Clk! He pulled out a chipmunk.

It was a big stocking and

He pulled out more and more things.

Then he heard somebody coming in the doorway:

Bang!

He closed the door. He came in.

It was a big boy.

The baby was surprised.

He didn’t know who it was.

It was his cousin.

Then he keeped on pulling more toys out

And he hanged them on the tree.

He looked his stocking through.

It was a bright purple stocking that he wears.

It was a red and orange chimdey.

He hanged it on the nail that his daddy pound in.

He does get big bangs when it wasn’t Christmas,

When the baby was a little boy.

When he opened all his presents

He hanged them on the tree,

And I’ll tell you what they were:

Some cows – toy cows.

He wasn’t being a little baby.

When the baby and his cousin

And his mother and daddy

Looked out the window

And they looked and they looked

They saw a pussycat running on the road.

Opened the door with his sharp paws.

What do you think he saw?

His own friend – the puppy.

And do you know?

They both lived in the doghouse.

The doggy was nice.

The pussycat kept him in tight.

And then they saw a mouse.

The mouse snuggled up in there –

Hid in behind the doggy’s tail.

When the baby was well enough

They all goed out.

They saw everybody in the doghouse.

They didn’t see the mouse.

When the mouse sat up they could see him.

And now this is more of the story

I’m going to tell you. Well –

Then they saw a kangaroo

Hopping fast –

Their very own –

And the kangaroo ran behind the mouse.

The doggy and the cat sat up

And they couldn’t see them that time.

There was a big doorway for two to sit up.

When the doggy went up and peeped around the corner,

Then the people saw mouse,

Then they saw the kangaroo.

They saw something jumping way up high, the people did.

It went

Rrump

Up to the side.

Then the cat saw the animal,

The one that was going

Rrump

Rrump.

The cat and the dog both knew.

And the mouse knew

Three of them knew.

Four of them knew –

And that was the kangaroo.

Then that animal went around,

And I’ll tell you what he was.

Let me guess

And wait and see…

That was a little moose.

A nice little one that came from the forest.

It was one of the ones that the pioneers didn’t shoot.

They just shot the pheasants and the hawks,

And the wolves.

(They were far away and the baby could not hear them.)

The moose ran behind the kangaroo.

They liked it pretty fine.

The moose was from the forest.

That was in the night and they couldn’t see.

That was their own doggy that the baby had,

And that was their own pussycat.

Just a little bit,

That was the cousin’s too.

The pussy had a name on,

And the doggy did,

And the pussy had some fur.

The dog the cat and the moose

Could stay in the porch

But not the kangaroo.

The mouse could ‘cause he was such –

That nice friend

And you know? They could jump down high, from the porch.

And you know what was tangled with the moose?

His four feet.

The pussycat and the dog untangled it.

The kangaroo stayed in the doghouse

All by himself.

That kangaroo wasn’t good enough

He didn’t jump higher and higher,

The cat was very good, and

The dog was very important.

He jumped on the ‘noleum floor.

The kitchen and the rug,

A dot of warm rug,

‘cause all those animals don’t like it cold.

It’s pretty warm in the doghouse.

That was their place;

That was their very own animal place.

That’s something very important.

And so the kangaroo had to stay in the doghouse,

‘cause it was warm.

He had to stay in and walk.

When the kangaroo wants to come in

He sees the whole family.

The whole family says all right

So he

Jumps

And he

Step

Up on the step.

He walked in ‘cause he can’t jump all the time.

While the two little kangaroos were asleep

In the little small place –

The mother’s pouch,

The daddy wanted the other kangaroo in the mother’s pouch.

The father kangaroo reached in the doghouse and put the little kangaroo in the papa pouch.

I have one more single important thing:

They just stayed in the doghouse,

And that’s all.

About a Little Pony

Karin, 4

Once there was a little girl and she had a little pony but she didn’t have any big bike like her sisters and her brothers. The sisters made the little pony that she loved a golden saddle out of gold and silver sewing things that they had.

Her mother didn’t know that her pony had a gold-and-silver saddle but she got her a book for her birthday about a pony that had a golden saddle. That night her mother read her the story:

Once a farmer and his wife had a pony and they wished he had a saddle. The farmer said, “Do you think we should make him a saddle?” And his wife said, “Let’s make a golden one,” and they made him a golden one. Then the little pony, he skipped and he played.

The big donkey had a little teeny donkey and they said, “Let’s make him one too.” So they made him one with red and black and silver in it and gold too. The little donkey played and skipped and jumped and was so happy that they made their little dog one too.

The Sun

6 yr old

The sun is the biggest shining light, bigger than all the planets, a big fat ball of fire shining. The hot gas looks like it’s burned, on fire. Planets go around the sun. The earth is turning. Why it turns is so it gets sometimes to the moon so it can be dark, sometimes to the sun so it can be light. The sun has the light, throws it to the moon and it bounces.

A People-Snake

Sarah, 4

A people snake came to my house

It came knocking on my door with its little hand

And said “Can I have some water?”

We gave it to him and he licked me.

He went up in my room on my bed

And slept and slept and slept.

I walked in and said "Good, little snake"

And kissed him. Then he went home.

He came back the next morning,

Knocked on the door.

He wanted some milk.

He slept down on the rug.

Then he said he wanted to live with me,

And he’s living with me now.

He has a little tongue, and he doesn’t bite.

He has sharp teeth to eat.

He loves, really loves hot dogs,

So I’m going to give him hot dogs when I get home.

I put him in a cage from now on

and I put food in his cage.

His cage is hooked up to the kitchen.

It has little hooks screwed up on it.

He’s skinny, has a little mouth, little arms,

And hands that knock on the door.

He loves my house.

He likes to be nice and cool

And my house is nice and cool.

He’s yellow and white and red and yellow.

He likes people.

He likes to be in the shade.

He likes to stay at home with our family.

Living a Flower Life

Blair, 5

Once there lived a flower,

Drinking water, sitting by a tree.

One day she got picked.

And one day she died

And got thrown in the trash can.

In the Hospital

Paul, 5

It was half and half: they gave me ice cream and popsicles, gave me toys, lots of people came, but I was in traction, couldn’t move my leg.

At night the hospital is at work. Beds roll down…squeak! Things pass by. Noises outside. Smells! People wake us up to give the pulse and fever thing, in the morning and afternoon too. When they tell me I’m going to surgery it doesn’t feel so good. Mom and dad can’t go to surgery. I had a journey through a walkway that seemed like two hours. They gave me a pill to relax that didn’t help because I was fascinated watching.

Duck Talk

Blair, 5

Once a duck waddled by.

She saw the deep blue sky.

She wished she could fly way up there.

She saw the blue water beneath her.

She saw the warm fur that the raccoon had.

She said to herself

“Can’t that raccoon fly in the air?”

“No, he cannot,” said a duck.

“Whose business is it?”

She said with a quack.

“Can that butterfly swim in the lake?”

“No, he cannot,” said Mrs. Lake.

(Mrs. Lake is one of the ducks.)

“Goodbye, Mrs. Lake, I’m going on a trip.”

The Swimming Duckette

Blair, 5

The duck is so soft;

As soft as a pillow.

He’s fuzzy and warm…

Just like a heating pad.

He’s soft as a feather,

And so light;

And his head feels like soft, soft fur

And walks through day and night.

From day to night

And night to day. His wings feel like satin;

They look like it too.

And when he flutters his wings

Sparkling color comes out and blooms.

When he spreads his wings

He looks like a flower blossoming.

He looks as if he has diamond wings.

He swims like a fish.

He has a duck pond of his own…

So he can swim in his duck pond at home.

He looks like a duck king…

The king of majesty.

Looks like he has diamond feathers, jewels.

When he opens his mouth

It quacks sometimes.

And when he quacks

Holding his head still

He looks like he’s balancing

A golden crown.

He’s nice to hold

And colorful in the spring.

He turns colors when he walks in the sun.

When he flutters his feet in the water,

He swims.

When he walks

His feet glow in the sun…sparkling.

When he walks his back wings wiggle…

He wibble wabbles.

The ducketty ducketty ducketty,

A magic king of all diamonds.

The Owl and the Buttonball Tree

Daniel, 5

Daniel, 5, was communicating with an audience in a very lively way, when he told the other five-year-olds a supposedly humorous story:

“When I was ready to go to bed I heard an owl on our buttonball tree. That’s a tiny tree that has buttons-a big big tree with little round things on it. If there was a pin stuck through a whole lot of fuzzy stuff would come out. The owl went Whoo - - whoo - - whoo - - oo - - oo! It bubbles in his mouth! I thought it was a ghost - - those things that go AAaaaah!”

Daniel has re-invented the classic ghost story, culminating in the big shriek and pounce. The whole story has the transparent purpose of not only expressing, but also helping to drain away some of his own anxiety. In the re-telling he perhaps uses cues from the audience to figure out what attitude he should take towards the experience. Some emotional gain results for the hearers too, if they conclude with Daniel that experiences which seem frightening at the time, may be laughable later.

A Wish

Jeffrey, 5

If I were a bird and I could fly

It would be pretty up in the sky;

Clouds and other birdies around

And airplanes flying from place to place.

I get a great view down below,

I’m above the redwood forest.

I fly over the sea without eating or drinking

(just like a cactus)

Toward the clouds that looked like cotton candy,

Fly around the world and see different things

And in just one day,

But that wish can never come true.

A Fire

Jeffrey, 5

New Year’s Day I saw black smoke and bright orangish red flaming all around, just bounding in flames. I heard the explosion from miles away. It was very exciting, because it was just blazing. I was up on the hill and I kept on moving farther and farther back. When it exploded I was so scared I runned right under one of the fire trucks. They had big fire hoses spread all across. The fire caught onto a light and it exploded all over the walls. In the hallway the ceiling started to cave in. A fireman fell through the roof and made a great big hole where it was burning underneath. It formed a big circle. His weight was getting heavy from big rubber boots. He couldn’t breathe until a fireman brought an air mask, or he would have died. He only had a couple of scrapes and was bleeding on his forehead and mouth. A second fireman was knocked out. When the parts started coming down one of them fell on a fireman’s head. He had his helmet on. A pile of wood in the yard, as high as a door, was a pile of ashes. The fire leaped along and caught on the fence. It was starting to catch on the house beside it. Nails fell into the cellar. The swimming pool was full of burnt up ashes. It was like an ash pool.

After the fire was over, I invited one of the fireman, the one that fell through, over to my house. He stayed a little while. All the trucks were gone except his; the men waited for him. I got the first-aid kit out of the car. He told me how he thinks it started-maybe the hot water heater. There were two explosions, two cars in the garage. The fire got into the gas tank. The car gas blew up and started the big fire. That house was blown to bits, scattered all over the place. I’ve gone inside that house. When I was walking on that burnt floor I almost fell into the cellar; that was a close one. I jumped straight up far and fast. I opened one of the doors and it fell down. I had to jump even faster than on the balcony. You couldn’t get up to the attic, there was nothing to walk on. Money was burnt up into green ashes. I got my face all full of soot and junk, ashes and soot.

The Big City

Brenton, 6

In the city lots of noises come from up and down: people yelling, people sleeping, people eating, people playing. Big buildings, sky scrapers, city stores everywhere. People laughing, people giggling, some have lots of fun. Some don’t.

Birthdays are in the buildings, cars down on the street driving along to different places. People coming home, people going away

The day is almost over. It gets quieter and quieter

And then so quiet you can’t hear any noises, but little snores.

Ripple

Brenton, 6

Once there was a hippo, his name was Ripple.

He loved to swim in the water every afternoon.

There was a crocodile named Creaky, he loved roasted hippos.

He always goes creepy, creepy, swimming in the water very quiet.

He crept so quiet that the hippos didn’t know that anything was coming.

He jumped up and gobbled them opened. Ripple was too smart. When he came close to Ripple he opened his mouth and Ripple turned around and the crocodile turned behind and the crocodile opens his big mouth and shuts it and says, “This tastes like nothing.” Ripple swam closer to shore and starts to laugh. The crocodile gets angry and swims away.

Flying

Brenton, 6

If I could fly I’d fly in the sky

Watch the birds as they fly

Go down for a landing, have something to eat

Go up in the air, see how high I can fly

See how fast I could fly high in the sky

Take a rest on the soft gooshy clouds,

go down for dinner and have a good rest.

The Little Black Horse

Brenton, 6

There once was a horse named Harry who liked to jump on things.

Every morning after breakfast he jumped over the fence to see what was in the woods. One morning he got lost. He went farther and farther and met all sorts of animals. All the animals said there’s a wolf that eats all the animals that taste good. They said that he lived in a cave and he’s gray. When you see him it makes you so scared you’ll run miles and miles. He licks his chops and shows his shiny white teeth. They heard him coming and all the animals ran except Harry. He hid behind a tree and saw him go from tree to tree. He climbed up to the tippy top. The wolf tried to get him. He suddenly jumped up so high that he got stuck in the tree. Harry saw him in the tree and climbed down as fast as he could. He ran straight home and never ran into the forest ever again.

The Story of a Horse

Jenny, 6

Chapter 1

Once upon a time there was a horse. This horse was new from all the others, and he was a very particular horse. He wasn’t really the type that really belonged there, a Palomino farm. He was similar to the other horses but not stubborn and he wasn’t a fool, but he was nosy.

One day a man with a striped tie came to take the horse “You see horse that I will not hurt you so don’t be afraid. You must come with me and you’ll have a nice time so why don’t you just be good while we ride in the truck. While you’re in the trailer I hope you don’t bounce up and down, boy, so please be good. We’re on our way horse. I’ll see you as soon as we get out of the truck when we get home. Goodbye.”

As they started on the freeway they had a dreadful stop and the horse tried to turn around in the wagon. Every time he tried his tail would twitch.

After they got home he was given a nice bath. He was put in a brand new stall. It looked new to him, but it was old to the other horses. That night the man who owned the farm said to the man in the striped tie, “Wouldn’t you think we should have a show for the horse. We’ll start it tomorrow morning. It will do the horse good.”

Chapter 2

The horse started out ther next morning and watched the other horses perform. They made figure eights and did some other tricks besides that. After the act was over, the man with the striped tie told the horse, “Now you see you’ll be a horse like that. We’re going to go back to your barn and rest.”

Chapter 3

So the man and the little girl came. The little girl’s name was Marian. She loved horses very much. The next day they went down to town to look for a saddle and bridle. After they got home Marian went out to the barn so she could ride the horse and she put the saddle on him. She said, “I do not know what I’ll call you, will I call you Joe? Joe will be your name.” After she rode the horse she went inside and said, “Mother I named the horse Joe.” “What an interesting name”, said the mother.

“It was fun riding the horse, mother; could you ride?”

“No, no dear. I couldn’t ride the pony. He’s too small for me.”

“Mother may I look in the dictionary?”

Mother said, “Yes.” So she looked and there it was: Golden Palomino.

“Is that the name of the horse?”

Mother said, “Yes.” Mother said, “May I see you ride the horse?”

“Kindly, mother I will ride the horse.”

“Come on dear let’s get out there.”

Pretty soon she said while they were walking out to the barn, “Mother?”

“Yes dear?”

“Would you dare tell me why I had the horse?”

“Because he’s yours.”

Chapter 4

So the horse started to ride, then the horse started to trot, after he started trotting, “Would you do a canter?” said mother. “Would you start the run on the horse? Let’s see how you make the horse run?” The horse started to jump over the jumps mother had set up. Mother said, “Good, dear, you jumped it.” She bounced up and down as she trotted.

“Mother, would you take off the bit for me and then I’ll send the horse out in the field to run while I put the saddle away.” The horse started running around the barn to see if there was anything for him to eat. Mother said, “Here, we forgot to give him oats and water and hay.”

Chapter 5

On New Year’s Eve Marian’s mother got a horse. In the afternoon her mother went riding with her and they went out into the woods. They started up the big hill and they looked and they looked. They took the saddles off the horses and sat on the rocks and rested and the horses walked around and ate while they rested.

“Mother do you know whether my horse is a boy or a girl?”

“Yes I do. Yours happens to be a girl.”

Then the horse started to rear up. “Down Queen, down!”

All of a sudden out of the bushes came a mountain lion. Luckily, a hunter came out of the woods on his horse and shot his gun as he rode. Mother and Marian thanked the man for shooting the lion. Then they started down the hill as they back home.

After they had dinner Marian went up the stairs and went to bed. Mother said, “Good night dear, see you in the morning, we’ll have pancakes for breakfast.”

A year later the horse grew up.

Rabbit and Fox.

Beth, 6

There once was a rabbit that lived in a clump of dirt. He looked all over and could not find one bit to eat. When the stars came out he crept out of his hideout, and he walked and walked, and walked down the trail and found a clump of trees. He ate all the leaves and all the acorns, then he seemed to get full. He gathered all the leaves and acorns off of another tree and stored them in his cupboard. He went to sleep because he thought he was very tired. As the winter grew on, he crept out of his clump of dirt and dug in the snow and found some food to eat. He found leaves and he found grass and then he climbed up a tree and ate some twigs. He sniffed as he ate because he thought he smelled danger. And he smelled it! - - snf - - snf and he thumped his feet to warn the others.

The fox was following their scent. The fox was very hungry and he hoped to catch the family of rabbits. When the fox found where they were hiding they scurried out of their hideout. The fox crept closer. All of a sudden they saw the fox and they started to run faster and faster and all of a sudden faster. The fox could not smell their scent anymore. The rabbits were too fast for the fox and then they crept back and dug in the snow. Back to all the things they had stored for the winter.

Panther

Beth, 6

In the big woods of Wisconsin

A tree was lonely and swelled in the wind.

In the wind in the forest

A lonesome scream like a woman - -

It was a panther - - big cat.

As the panther grew closer

The horse began to run and run.

The panther still screamed and screamed.

It stopped howling, but the horse knew

It was still behind him.

He ran into the open barn door

And pawed the door closed.

All the barnyard animals

Would have been eaten up by the panther.

The Tooth

Carl, 6

Once there was a boy and his tooth was very loose.

He ate two oranges. The tooth fell out.

The boy wrote a story about his second tooth growing:

Sitting by the blood stream, looking for its hair.

It found its hair, and then it looked for its head.

It found its head and then it looked for its shoulders.

It found its shoulders, arms and hands

And its stomach, legs and knees

And it found its feet and it was all made.

The Germs’ Square Dance

Carl, 5 yr, 3 mo.

Once there was seventy germs.

They lived inside a boy who was five.

They liked cake, they liked pie.

They liked candy, any kind

They don’t like milk or toothpaste

And they don’t like meat and carrots.

When I’m asleep they stay awake

And in the morning they don’t know

if I’ll have something that is good for them.

In the morning I yawn in bed

I slowly get up and get dressed, my breakfast is good

A big glass of milk, about a quart, and when I’m finished we get in the car

And we drive off to school.

To see germs you need a magnifying glass

That will make babies look like giants.

An Imaginary Friend

Carl, 5 yr. 4 mo.

When Friendworker and I were born, under a bush beside each other, we had no mother, only as soon as we were born we walked over to each other, just when we were a little baby. We found a little magic stone that walked upside down. Every time it took a step it turned itself over and put its legs down on the ground. It led us to a big clearing and what did we see but a big long pole, but it was really a big long poisonous snake. We climbed up a tree as fast as we could, and someway up in the tree we killed him, both at the same time. Under it we saw some kind of a little furry animal that had a ball, a rubber ball, that made us come down the tree.

Colors

Carl, 6

Whenever I say cafetorium

It makes me think of dark colors

But when I say auditeria

I see real light, bright colors.

Run Away

Dawn, 7

I think I’d like to run away

To a land where the sun will stay

Clouds will move, rain will fall,

Someone will call to the crow in the sky

The sun goes for a hot day at the beach

And over the mountain there’s Candyland.

Instead of plain lemons there’s lemon candy.

The mountains are made of chocolate rocks;

The ground instead of sand is sugar.

I think I’d like to run away

To a land where everyone smiles

And kittens stay young and it’s always sunny

And you could have lots of money,

Stay up all night and watch TV,

No school and you wouldn’t need a grownup;

There’s a pool for each kid, and his own house and car.

I wish I was magic and could fly

And visit any place in the world.

Craig’s Tales

Craig, 7

Once upon a time there was a little brick house down by the river, down by some trees and Indians lived down the river, and I lived by them. And they have guns and bows and arrows and they shooted animals and bulls And I used to go to their house and the boy would play with me, but I moved away and when I moved away I made myself a little house just like it. And after I made the house I went in it and took my toys in it and the Indians wrote me a letter and after they wrote me a letter I wrote them a letter and said, “Thank you”.

Once upon a time there was a lion in the zoo and it got out of the zoo and the men saw it get out so they called the zoo people. The lion wanted to get out of the zoo, he didn’t like it in there. He went into some mountains by the zoo and after he got up by the mountains he saw somebody camping and after he saw the people camping he went and climbed up a tree and they saw it and they had a gun. So they took the gun and shot it and then it fell down out of the tree and they went over there and shot it again just to make sure it was dead – just to make sure it was dead.

Once upon a time there was a tree and it was an old tree and it lived for millions and millions and millions of years and there were real rocks on the branches and when the sun lies down on the rocks it made the tree sparkle and there was weed all around the tree and the tree didn’t get any water because every time it would rain the weeds would take all the water.

My brother has a snake and when he is at school I come before he does and after I get home I go in the garage and take it out and play with it and it looks sort of prettyish-pretty and he got home and we put it back in the garage and went down looking for more snakes and I found one near a gully and my brother caught it and he let me hold it and it felt like it was a lizard. And we went down further to catch more and we found 56 of them. So we let four of them go and we went up to the house and we put them in the same cage and looked to see what they would do and they tried to get out of the cage. My mother said, “Put them in the garden and put a gate around them because they are gardeners.” But we didn’t want to so we caged them out in the garden and flies went in there everyday and every minute the snake would catch a fly.

Slithery Snake

Chelsea, 8

A slithery snake crawls around

On shadowy nights

This slithery snake

Slithers down the alley

Like a shift of a wave

On the ocean floor

Of the octopus dance.

A sudden surge of wind crawls down

On little cat feet

And doesn’t make a sound.

Suddenly

It tries to carry him off

But it is far too weak.

The hot sun comes out

The slithery snake is going to go out

And bathe in the water.

Now it’s dusk.

All the animals have to go back to their home.

Travel Guide

Handwritten by 6-year olds

Vermont

At Vermont there is a Maple Syrup factory and it makes syrup and candy. There are a lot of maple trees. And they got the syrup from the trees. And it snows a lot, a really lot. And it rains.

Dinosaur National Park

On the road there is lots of dead prairie dogs. There is this camp that has a mountain that is split is half and there is a river that is very deep and it has some funny looking fish. And the best thing there is the dinosaur bones. They have little and big ones. There is a huge quantity, enough to give some to every museum in this country.

Washington D.C.

Washington D.C. is a nice place, it’s pretty and you can see lots of monuments and white buildings. But, it is not all so beautiful, there are a lot of ugly hotels and stores, but the stores have nice things in them. So Washington D.C. isn’t really so bad. And if you come from another country, you would like to know that it’s the capital of the U.S.A. The Lincoln Memorial is a beautiful sight, even the pillars and carved rock are as beautiful as a monument. The Washington Memorial is not worth seeing because it’s not very pretty.

Costa Rica

The rain was heavy in Costa Rica. We had to walk through the mud. It was not that bad. It was hot in the summer. I liked to play downstairs with my friends. I had lots of friends from school. I liked to swim in the pool at the club. Not everybody spoke the same language.

San Diego

THIS IS OUR CITY

THIS IS OUR LAND

THIS IS OUR COUNTRY

IT’S ALL OUR LAND.

In San Diego red trolleys go by

And people get on the trolleys.

The best zoo in the world is San Diego’s.

It has pandas and koalas.

You can take classes

To know more about the animals.

Wild Animal Park has more space and more exhibits.

Sea World has lots of sea animals and fish.

Balboa Park is special because

You don’t have to drive two or three miles to get to another museum.

Instead they’re all in a group.

In San Diego you can go

Down to where the harbor is

And you can see the sailboats go by.

The navy ships are carrying soldiers

Over to where they are fighting.

Rain, rain is falling on the trees

All over the land.

There’s something happening up there to the sun.

Pollution broke a hole through the wall

Around the sun, so now the sun

Beats down real hard and dries up the water.

We don’t get enough rain.

We get fresh water from the California River.

The climate is sometimes warm, sometimes hot,

Sometimes cold, sometimes perfect.

San Diego is where you can go swimming

Instead of ice skating.

You can play outside and take a suntan

Under the palm trees.

You can grow strawberries, avocado and oranges.

Surfing, snorkeling, swimming, shelling, fishing.

Some food comes from the ocean:

We eat fish, lobster, clams, shrimp, crabs.

They are making even bigger buildings downtown.

They look like they could reach the sun.

There are giant rocks in the mountains.

Mount Palomar is the only mountain that has the big telescope for the scientists to look at the stars.

They made a special kind of light that just lights up the street, not the whole sky.

Our neighboring country is Mexico.

You can drive there for a vacation. It’s not very far.

They have nice festivals.

Mexican food has a lot of beans and corn.

It’s all around them and it’s good for them.

When corn and beans come together it makes the same protein as meat.

CANYON STORIES

Seven-year-olds don’t sit down and write their thoughts, but it was easy for these boys to talk their stories on a few sunny summer afternoons.

In the Canyon

Randy, 7

The sun rises over the mountains

And shines so bright, so bright.

The clouds come too

As the sun goes behind the clouds.

It is no longer dark any more

But it is light

As the sun shines brighter

Over the mountains

Shady trees and little ponds

Where frogs go and toads and turtles.

When we’re alone the breezes come.

Climb a tree and sit in the branches.

Look down, you might see snakes go around,

Or lizards

As horseflies come on the horse

And he tries and get them away

He goes down to the brook

And drinks some water away.

Nobody sees him but birds in the trees

And some spiders in the breeze

On their webs.

The trees are so green and so still

That birds come up on it

And make their nests there.

As they lay their eggs on the nest

Some baby birds hatch –

And they wouldn’t have

If it hadn’t been for the trees.

The brook runs so slow

It seems that fish will be in it,

As the clouds move so fast

And the sunshine sparkling on it.

The pony comes down to drink,

Then along comes birds

And sit upon the trees.

The brook so calm as the sun sets down

And the moon shines bright over the brook.

The owl comes out at night to look for mice.

(Some of us think that owls are very wise,

But that is superstition; they are just not wise.)

Trees are in the canyon and birds too

And snakes are in the canyon and lizards too.

Along comes a scorpion. Scorpions kill sometimes.

We kill scorpions, but sometimes they kill you

As the canyon settles down and the moon shines bright

The canyon goes to sleep, and everything in it –

And so do we.

Down Wildwood

Randy, 7

At summertime you move to new places.

We used to catch turtles and caterpillars.

Sometimes we caught little tiny fish,

Called minnows, at the point of the beach.

Wait ‘til the water comes in.

If you see some minnows, make a little crack in the sand.

Make a little gate of sand.

Make the sand press down your muscles.

The fish run in there.

Get some more sand, pat it on the end of the brook.

Look at them awhile.

Then you pat the gate on the other side

And let the minnows go.

The Desert

Randy, 7

The desert is so hot, rattlesnakes come out in the heat.

And some lizards do to and find something to eat.

Roadrunners come out and eat the rattlesnakes.

But the rattlesnakes eat the lizards.

And the roadrunners do too.

The Road

Randy, 7

The road runs wide and long

As cars turn on it too.

The speedy cars are the sports cars

And the police cars too.

Sometimes we go too fast and have to get a ticket.

But the road is a very good thing

Because…how could you…

Even if you get a ticket

Do you expect to walk?

Sand

Craig, 7

Sand used to be a rock. It crumbled.

Big waves jerked it up out of the water

And threw it down real hard.

Waves crash against it.

When it’s tumbling in the water

It broke into really tiny pieces,

A little piece at a time.

Chips came off the rock.

It took millions and millions of years to do that,

And now there’s sand.

But the one thing I don’t understand

Is how the sea water got salted….

Salt rocks?!

Down in the Valley

Craig, 7

Down in the valley birds come up and down

And sing all the time in the trees nearby.

Wild horses come for a drink of water.

Snakes and turtles come up from their hibernation

And swim in the valley.

Some lizards there run in the hot sun.

As the sun sits down and the moon shines over in the valley.

The King

David, 9

The whale moved slowly through the water

Splashing the water with his tail,

Eating little fish with a big swallow

And spouting water high in the air.

He is like the king of the ocean

With the coral reef as his throne.

The Rock

David, 9

The rock is lying on the beach

With water splashing on it.

It has some holes in it that it is very proud of.

It is looking down on the sand

For another rock to chat with.

But all he can see is the beach.

He is very lonely there

Sitting all day and night

With nothing to do except stare

At the wide and lonely beach.

Long Arms

Eric, 9

Long arms the spider goes up and down,

Up and down in his silky web.

He walks as silently as a cat.

He hides in his web and waits for his prey.

When he finds his prey he jumps on it,

And wraps it all up in his silky, sticky web.

The Canyon

Eric, 9

The Oak

We lived here for centuries with out ancestors.

Many friends have their homes in my branches.

The Bird

We lay our eggs in the trees here

And catch the worms, too.

We see the fox, we fly away.

The Fox

I, said the fox, I like to chase mice.

I like to eat the rabbits here,

And the birds, they taste so good.

The Lizard

I snap at mosquitoes.

If someone wants to eat me,

They can’t find me very well.

I can run fast.

I hide in the rocks.

The Boy

I slide down the canyon, get prickles on me.

They stick on my clothes and not through me.

There’s bushes to hide in and trees to run to.

When I climb on the trees I see squirrel holes

And the holes that woodpeckers make.

My Wish

Eric, 9

If I could have my every wish:

Wander around in nature,

Wander about for adventure,

Find a blasted thing

And make it my friend forever,

Go lurking around and spying around,

Out to the forest –

Only low bushes but big space under.

Crawl under it, make it our home.

Fly all over the place,

Crash through rocks,

Fly through cold ice.

What would you do?

The Wind

Eric, 9

The wind is a cat.

Trees are mice, bending to run away from the cat.

The wind is a cat.

The sea is water the cat drinks up.

The wind is a cat.

It whooshes down from the rooftops to the ground.

The wind is a cat.

We cannot see it camouflaged by the clouds and sun.

The wind is a cat.

And the clouds are its fleas.

Sounds

Dane, 7

I don’t like the sounds of cars that much.

Sometimes when people yell

I cover my ears.

I like the sounds of nature

Like when the river streams down –

When the wind hits the trees –

Birds chirping –

When some animals make that Aoo sound.

That’s the basic sounds of nature.

Now, there’s little sounds of nature:

When you step on the ground –

Leaves falling on the ground

Are like stepping, almost.

When things eat, I like that sound.

Every animal is made to do that.

I like the sound of food that goes crunch.

I like the sound of rain – sss fff.

Snow, too, has a soft sound.

I know Beethoven felt the same way.

He liked all those noises.

There are sounds of people I like, too.

I like the sounds of instruments,

The harp and the piano.

And I like the sound of some singers.

But there’s one sound of nature I don’t like:

I don’t like the sound of earthquakes.

That sound hurts my ears.

THE YOUNG CHILD EXPERIENCES LIFE

Feelings which well up in a young child have to gush forth more or less explosively. To re-press emotion is to press it back instead of dealing with it. To ex-press it in some way is to bring it out where there is a chance of learning to live with it. Sometimes merely recognizing its existence can give the individual enough insight to handle it. Sometimes it needs to be relived or shared.

Glowering with jealousy of the teacher’s attention to another child, Loretta, a pre-verbal two year old stood at the easel letting out her rage in quick pretzel-like swirls of black paint, cne to a page, pulling off the top sheet and letting it fall to the floor as she attacked the one underneath. It was fortunate that the materials were available to her at the moment because it required 36 separate sheets to bring her back to equilibrium.

Like any of the creative arts, language provides a way of externalizing the inner drama. A live bird had been caught and a young three year old with passionate convictions wanted to be sure it had not been shot: “Those little birds don’t have to get all shooten up an’ eat! Darn good bird, that little bird! Little birds won’t get eaten. And no rabbits. No little baby rabbits. And no birds who are just little baby and can’t fly. All the little birds go in so they won’t get cold – so they won’t get rained on. And all the big birds stay out.”

Language emerges later than physical and dramatic modes of expression and is more mature and socially useful than direct acting out of feelings. It is the method of choice for settling labor, marriage dispute. As long as the United Nations keep arguing we can delay calling out the militia. The child who is satisfied to express hostility through verbal channels has gained command of one method for dealing with life’s problems which society will condone.

Positive Feelings

If the laws of psychology had not been discovered, we might have conjectured from the laws of physics that when big feelings occur in little people, heat will be generated. Both positive and negative feelings may be almost too much to bear. Five-year-old Bobby said of his beloved pet, “I wish Muggings had a brother because I love Muggings too much!”

One of the desirable feelings we hope children will develop is tenderness. And one good channel for the expression of tender feelings is language. The husband or wife who can verbalize what he or she is feeling has one asset to bring to the marriage which is lacking in the person who can only feel and not speak.

Karin, age four years and one month, delightedly watching a neighbor’s baby nursing expressed her satisfaction in a little song.

“He doesn’t take milk from a bottle

He gets it from his mother

He doesn’t take it from his daddy –

He doesn’t take it from his grandma –

His cozy little grandma –

He does get it from his mother =

His little cozy mother.

A Chant

Eva, 4 years, 5 mo.

Oh be very quiet, there’s a baby sleeping in the high church

Sleep, baby, sleep.

Thank you God for the special treat.

Thank you for the special things.

Negative Feelings

Positive feelings may be acted out. Language is especially useful to express negative feelings, where direct expression is taboo. Three year old Skipper felt able to offset some of the frustrations of his young life by enumerating the anticipated joys of adulthood.

“Someday I’ll live by myself

And I’ll break the dishes,

The knives and the cups.

And I’ll say NO then

And play the music.”

Aggression

If Skipper had no words he might have had to break the dishes right away. As children grow we find verbal aggressiveness replacing physical aggression. Parents seldom welcome “stinker!” but teachers recognize this as one degree more controlled than socking another child. Confining expression to the verbal level takes some self control; but language, by affording an alternative outlet to direct violence, contributes to the development of self control.

Insecurity

A sharper ear is required to detect the fear, the loneliness, and the insecurity which children express in words a little less readily than in behavior.

A six-year-old whose mother had died was playing by himself. An educated reader thought the poem I recorded was just about the failure to tame a bird. What I heard was love and tenderness, need for protection, abandonment and loneliness.

“My dear little pigeon, I won’t hurt you.

If anybody shoots you, I will pick you up and hold you…

But he flew away when I told him that.”

Many three year olds have told me what Robert Louis Stevenson told the world so well about the feelings of a child lying alone in his bed while the world wags on.

Bridget, 3/1 said:

“We go to sleep and we hear all the noises

Going by windows shouting.

But I sleep as hard as I can.”

One child’s story includes this description of isolation:

“Then I was going to sleep in my crib.

I was a kid and I was in bed. It was dark.”

What strikes us here is the pathetic admission “I was a kid.” One of the great concerns I have found children struggling with is the helplessness of being little and their ambivalent attitude toward growing up.

Sometimes it is the triumph of feeling strong and capable that rise as the three-year old carries a load of blocks:

“Who is the builder? I am.

“Who is the builder man? I am.

“Who is the cement man? I am.

“

And the chant goes on as long as the building goes on.

Wilma, 3 ½ started the day bragging. “I grew so big. I grew as big as a housetop. I grew as big as a church top. I hit the playhouse walls.”

As the day wore on the upward thrust was balanced by a temporary regression:

“Oh such terrible work to do!

I have to wash my paint jars.

It makes me trouble-tired.

I was up all morning doing work.

I cleaned my den all alone –

Oh long, long ago –

I clean it again this morning…

Oh gee, I wish you would dress me.”

The Little Duck

Wilma, 3

There was a duck swimming in the water.

He forgot about things that were hard to bite

And he bit some water. It didn’t taste so good.

It made him gurgle it up again.

He swim too far down, and cried and cried

Because he didn’t know how to swim up.

He was too little.

Along came the mother duck flying.

She flied up the water and took him home

And put some dry clothes on him.

It’s no good for a little duck to stay down in the water

Waiting for his mother.

He get too cold.

Now he’s grown up, he’s as big as his mother.

He knows how to fly.

It is pleasing to relate that this little duck did indeed grow as big as her mother and now she can fly, thanks to the support of relationships like the one to her mother, and to her ability to externalize her many youthful difficulties in various media, including language. I recall her walking across a field after some conflict, confidently clasping the teacher’s hand, while at the same time sobbing angrily, “I’m going to go down to the whale ocean and get something that will kill you.” The good basic relationship gave her the security to feel and express the temporary anger. This group of quotations from one child demonstrates the healthy shift of motifs from dependency to mastery to hostility. Disturbed children stick to one. Normal children are able to move around from one to another.

Strong Feelings in Normal Children

The children I have been quoting were happy, average members of the group, undistinguished by facial expression, unusual dramatic play or any other clue. They have strong feelings but are under no compulsion to express them in problem behavior; apparently they are able to make good use of the outlets provided for blowing off steam.

These are simply the children who happen to express themselves in words when someone happened to be listening; otherwise we would have no inkling of what was in their minds. In a large group with a less favorable ration of teachers to children they might pass unnoticed.

Blair, 6

If I were an animal I’d like to be

One that didn’t get captured and was free.

I wish I wouldn’t die – never die

Stay young forever.

Do people cyclamate? Go over and over again?

Disturbed children

Lee, 2 years 10 months, showed personality disturbance in a stressful situation -his first separation from family to attend summer camp in the country. This boy used both words and behavior to express his difficulties, both directly and symbolically. At nap time he rehearsed a dramatic dialogue in whispers taking the part of first the unreasonable child, then the tolerant adult explaining social behavior. “But I want it now.” “You just take a little turn now and tomorrow you will have it again.” His behavior showed this split; he had to do everything in the unorthodox way. He slept “on the rough” which meant on the canvas of his cot under the mattress pad. He could not walk down the hall but had to “chooga” like a train chanting “nema, nama, noma, no, ginga, gonga, go.” He also had compulsive ways of dressing saying

“I put my sock on over my shoe

‘cause that’s the way I like to do.”

At bedtime he tried to make his own world with words but succeeded only in communicating his homesickness and helping to make himself understood, the best that could be done in the circumstances.

“No nights! No nights – just days and no nights!

So I won’t let the sun go down.

I’ll just let it be night when I go home.

I just like to sleep in my own bed at home.

At home’s the only place I’ll have my tempu’ature taken.

I don’t want to go to bat’room any more.

Not any time, not with nobody.

I won’t go to bat’room no more—

Unless I have to.

I’m going to stand right here till my mommy comes.

I like all the mommys come, at getting-up time.

I want anudder kiss.

Why do you have to go away?

Stay with me! Sleep with me! Hold my hand!

I don’t want to play with anybody else.

I don’t want anyone but you to give me a bath.

And some day everybody will come to see me on the big trains.”

Down the open blue sky the strong wind drove the long white clouds like Indian canoes on the horizon as I sat reading her Vachel Lindsay’s The Proud Mysterious Cat. When I finished she carried on the rhythm with a chant of her own:

“I see a berry – I see a thistle.

I see a thistle – I see a bug.

I see a tree and a locust on.

Locust on a tree.”

Still looking carefree and gay, she waded across the stony creek in the hot sun, one hand full of colored pebbles, the other clutching a bouquet of mint, singing. Bending over to hear her chant, blown downstream in the wind and current, this is what I heard:

“O wind don’t blow, you’re a bad, bad wind.

Don’t blow me down the creek.

My mother will be looking for me, all next week.

And she won’t find me till she looks in the creek,

And then she’ll find me dead.

O wind, don’t blow, you’re a bad, bad wind.

O wind, don’t blow; you’re a bad, bad wind. “

(More than a few of these expressions seem to run on innocently enough and then end with a sudden shocker.)

It sometimes happens that a child has a truly traumatic experience which calls for playing out, talking out, and all available forms of release. We are having good success these days in preventing emotional damage by rehearsing in advance such potentially disturbing circumstances as hospitalization or new babies. Pictures, stories, and role-playing have helped children to understand what to expect and to mobilize their forces.

But sometimes children are called upon to meet the unexpected – If a teacher or acquaintance disappears, how is a child to know whether he has moved away or died? - The disappearance of an important person who just moves away is experienced as final, like death: -- Three-year old Philip’s best friend Linny went to New York for the school year. When she returned for the summer he said, “What is that girl? Linny Bacon! How could she come back?”

If the child is able to talk out his feelings, at the time or even later, he has one more way to clear muddy channels. The chance to take it slowly, in stages, provides an opportunity to break undigested experience down into parts so that it can be assimilated.

At the age of three years two months Bobbi was at the seashore at Longport, N.J. with her mother, 5-year-old sister, 6-month-old brother, and their deaf grandmother. A hurricane took them by surprise, blowing the roof off their cottage. No one else was around to help, and they were helpless in the water when Bobbi was actually swept away by a wave and miraculously rescued by her mother. Except for a slight increase in timidity, Bobbi showed no outward signs of remembering the experience. I was surprised when she opened the subject exactly one year and two months later, when she was 4 years 4 months old.

The Hurricane

Bobbi, 4 years, 4 mo

“When the big storm came in Yongport

one house didn’t fall down, it was so strong.

We went in a different house and found some beef bologna

and Tina and I had some in two beds.

Mommy and grandmommy had to go in the kitchen

where there was yeaks.

The water went all over the place

and the road was all covered with water.

Then a man came and fixed the whole street up

so cars could come in it.

Nailed boards up so the water couldn’t come in.

Dr. Pepper had two fences and two little children.

When the big storm came

Dem daddy and mommy held on to dem.

Once I was out on a big wave and Mommy caught me.

Nice and cold it was in the water.

I didn’t like the storm very much.

When there’s no big storms, that’s when we’ll go to Yongport.

Every time when there was a big thunder of rain

I turned to Mommy: “Is that going to be a big storm?”

I was about two or three then.

I only went about that far away from Mommy.

Mommy pulled me back again by the hand.

We were walking in the waves.

Finally we saw a boat coming

We hopped in a boat and went away.

A man took us for a ride and stayed a little while

Till the whole house was fixed up

And then we went home to bed.

All that time we were in Yongport.

The door blowed away.

It was all full of water in the house.

Finally we came in with boots.

The man brought a pair of boots for us

And gave them to us for keeps.

Our shoes were wet, and then dem got dry in the boots.

The door was falling open all at once.

I think we got out a window or something,

We were almost drowning

But I’m back again from the waves.

Somebody fixed it up.

The water got over my face – no good!

Had to dry my face when I got home.

My hands are still cold from the big storm.

(She was washing her hands in cold water as she spoke.)

My shoes were over in the water.

Dem came off me – my shoe came untied.

We yooked up and down before we went in the waves

To see if any things were coming to run over us.

I’m going to tell Mommy I told you about it.”

The importance of the act of telling is evident in the comment “I’m going to tell Mommy I told you about it.” She had not talked about the experience at home in all this time, nor had anyone else. The relief which shows through the last line indicated to me that getting it off her chest meant a great deal to her and some how resolved the experience into some sort of finality and acceptance.

The intensity of affect shows in her feeling that her hands are still cold after 14 months. Her memory is very accurate for events that occurred when she was little past her third birthday. Her account, however, is a mixture of fact and fiction; she imagines helpers she would have wished to be there but who were not.

Once the floodgates were open, she could not stop talking. Pushing two small animal figures around on an ebony stand on the table, she began all over again:

“Dem are doing what I was, chugging around in a boat

All around granmommy’s house yeaking

And granmommy had to put pots all over the place.

The roof came off part way cause it was so soft

from the water and the rain

The wind was what blowed me away from mommy

Part of it was the wind and part of it was the wave.

I thought I was going to drown and never come back

My mommy would never come see me again.

But I’m back again.

Grandmommy held Derek a minute while mommy got me.

We should have stayed home so the water wouldn’t have come.

Well it’s good I was there with grandmommy

because I wanted to be there with grandma to help her,

not have her there all alone.

Wouldn’t want that to happen to me.

I think granmommy must have pulled me back,

or the man or somebody must have helped me.

Dr. Pepper was holding out his arms

He was in the water with his children

and he held out his hand and caught me.

I’m afraid of waves

I’m afraid of storms – not here.

When there’s no big storm, that’s when we’ll go to Yongport.”

A psychiatrist was consulted after the hurricane but no treatment was prescribed for any member of the family and Bobbi had developed no neurotic behavior but she had kept the feeling within herself. None of us would of dreamed of opening the subject for her, for fear of getting into what we might well call too deep water. But we can be pretty sure she will not get beyond her depth if she does all her talking herself.

I would have been willing to listen at any time during the preceding year. Why did it all rush out at this precise moment? Because Bobbi accepted an invitation to spend the night at my home. Her first night away from her family (and she was always mommy’s girl even before the accident.) This aroused enough anxiety to remind her of the previous danger with full force; but instead of telephoning her mother to come for her (as we had half expected her to do from past experiences), she stayed the night and began at seven AM to tell me this story (I was her teacher in the three-year-old and the four-year-old group; so she knew me well but had never talked to me for a stretch of two hours.)

No advice on how to stimulate expression would ever be necessary if we could do this one thing: be there! At the psychological moment the impossible is easy. Of course, one must be there with the child 100%, not just physically.

One may “forget” the facts by repressing them, but feelings can be forgotten successfully and healthily only by assimilating them into their proper place into the personality. Expressing herself helped Bobbi to feel that she had gained control over the residual anxiety. Her coming to terms with the experience is shown in such lines as “I am afraid of storms, not here.” “Well, it was good I was there with Grandmommy, not there all alone.” “But I’m back again from the waves, somebody fixed it up.”

The interval of fourteen months between a traumatic experience and the first full discussion of it is certainly a very unusual one for a three to four year old, and demonstrates that any time may be the right time for resolving an unresolved experience.

Reliving experience by playing out and talking out develops a feeling of strength with a discovery “I have problems in this world and I can solve them.”

THE WORLD OF MANKIND

The Family School’s Camelot was the year six 5-and-6 year olds elected to study anthropology through with the guidance of a knowledgeable teacher-parent, described in my book “We’re Early Kids!” One 5 ½ year old illustrated her own book (see next story, “The World Adventure”), the largest subject by the smallest author I know.

This view of world history is the children’s summation of the course in anthropology for five year olds, the Family School, 1986-1987 by Zachariah, Wesley, Lauren, Ingrid. Cathy and Kamaryn.

Mary Pat Beach and Margery Baumgartner

ZACH: A long, long time ago, we weren’t here, but the world was.

WES: There was hot lava. We weren’t here at that time either.

INGRID: We’re talking about things that were way before – not even Early Man – when the world was just beginning, like a blank paper.

LAUREN: First there was a humungus mountain, a very long time ago. One day it got nervous and the earth started forming. After all that dried up, it formed a humungus valley. It rained; big drops of rain began to fall until it became the ocean.

CATHY: In the sea there were animals.

LAUREN: Little cells formed animals, sea animals, coral – we find fossils. Some stayed in the water. There wasn’t enough room for all, so some came out. Then trees came out. Dinosaurs had to get growing up.

KAY: The animals started to get bigger.

INGRID: The dinosaurs, they were spiky.

WES: They died of old age, or got aten up by other dinosaurs.

ZACH: When they were in the eggs.

CATHY: There was an explosion.

LAUREN: A meteor dropped.

ZACH: The weather changed – dust storm – the sun couldn’t shine. Dinosaurs need warmth, they were coldblooded.

WES: They didn’t have fur like the mammoths.

ZACH: Scientists don’t know.

LAUREN: Avalanche, fire, meteor – nobody was in that time. Then they were getting more trees up.

INGRID: Mammoths.

KAY: They found bones.

ZACH: People got bigger, bigger brains, standing up straight. They had to travel – the food was moving.

KAY: The mammoth were moving, so they had to move.

ZACH: Tigers – dangerous things were chasing man.

WES: Then the man ate the mammoth, then it got hot and the mammoth couldn’t get their sweaters off, so they all died.

KAY: Mammoths’s brain couldn’t grow. Then we turn into farming people and make baskets for berries and corn and beans.

ZACH: Caves –

WES: Overhangs –

ZACH: Storage pits –

CATHY: Put on a roof and use it for a house – a pit house.

ZACH: One block to two houses –

CATHY: Pit houses became one of those things where they weave –

WES: Kiva.

TEACHER: Living in apartments freed the land for –

WES: Farming for food.

KAY: Navajo came – fighting over land.

LAUREN: It got crowded.

ZACH: Turn into a city.

LAUREN: People have to go somewhere else.

ZACH: Some people went west.

LAUREN: Avalanches – narrow place – animals would block their way. They got trouble by the Indians.

KAY: They’re in their land; this is our land, get off of it!

WES: They stayed there. Fighting over land.

ZACH: They lived apart.

ALL: All people have to breathe, eat, sleep, work, exercise and have shelter, clothing, education. We don’t need ceremonies but we like to have them. People help people – police, doctors. We eat steak, French fries, hot dogs, hamburgers, sandwiches, potato chips, which we buy in stores. Men and women can do any job they choose, and children’s job is learning in school. Mexicans eat sea food, corn, beans, rice, cheese, squash, peppers, tomatoes, cactus, hot sauce; they get it from fishing and agriculture. Women work at home, and some children have street jobs. Hopi eat corn, beans, squash, and seeds which they grow. Children learn and help with tasks. Women’s work is cooking, education, pottery and helping build homes. Navajos eat mutton and fry bread. Hopi men and Navajo women weave. Hopi men are in charge of agriculture, building and ceremony work at jewelry making and they are the story tellers. Food comes from agriculture and herding, and children are the herders. Navajo homes are hogans and Hopi homes are adobe. People are the same and not the same. They don’t wear the same clothes or have the same color eyes, but who cares if people are black or white? What’s important is we’re here and we’re us, we’re alive. It’s good that we’re here and we are nice and we help people. The only thing that matters is that they’re people and supposed to be people – some good, some bad, both. That’s how it is.

THE WORLD ADVENTURE

Lauren, 5 1/2

This whole world used to be sea.

Hot lava dripping from a volcano turned into a valley.

It began to rain into the middle of the valley.

That’s how the ocean formed.

There was fishes and coral in the water.

All the seas were made and land formed from the sea.

Dinosaurs lived in prehistoric too.

They lived for a long time, for long years.

When the dinosaurs died they sinked down into the earth.

They came extinct forever.

A long time after the dinosaur Early Man came.

They were very furry, didn’t need much clothes.

First they were like a chimpanzee, a monkey.

After time the fur went away and they were more like people.

Caves were big, and dirty and dusty.

A whole bunch of people lived in.

Without food and water they would soon die.

They scared the mammoth with fire and chased them in a pit.

They didn’t want to kill the mammoth.

They wouldn’t have done it if they were in America

Where there’s hundreds of food in the stores.

They prayed before they ate their meat.

Food would dry. One day when you came out and you were starving,

you’d find it and it would taste good.

It’s like drying a mummy.

The bugs don’t have hard enough teeth to go through there.

The sun was so bright and in hot weather

Mammoth couldn’t shed their skin.

When the iceberg moved back they didn’t need their heavy coats.

They were furry and needed some coolness on their body.

They could only survive in the winter.

They became extinct.

The whole environment changed and the people changed.

Finding seeds that drop to the ground:

They might spit out a seed

And next time they go there they find an apricot tree.

They might remember where they dropped some seeds and they grew.

They didn’t want to scurry around any more and worry.

“What are we doing this for? We should settle down.”

They decided not to move and follow the animals.

They changed. Changed into a farmer.

One day a husband would come home and say

“Where did you get this food?”

And they’d have a good dinner

With hundreds of fruit and corn.

A deer moving around in the area

Couldn’t find its mother,

It might stay and have a baby.

You could keep the mother deer

And some of the babies.

It was over periods of time they invented clothes.

Time changed, and with those past of years

Women had pretty hair,

Men grew beards and moustaches.

They had time to have meetings, make friends.

With a bow and arrow you wouldn’t have to get close.

Basket Makers weaved lots of baskets.

One day they discovered pottery would be better.

Kids do play with mudpies.

Overnight it dries up.

They made pottery like play dough.

They could make a shelf and put their pottery on it.

They stored it in their little brains.

I hope the Basket Makers sewed the sandals up good

So they wouldn’t get stickers in their feet.

They left things for us – drawings.

I never looked it up in a book, but I think

They drew on rock, in the sand, used sap from a tree.

I would peck a picture of a horse running,

To be here after we’re gone.

After time anthropologists went to the places

and find lots of bones.

Some find dinosaur bones.

If we went there we could see

Lots of objects, things they made, instruments.

A bigger house for the whole family;

Round house, little door like an arch.

Clues tell me the broken part used to be a wall.

Hurricanes, humungus winds, and not only wind

But creatures might have broken the wall down.

EMERGENCY LITERACY

“I blif in efrethng”

Natalie was a prolific self-taught writer (and speller). At 5 years, 10 months and 5 years 11 months she produced these stories on a daily basis.

The Polar bear

(research project)

the Polar bears liv ner the arct. Oshn thay liv on sno and ise the polar bears way about a thousin powns and are about nine feet long. A pla cub was about wne pound wen hes born. Pola bears eat fish and walrs and seels the Polr bears far is wite so she cant fres the Polr hed is small and hes nec is lagr and hes bode is slemrs thenathr bars so thay can swm good. The Polar bears feet wot slef be cast hay hav far on the batm av thar fet. The end.

the rane

The raine is baudfl when raine and san get to gethr it macs a raboe. I like raine but thes wen it raines hard I like it wen it thadrs and litnig.

I blif in efrethng

I blif in efrethng but I don’t bilf in gosts I dot blif in gblins I dot blif in mnstrs but wt I blif in is sat aclos and the estr bani and I blif in the tuth fare that’s wt I blif in.

I Love Scul

I love scul it is fun we hft to do wurc frst

We hft to do redi and ridie and math scul has a hel and

We play escamo on the hel scul has beldng blocs

Scul has a sand bocs scul lets us pla on the hel for ten or

Feften secents the end

Iwet sam war

I wet sam war tha had lots av watrfaotis and it had a masoj pas you woc strat then you si the wemins madath wroom thay had a jacus that was hot and then thar was a sweming pul

We at thar then left. The end.

My brthda list

I wont sam scrts I wont my own radio I wont my own brbi clos and I want my own Barbie panties and I wont cens shus and I want a nu bike and I want a kiss and a hug. The end.

- a new bike with a basket in the frant and I want my own little chrash can by my bed and the last thing I want is a hug and a kiss. The end

My DADDy going to serial

My daddy is going to serial ina fau das hes staing in a hotel intel he gos to serial wen he cams necst to cresma my step moms babi wel bi aout and I git tp pla weth hem and hold hem and wen he is eat maths old I wel get to fid hem weth a botl the end

My dreem

Me and my mom and my sesr wur waring are plans and then thes cavman ckum and he was stragr then eneebude ecsept my mom ckaus shes turf then eneebude to so shes stragr then the ckaveman beckus she wurcks out so she pushtun and she ckekt hem and then he was did and then we started to wadr age and alittl latr thes men dinasore came and he was destroying all the houses but he had to go around the black so he dedent geit to are house so we put haugh levs weth are pets the red ans so thay can kel the dinasor so it was are tarn! But furst he gos in the backyard thas war. The levs are so now hes going in the backyard. And then hesaeping onnthe lef rinte now hes ded so my furens Ken and Katey went to go tel the ples. The end

about babeese

how the wife and huzbin make a babe is this but they haft to go to bed at might and then the pines gits to the vuginue and in the bade there is a yudris and in the yudris there is a egg that has a tinye babe and then they make a babe and when they wake up shel be pregnit and then she hast to wate until nine muths.

a wish

if I cod do an thing in the word I wood Sali the seas to lads far away and discover islids that nobody has non a boot.

Letters

To Bod by Natalie

Bod is a speshl kinde of a prsen beckas hes nise. He lets aos plla up on tht hill and one day we stad on the hill for a long time and wor hapey and I like wat he das. Have a gud time on vucashin. The end

To margarey with love from Natlie

hw is avoe I hp she is fyling good how was her sigirye. Did you wotsh it.