This week we homed in on the planets in our study of the Story of Everything. The first thing we looked at was the solar system. I popped a small model of the solar system in the middle of our circle time each day and asked our soon-to-be space consultants what they thought it was. The immediate and universal response was ‘planets’! So far so good.

Hmm a little trick question for those who think on their feet. What about this big yellow one one in the middle? Is it a planet? They all eyed me with suspicion and slight derision and certainly incredulity ‘No! Ha ha ha of course not! Its the sun!’ I asked the question, ‘Isn’t the sun a planet?!’ ‘No!’ (subtext: Fawzia, have you learned nothing?!’) ‘The sun is a star!’ Awesome!

Let’s count the planets. We did. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Now let’s divide them into two groups – our rocky ‘terrestrial’ planets and our gas giants. At this point with 4 planets on one side of the sun and 4 planets on the other side a child observed ‘it looks like a spider.’

Now let’s name and think of what each of these planets are like by being space explorers. And unknowingly to start with we ventured on a path of problem solving.

Mercury –we all swayed and ducked because of the flying meteorites crashing into the planet. One child labelled them ‘boulders’ and it stuck. Another said if she was on Mercury she would get a tent which would protect her from the boulders. We might all just join you. I commented, it would  be a very strong tent.

Venus – we all experienced extreme heat on our travels to this planet and mopped our brows profusely as the sweat gushed out! All because of those pesky enduring clouds keeping the heat trapped in. ‘We could bring fans to keep us cool’ came a suggestion. ‘Good idea!’

Earth – the best! One child observed, ‘It is not too hot and not too cold’. We identified we can breathe the air and drink the water and live on the land. How awesome is the earth?! No need to problem solve with this one as it’s just right. Hooray!

Mars – keep your head down as there is red dust flying everywhere. What can we do?! ‘Shut your eyes!’ ‘Wear swimming goggles!’ Sorted.

Jupiter – the biggest gas giant in the universe! So big it has 60 moons! Would that be a bit confusing to open your window and see 60 moons? Or would it be exciting?! ‘It will be funny’. But! We couldn’t land in Jupiter – or any other gas giants as there is no land – just gas (like air). ‘We will have to stay in our spaceship.’ The logical thing to do!

Saturn – the rings are made from ice and rocks flying around. Would we like to whizz round in the rings? ‘No no no!’ Very emphatic. How do we get out of this one? I loved the suggestion that emerged – ‘We could follow the penguins and stay with them.’ Good idea! The penguins would be the key to safety! ‘Where would we end up I wonder?! Where do penguins live?’ A boy answered, ‘Antarctica!’.

Uranus – Major problems with this planet because it spins on its side. How can we combat this?! In short – we can’t! But we can be jolly and sing ‘Uranus on the bus spins round and round round and round round and round, Uranus on the bus spins round and round all day long.’ So that’s what we did.

Neptune – the furthest away and the coldest. Hmm.. ‘What to do on a day trip?’ ‘Wear a very woolly coat and hats, gloves and a scarf’. Problem solved!

So there lies a handy little guide of top tips if you, or anyone you know, wants to venture from Earth and visit the other planets in our solar system! Good luck! May the force be with you!

Maria Montessori spoke about ‘the Absorbent Mind’ as naturally as we all talk about our every day lives.

It is a concept that lies at the base and heart of the way children (and for that matter adults) learn. Montessori observed from the moment every child is born they have the capacity to absorb and learn from their surroundings; this happens first unconsciously and then consciously. Every child has the innate ability to comprehend, make sense of their world acquiring skills and knowledge. 

From a modern day perspective the pressure for children, at an increasingly early age, is to aspire to a perceived ‘academia’ (for little ones this is often translated into a fixation on learning numbers, letters and sounds). In aiming for such results, this can often be accompanied in the loss of value of the nature of the absorbent mind; or to put it another way – the problem with adults imposing a directed structure of learning on children results in a compromise and interference of the absorbent mind and subsequently children can miss out.

Having lived the Montessori method now since our eldest daughter was a toddler (she is now approaching 20) I can say with certainty that my belief in the correctness of the ‘absorbent mind’ is emphatic. 

The Montessori nursery provides all that is needed for positive, happy and successful learners. Montessori’s genius ensured that all the milestones and learning concepts for children could be achieved by placing them in an ‘enriched’ setting. The shelves in a Montessori nursery are laden with materials that are aesthetically pleasing and entice the children to play with them, at their own will and direction, and figure them out. And once they are satisfied in their understanding of how something works they move on to the next activity or they continue with the same materials organising and working with them in a more complex way. 

I could go on like the nerd that I am about this but I will refrain! 

The urge to make me write this was sparked by one of our four year olds who drew a fantastic picture of the staff team on the white board. What struck me was multi fold and I will keep it brief! First the detail of all the staff – I had curly hair, Lesley had sparkly earrings, Donna had a bun and so on. Second, that there was a process of elimination that went on – who first, who next, and who was there still to draw? Third, the skills and precision of her mark making. Fourth – the joy which the child got from doing it and also the joy that all felt in seeing it. And lastly and most importantly – that the child had chosen to do this on her own. She was creative, precise, imaginative and valued her own ability and achievement. The child has been at the nursery since the age of two (she is now  four) and in that time, like all the other children, she has gently and happily gone from one activity to another, exploring, discovering, enjoying and learning. 

Suffice to say here was the absorbent mind showing itself in all its wonderful glory! 

On Monday morning one of the children came and took me by the hand and said, ‘Come and listen to my story.’ And so I was lead by her to her work. She had laid out some of the picture cards from ‘The Slug in a Jug’ game in a line. This I discovered was the sequence to her story. She began to tell me her story, ‘The cat put on a hat because it was sunny and chased the bee with the fan and landed on the pie. The man with the tie was cross and looked like a frog...’ She carried on inventively and at times I chipped in to help her in moments of her pausing to link the pictures together and we soon entered a negotiation of events based on how credible it all sounded and whether it all fitted together. The outcome was delightful and fun, and soon other children joined us and also wanted to take part in making up a story based on the pictures. There followed group ideas, negotiations, and compromises and different stories around the same pictures.

Following on in circle time we read one of my favourite books ‘The Story of Everything’ by Neal Layton (remember he also wrote ‘The Tree’ which featured in a blog post a few weeks ago – Neal is a great story teller!). The Story of Everything is exactly as it sounds. The children were taken through the story of the beginnings of our Universe, starting with ‘A very long long time ago there was nothing’ ... and then came the Big Bang, followed by the formation of planets and stars (we discovered the sun is our nearest star). They learned about first life in the oceans, followed by evolution of life onto land, the thought about the timespan of the dinosaurs who were wiped out by the biggest meteorite. We read how that had given way to the smaller mammals to thrive and then from apes evolved humans. We delved into the world of human resilience as they survived the Ice Age wearing the furs from woolly mammoths and lived in caves and dens. As time passed they made houses first in villages and lived on farms and later moved to cities. And the cities grew and the buildings got bigger and humans spread themselves all over the planet. The last page poses the question ‘what will happen next in the story of everything?’ Hmm... an interesting and relevant question. Although I think we can address climate change and the need to be eco warriors at another circle time.

I love stories. I love the joy of hearing stories, reading stories and discovering stories. Be it fiction or historical. This lead me to do a bit of reading around the value of stories particularly for children. There is a lot out there! But suffice to say stories, as we innately know, are immensely good for the soul. They are the life force for imaginations, for developing empathy, for connecting people. We share stories, we learn through stories and our own lives are a collection of stories.

In my reading I came across these wise words from Albert Einstein; ‘If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be brilliant, tell them more stories.’
The next part of the Story Of Everything lies in their brilliance and imagination.