“Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society…but for me, education means making creators…you have to make inventors, innovators, not conformists.”  Jean Piaget

I’ve just purchased the newly published Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson  (although it will have to wait until I finish the biography of Einstein by this same author).

I’m looking forward to the read for many reasons; but mostly I want to see if the book covers Job’s childhood.  In flipping pages, I did come across a statement that Job’s biological mother insisted that Steve was to be adopted by college educated people.   When the world calls him a visionary, what part of that can we relate to his early childhood?  I’m interested.  Research tells us the early years make all the difference – so did the difference Jobs make come from his early years?  Today I’m thinking about how to support pre-service teachers in learning how to make space and time and energy to allow children to continue to be the inventors and innovators they are when they arrive.

Yes, that is right.  Today I’m thinking about Einstein.  I’m reading his biography.  I really enjoy biographies.  It’s a really great way to learn so much about a lot of things; not just the person the book is written about.  Of course, this assumes, a well-written biography.  My hubbie has been reading one about Sir Richard Frances Burton written by his niece — he has been reading it for about ten years!  Apparently it’s very poorly written.  I have less patience for the poorly written biography.

This is a brilliant book about a brilliant man.  The challenge is that the math and science that is absolutely necessary to cover in the book has me totally baffled!  I’m reminded how poor my math and science education was:  when I was a young girl the only science I needed to know was the biology of babies; and we won’t even consider the math I was(n’t) taught.    It’s not often I find a book that has me in my dictionary this often.  And,  I’m not sure how I’m going to figure out how to understand the science involved.  I keep reading and try to understand the jist of the subject matter.  Einstein was an interesting person – well worth the challenge.

It’s a great read.  Add it to your list.  Be baffled.  Be amazed.

Today I read Llama Llama Red Pajama – not once – but twice!   Did you?  As part of JumpStart’s Read for the Record Program, I enjoyed reading the book to a group of early childhood pre-service teachers, and a group of women who donated books and pajamas to local service agencies for children in need.

Children’s literacy is at the heart of so many important achievements in their lives.  Try to find a way to support children’s – all children’s — access to books.

Today I’m thinking about the joy of reading aloud for a great purpose!

Did you know about this other blog I write for?  It’s a great resource with thoughts, book suggestions, tips and more for bringing drama to the early childhood classroom.  PictureBook Plays is more than taking the three popular well-behaved kids in the class, giving them costumes, hoping they remember how to recite a few lines, and praying that all the others, designated such uninteresting things as trees or traffic lines behave!  Check out my thoughts about Halloween and how to enrich young children’s lives with REAL interactions with picture bookcharacters, props, self-esteem, problem-solving and more!

The movie, Where the Wild Things Are, like Sendak’s book, does enormous justice to the wild and what feels uncontrollable at times emotional world of the young child.  A world we work hard to regulate into oblivion.  A world that very few adults really understand.   Just the other day one of my per-service teachers actually said to me that there should be a law against rough and tumble play between children.  (Thank goodness it hasn’t gotten that bad yet!).

I went surfing about looking for others reviews and found an incredible mix of reactions:  “jackass prank,” “lovingly crafted”, “teaches moral values” (what!?), “slow-moving poem to childhood confusion” (Max is not confused and neither is his mother — life is hard and life has challenging emotions that are hard to figure out); “potentially ferocious” (yes).

One of my favorite scenes is when Max actually does get eaten — I won’t say how or why, but know that strong emotions sometimes call for getting eaten by them.

Go see this movie.  Enjoy a poem, sometimes a slow one, sometimes a truly ferocious one; let yourself remember that sometimes life is so full of emotions that all you want to do is go somewhere and howl and throw things and rip life apart, and then crash into a pile on the bed with your mama.

However, I do think the visual presentation of these hard emotions is not appropriate to children about 5 and under.  Read the book, take a friend of any age to the movie, and then talk – talk about when you remember the day you  thought you would explode because you were so full of feelings!

Bravo, Spike Jones and company.

“….children progress from a focus on themselves (me), to an awareness of others (you), to the formation of reciprocal relatinoships (us.) (p 13)”

This book does a really thorough, and easily read coverage of this really important topic.  The author speaks to the value of this development in young children in today’s culture where academic knowledge seems to rule all.  It is research based and addresses national standards.  Each chapter begins with a definition, moves on to the recent research and thinking on the subject and ends with quite doable teacher strategies and practices.  Each chapter contains a couple of sideboxes summarizing the points for quick reference for teachers, or even groups of practitioners who wish to use it as a source of study.

The only bone I would pick is that I strongly think that the last chapter should be one of the first.  Chapter 14 : Preparing Ourselves to be Role Models is a really important chapter.  It speaks strongly to research showing that nurturing behaviors observed in teachers is actually a small small part of what we do when we interact with children: more of our time is spent managing the children, engaging in routine tasked or teaching in adult-centers ways.  She goes on to cover the importance of examining our own beliefs and levels of social and emotional capacities.

This is a valuable read.  I would suggest that you read it with a buddy.  I think that if the whole teaching team in a classroom were to focus on the ideas in this text, it would really be evidenced in the children in the classroom.

Our club takes part in a program called Reading is Fundamental.  We fundraise and purchase quality picture books, arrange to read them to young children, and then the children get to take a copy of the book home to enjoy again and again. Rolemodeling and sharing the joy of a great book with a young child is delightful!

Volunteerism will become more and more important as our economy struggles.  Look up this program in your community — you won’t regret a moment of it!

I’ve just finished reading My Father’s House: An Oneida Boyhood by Pierrepont B. Noyes. It was written as a memoir – I expect it might be selling more now than when first published as it seems memoirs are all I see in bookstores these days (I’m much fonder of reading biographies.)

You find out in the Afterword that it was written when he was 67. Mr. Noyes was born in 1870, and was about 10 when the communal experiment broke up. Although I was surprised to discover in this book, and during our visit, that members continued to live in the Mansion house, and descendants still do.

It is a sweet book, written, as memoirs always seem to be, with hindsight and a bit of romanticism about the past. We all, I think, remember the best of our childhood first, don’t we? But as a first exposure to the community, I enjoyed it and look forward to reading more.  What is interestingly missing, for me, is that Mr. Noyes does not discuss at all the experiment of stirpiculture of which he was one of the offspring.  At least as far I could find, he does not mention it at all.

At this link you’ll find another interesting review of it – actually if you Google it, there does seem to be quite a few of academic reviews not accessible without going through a library.

If you’re interesting in communal societies, or just want a quick memoir to read, it’s worth your time.