Small Things

Sometimes it is small things that make the difference—in one case, to empower a teacher and extend a child’s learning. We adults tend to think we need to fix things, solve problems, smooth the path--and these actions must be BIG and RIGHT. In reality, most adults and children do a better job of charting their own courses than we understand.Today, a few brief, encouraging conversations resulted in a teacher taking on increased responsibility to implement a series of activities for her students. She tapped into her interest in art to research best practices for art curricula for toddlers. The first activity was a smashing success!One of the young artists announced he was “done” after a couple minutes. He’s a child who’s uncomfortable getting messy, had gotten paint on his hands, and was more interested in washing them off than continuing to paint. A teacher encouraged him to return, and painted alongside him, talking about the colors they were using. Their colors mixed together to create more colors, and they experimented with using their fingers and hands over the intriguing bubble wrap surface, even popping the bubbles as they went. The child was happily engaged, exploring the effects of the paint and the tools of brush and finger and hand. It only took a few seconds of the teacher’s interested company to deepen the satisfaction of the experience. Everyone was happy.