Rachel Samoff's blog

I had a really eye-opening conversation with one of our teachers the other day. This teacher was working her way through some challenges in her life. I asked her how she was doing as I greeted her one morning. She recounted how the children were helping her and giving her the strength she needed. Here’s what she said. (The names below have been changed to preserve privacy.)

Children start working on peer relationships even before they are mobile. During the years between birth and six, children spend lots of time and energy working on social skills. As the article, 'Children's Peer Relationships Have Enormous Influence' indicates, a child's skills at entering a group of peers, self expression, assertion, listening, negotiation, empathy, and forgiveness are very important for a successful learning and a satisfying childhood.

We’re all seeing articles and reports of research on the importance of giving children unrestricted and unstructured time to play. In our busy lives with our emphasis on education, some of us tend to fill up our children’s time with lessons, excursions, and lots of coaching from the adults. What gets left out is time for children to simply play and work on their own ideas, relying on their own resources.

Take a look at this article 'Plugged-In Parents' to help you reflect on the quality of your time with your children when you are with them as you drop them off at school, pick them up, or take them to the park.

I was passing through all our classrooms this morning greeting teachers, parents and children as I normally do. Aidan, a 3 year old, was working on a sticker/drawing he was creating. I knelt down and watched him working. “What are you making?” Silence. I waited a bit while Aidan drew dark purple lines on his paper. I tried again. “You have 3 motorcycles there.” Aidan said, “Hate!” “Hate?” I queried. “Hate,” he repeated. “Is that hate you are drawing?” “Yes!” “Did you have a hard morning?” “No.

Here's an interesting perspective on testing young children's intelligence.

The Myth of Testing Gifted Children

During my walk with Nicolas (who just turned 1), the sun behind us cast a very sharp, clear shadow of both of us moving down the walkway. Nicolas definitely noticed it. I saw him looking at his shadow. I could see that he noticed that it moved when he moved. If he had the words, he would have said, “Look at that dark thing on the walk! Hmmmmm. That’s really interesting! And it moves! Hmmmmm. Look at that!”

One sunny school day I saw a teacher out in front of the school with two babies who had recently started walking. Each was holding their teacher’s hand and walking to the front door. I was struck by how they really were no longer babies, but toddlers. The teacher brought them into the office and headed toward their classroom. Nicolas did not want to go in. He kept circling around and heading back for the front door. I decided to take a few minutes and see what he wanted to do. (Actually I had a pretty good idea.)

Are babies born with a moral sense? Conventional wisdom informed by observation is that they aren't. But take a look at this article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday. Perhaps babies know more than we think they do.

MAGAZINE | May 09, 2010
The Moral Life of Babies
By PAUL BLOOM
Can they really tell right from wrong? What researchers are cooing about.

I saw a really masterful interaction between one of our parents and her 3 year old little boy when we were preparing for the May Fete Parade on Saturday. We were getting ready to transport our children’s wagon to the place where we were gathering for the parade after dropping off what we needed for the PIE carnival booth at Addison. Mom was going to drive me over and then return.

“I want to go with you, Mommy.”
“You can’t go with me. I don’t have your car seat. You’ll stay here with Daddy.”
“No Mommy, I want to go with you!”
“I know you do, but your car seat is not in my car.”

Have you ever thought about the role risk-taking plays in a child’s learning? If you reflect on it, I’m sure there are times when your child makes a move to try something out and you ask yourself, “Is that safe?” If your answer is no, you prevent your child from trying it. If your answer is maybe, you probably offer your child help and perhaps insist that your child let you help.

April 12 – April 16th was the official Week of the Young Child. At CPSC, celebrating young children is a daily phenomenon. As a matter of fact, we spend all our time every day celebrating the beauty, the love, the generosity, the creative ideas, and the unique capacities of every young child in our CPSC community. Even so, we held a special event as we do every year for parents and children to celebrate the young children at CPSC together.

Each year a teacher works within the CPSC community, our hope is he/she gains skills, advances professionally, becomes a more dedicated early childhood educator, and becomes increasing connected to others in this early childhood community. Alma (left) and Heather (right) were celebrated by their colleagues as they arrived at two important anniversaries. Alma has been teaching with CPSC for 10 years and Heather for 5. We will work hard to make sure they remain as happy in their work as they look in this picture.

Parent meetings where I talk with parents about their children, their children’s learning and development, and their parenting have always been really enjoyable for me. Watching video tape of children as they go through their day at school and discussing what we observe is always lots of fun as well.

Norma Leonardo celebrated her 20th anniversary as a CPSC teacher! That's a long time! And for each of those 20 years Norma has dedicated herself to loving and cherishing some of our youngest CPSC children. Norma receives cards, a cake, and gifts to honor her at her 20th Anniversary celebrationLeading the Butterfly classroom for many years now, many parents have trusted Norma with their first baby, their second baby, and even their third baby.

CeCe and Teresa enjoy their anniversary celebration.Consistency is so important for young children. Relationships with teachers who know you well and on whom you can depend to be there every day for you are the platform from which children can launch themselves into learning. CeCe Dunn and Teresa Rojas have both been with us for many years. CeCe celebrated her 10th anniversary at CPSC and Teresa celebrated her 5th. We honored them at a recent staff meeting with commerative plates.

Vania plays a Brazilian instrument to Carnival music to the delight of the soon to be dancing children.

I walked into a classroom to find one of our almost 3 year old little girls, Allie, crying by her cubby. April, her teacher, was with her, asking her why she was sad. She mournfully explained that she really wanted her Mommy. April and I both talked with her. We told her we could really see that she was very sad because her Mommy wasn’t there. April asked her if her mom was coming to pick her up this afternoon. No answer, just sobs and tears. “Do you want to write a letter to Mommy and tell her how sad you were?” “No. I just want my Mommy!” More sobs and tears.

I was in the baby rooms observing the early morning. I walked into the Butterfly classroom with my pad and pen, sat down on the floor next to Lucy, a delightful almost 7 month old baby. She was looking at me so I talked with her a bit. She smiled. Then she looked at my paper and then at my pen and then back at me. “Are you waiting for me to write?” I asked incredulously. I really do think that’s what was happening! Lucy repeated the round of looking at paper, pen, and then at me.

CSPC is proud to have a long history of NAEYC Accreditation. This accreditation program, created and administered by the National Association for the Education of Young Children is an excellent tool to use to assure ourselves that we are putting into practice the latest research on how to help children learn and develop optimally and keep ourselves at the forefront of the early childhood field. We have held our NAEYC Accreditation since 1991 and have thus proved repeatedly that we are capable of maintaining these very high quality standards.

I think every parent of a child between the ages of 1 and 2.5 years old has wondered why their children throw themselves (sometimes violently) on the floor when they get angry or upset. Such an extreme reaction! And often over almost nothing! Some of them do this with so much energy that they hurt themselves! What’s the explanation?

December is a festive month throughout the US. And it is a festive month at CPSC. Since we have many different kinds of families who celebrate many different holidays, as a school we celebrate many different holidays as well. Our effort is to bring children’s homes and the celebrations that are important to them into our school. This happens throughout the year, but December contains an unusual number. So we’ve had lots of fun this month with many of our families and teachers bringing their celebrations into our classrooms.

As I was walking through the Chipmunk Room I heard the following conversation between two three year old boys.

“Un, deux, trios, quatre, cinq. That’s how I talk.”

“Well I talk like this. Uno, dos, tres.”

This was a thoughtful exchange of ideas. There was no judgment involved . . . no words about which was the right way to talk.

One of our goals at CPSC is to give children a community to grow up in that is very diverse where they can learn that there are lots of different legitimate ways of speaking and ways of doing things. These two very young children got the message.

Here’s another piece of the utility-of-dramatic-play story. One day one of our 4 year old girls had a difficult day. She was uncooperative and disrespectful to her teachers and she called one of her classmates stupid. Her teacher spoke with her about her behavior and talked with her mother at pick up time. Mother and child talked about the incidents on the way home and later that evening as well.

On December 5th, around 125 families with young children from throughout out community gathered at the Cubberley Theater to watch a theater performance from Israel called Didi’s Keys. The performance put on by Lior Productions and was brought to Cubberley by CPSC and PACCC who joined together to sponsor the event.