Photoshoot with the Warthog

It's actually not a warthog. At least I don't think so. It's hard to tell, though, whether it's an enraged hippo or some other horrifying exotic creature. I think that whenever I see a sort of ugly creature that roughly resembles a warthog, I call it a warthog.

This warthog was at the Weihnachtmarkt, and I spent a good 10 minutes on the photoshoot.

I also remembered that I love typewriters. I remembered this when I was at my favorite cafe -- aka the hip one whose windows I washed about a month ago. If you are ever wondering what to buy me as a gift, a typewriter will never go unappreciated. As long as I am not still traveling. In this cafe (Muhackl oder Blutwurst), there's an old orange typewriter sitting in the middle of one of the tables. All customers are invited to make themselves comfortable and write a page or two. I think at the end, the pages going to be compiled into some sort of public art project book. The best thing about it was that the N key was broken, so I just replaced it with M and wrote about things being fum and emtertaiming.

On another note, I bought my second poem today. There is something intensely alluring about paying 1 € for a poem that comes in a little plastic container from a gumball machine. It's like a fortune cookie, but more expensive and less tasty. But still amazing. The poem is three lines long, in German, and obscure. I make the people I am with try to analyze it. I especially love having them try to translate tricky German words that have no real translation in English. But I make them try anyways and then I give them a round of applause. Usually a real round of applause because I find that that's not done nearly enough nowadays.

If you look at the word APPLAUSE really quickly, sometimes it looks like APPLESAUCE. Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

Question of the Day: What animals is that, actually?

A lot of presents for one baby to carry

Most Important Skillz to be an Early Childhood Educator:
(here is what my co-educators said when I asked them)

M: Love of children. Patience
H: Empathy
C: Calmness (the word for this in German is the same as "quiet" and at first I thought this could explain some of my shortcomings as a kindergarten teacher, because I am everything but quiet).


My thoughts: Love of children (so important or else you'll end up murdering someone). Professional Problem Solver mindset. (I read this really great article though I now forget whether it was talking about babysitters or kindergarten teachers. Anyways, I think THIS is SO key. You don't need to be able to create a good lesson plan or anything, but you have to know how to leap in and think of clever compromises/distractions/Fun Theories, etc.)

X-Mas
A few differences between Christmas preparations in Palo Alto vs. Leitershofen.

1. Lights: In Palo Alto, the elaborate light displays begin after Halloween (or, Thanksgiving, if you're tactful). They are multi-colored, and take over the entire yard. Giant Santas dominate, and life-size reindeer are the norm. The lights blink (or, "twinkle," if you're poetic), and suck energy like no other (except for maybe a laundry machine, as has been discussed). In my neighborhood here in Germany, there's practically nothing up yet and I've been told that their level of kitsch never actually comes near ours on the Christmas Kitschometer. My host mother put up a very modest white light display over our entrance arch and everyone is teasing her about it.


2. Present bringers: Here, Christkind (i.e. Baby Jesus) is the one who brings good children their presents, not Santa Claus.
Me: Oof, that's a lot of presents for one baby to carry!
Them: Well, the angels help him.
I might have mistranslated this next part, but I think that bad children receive a moldy root in their stocking.

3. Weinachtsmarkt: These "Christmas Markets" are great; apparently, nearly every city here hosts one. Basically, if you imagine a nighttime farmers' market with booths selling cured meats, stollen, lebkuchen, teas, chocolate, candied almonds, glühwein (hot spiced wine) and kinderpunsch, painted nutcrackers, LOTS of wurst, christmas tree ornaments, scarves, really amazingly ugly toy warthogs that I wanted to buy everyone as a going-away gift but then reconsidered, etc. The Augsburg Weinachtsmarkt opened on Monday and will last up until Christmas. It's a festive affair, with lots of lights and live music. HIGHLIGHT: When the live music was a group of six old smiley people wearing Santa costumes and playing ABBA's "I Have a Dream" on these mechanical organs. All they were actually doing was the wheel turning ("grinding"?), which makes it seem more like a workout than a musical performance. Amazing nonetheless.


Question: What are the most important skills to be an Early Child Educator?

Jellyfish are Dangerous

Rockin' in the City
Last Friday, all the 5 and 6 year olds traveled to the city of Augsburg with one of the other educators (Hanna) and me. Our goal was to walk up and down the big, historic Maximillianstraße and take photos of some of the old buildings there. In class, we're currently doing this art project where each kid makes a posterboard 3-D house with tissue paper stained glass windows (this somehow ties into their Adventskalenders leading up to Christmas, but I haven't yet figured out how) -- so this city outing was for inspiration.

Getting to Augsburg involved two different forms of public transportation, and I can't see this happening in America (without at least two parents along to help chaperone). It was a great day, though, and everything went along swimmingly. I was so happy to think about how far I had come in these two months -- these were the oldest kids who in the beginning treated me with the most scorn/pity. Now, they were all calling for me to sit next to them on the bus, and the ones who ended up sitting far away would spend the whole time waving to me. BUT: the BEST/most hilarious part = the singing.

Jakob is a huge fußball (soccer) fan, and I guess he heard "We Will Rock You" at a recent game. We started singing it together (a.k.a. just the chorus), and soon all the kids had learned it. And then, seriously, the entire last hour of the day (walking down the street, bus back home) was spent singing the chorus again and again. The kids are good at getting the right aggressive tone, and I think some of the innocent passerby were a little intimidated (and would have been outright terrified if it weren't for the kids' cuteness).







Brotzeit Games
A lot of times, brotzeit is spent playing this impromptu game, where one kid asks something like:
Who has an orange with them?
And then everyone to whom this statement applies starts chorusing, “Ichhhhh!!!”
I love watching this unfold.
Who has a younger brother? Ichhhhh!
Who has a younger sister? Ichhhh!
Who has a dog? Ichhhh!
Who has a Grandpa who used to be an electrician in a hospital? (Only Louis says Ich)
Who thinks Elissa has a pancake tree in California? (Louis asks this, but everyone choruses Ich. Uh oh. I think the other teachers are out of earshot for this one, at least!)


Jellyfish
I think if I had tried this earlier in my visit, the kids would have been horrified, but the time had come. I taught them The Jellyfish. They got SO into it, arguably more than my AC-ers. Even more than the BA-ers. German kindergarteners might be the Jellyfish's target audience. The name alone is awesome enough (in German, it is pronounced Tcheh-lee-fishhh). We had so much fun with it yesterday that we had to repeat it today.



Camino Zen
I love trivia, but I'm never actually good because I'm too much of a generalist. Yesterday evening I went to English Speaking Quiz Night in a local Irish Pub, and I helped carry my team to an astounding 10th place out of 10 teams (One of my teammates: "That's funny...we usually do at least twice as well!"). Key contributions included remembering the term "perestroika" (spelling?) and de-anagraming Ernest Hemingway -- but these were most likely negated by confusing Alannis Morriset with Pink, writing Orluk Murahami instead of Orhan Pamuk, and not knowing anything about cartoons. Or history. Or movies. So that was good.

On my way home, I managed to lose my cell phone.

Since my cell phone is also my alarm clock, I overslept half an hour this morning.

When I told my host family and co-educators about the missing phone, everyone was freaking out and offering to call the police, the city's lost and found, etc. I was very zen about the whole thing. I just had a feeling that things would work out. I had no idea where the phone was, but I had hope that something good would happen. We took an informal vote at breakfast time.

Who has no hope that Elissa's phone will show up: 2 (host mom, Louis)
Who has hope that Elissa's phone will show up: 1 (Elissa)
Out of town on business trip: 1 (host dad)
Distracted by stuffed puppy: 1 (Noel)

I emailed two people from last night, told someone else to text my phone with my email contact info, and convinced my host family not to call the police until evening. Lo and behold, that afternoon, we tried calling my phone again and this time someone picked up! (I guess it had fallen out of my pocket, two 4th graders had found it and given it to their principal, so I was able to retrieve it from the local school and give the kids chocolate as a thank you reward) The Camino will Provide.

Could it work in America?

I have progressed from thinking, “Why are there so many waldkindergärten in Germany?” to wondering “Why are there so few in America?” or even more importantly, “What is stopping waldkindergartens from spreading to America?”

I read Last Child In the Woods, the well-known Richard Louv book that chronicles what he describes as Nature-Deficit Disorder. In America, children are spending less and less time outdoors, opting instead for computers, video games, or structured activities like music or art lessons, etc. (All of this is condoned by parents, if not encouraged.) We still spend time outside being active (at least hopefully), but it often takes the form of organized sport teams. Even our outside “play” is in ready-made settings like playgrounds -- pre-equipped with slides, swings, monkey bars. In a sense, children are being told “how” to play.

Yet there is something special, something important about these completely unstructured “wald”-type of play areas. For instance, there’s what I call the Leticia Theory, that the forest can completely change how a child feels and acts (for the better). In the raum, Leticia is intensely shy, and the entire period can go by without her speaking much, or even playing with other kids. Often, she ends up playing some sort of board game with one of the educators, who, tries to draw in other kids as well, though Leticia isn’t always interested in interacting with them. Some shy kids are a bit nervous around me at first, but then when I am patient and perseverant with friendliness and pro-active interaction, they eventually smile and start to trust me. With Leticia, it took about 2.5 weeks before she even cracked a smile, and that was only after she had just crushed me at pick-up sticks (NOTE: All the kids love this game, and are all REALLY good. Or maybe I’m just really bad, which is actually quite possible and I blame it all on my big and clumsy grown-up fingers). Even then, though, she went back to looking troubled and nervous. The other educators were worried, because Leticia is entering the school system next year, and they’re not sure she’ll be able to make friends if she never talks to anybody her age.

After about a month, though, I began to notice a complete change in Leticia when she came to the wald. She would be a bit tentative as we all sat together to eat our brotzeit, but then she would find a tree to climb and turn into a happy little monkey. She would start climbing higher and higher and giggle as I stood below and minorly fretted (largely due to her predilection for standing on branches that were approximately 2 cm in diameter). She would climb higher and higher, this huge smile on her face the whole time. “Look at me, Elissa!!” she would call from the top. “Look where I am, Elissa!” In the wald was where Leticia first started interacting with the other kids. When they all ran and jumped in the mud, Leticia would too, and she would always be so excited to get muddy.


Raum



Brotzeit

In tree!


I was just rereading the waldkindergarten’s mission statement the other day, and I came across this part (courtesy of GoogleTranslate):

We hope that the children feel comfortable in the woods, perhaps even happy and safe there, and accepted and loved. Those who feel loved, can love - himself and his fellow creatures. “Happy people make less broken” (Beatrice Leitz Weinzierl).

So, the end sort of digresses, but the point is that the forest should not have any of the “dark, deep, dangerous” connotations that fairy tales sometimes ascribe to it. Rather, it should be a place where people can feel free and run and play – The Leticia Theory.

Best of all is that instead of just clinging to the educators, Leticia might have made a friend. Starting last week, during brotzeit time she has begun to sit near Lea (who is great and has wonderful social skills), and the two of them sometimes spend the whole time sitting together and talking (I try to get close to spy on them, but it doesn’t usually work). So, there’s a lot of hope here.

So…could it work in America?

Despite what Richard Louv writes, I DO have hope that, theoretically, it could work. Really, the waldkindergarten is not as radical of an idea as it sounds—in many ways, it is just like a progressive pre-school in America, but instead of having time to play on the play structure outside, the kids go to the forest. To show it’s promise, I will squash several myths about the Waldkindergarten.

1. They spend all the time outside. All playing and no learning.FALSE. We actually spend the first half of the day inside the room, which is filled with various stimulating activities for the children to choose (block building, art, reading, games, more crafts, make-believe area, etc.). While all playing and no learning is not necessarily a bad thing, it is actually not even possible – while the children are playing, they ARE learning (LOTS of research done on this). And there are all sorts of opportunities in the room to develop motor skills, social skills, or more “standard” skills through math games and counting, etc.

2. The Educators are intense outdoor enthusiasts and nature loversFALSE. Actually, the educators are just lovely, normal people. They, too, are not overwhelmingly enthused about going outside when it’s cold and hailing. BUT, they recognize the importance of the kids being outside. When the weather is bad, we spend more time in the room, and go out for a shorter time, to an area with more protection against the elements.

3. The parents are all progressive nature lovers themselvesHonestly, I see nothing that distinguishes these parents from my parents, or ones I know in the USA. These are not all granola-eating, Birkenstock-wearing hippies. They run the gamut; many pick their children up wearing nice office clothing. Some give good natured groans when they see how muddy their children are. A big part of why they send their kids here is just that this waldkindergarten is so established in the German culture; it’s such a common and viable option in this community.

4. The kids are wild forest children who run around petting frogs and catching insects, etc.The kids all love the forest, but I think so some extent, this is a learnable skill. Or, actually, it’s the opposite – loving nature is something ingrained, but sometimes in America, we learn to FEAR it. So, it is rather the AVERSION to nature that’s a learnable skill. But still, these kids are not purely tree-huggers. Mostly, the forest is just their adventure space, their environment for exploration and fun. They saw grass and living branches to build their cities. They uprooted a baby tree (actually, this was a great act of teamwork. I was running around, snapping all sorts of photos of this great collaboration before I realized we were uprooting a tree. So then we replanted it and all was well and the kids ran off to do something else).

I think the biggest obstacles would be our current US culture -- I just read an article in the NYTimes about how test prep companies are now targeting 3 and 4 year olds. Disgusting. If parents are so fixated on their kids doing these sorts of "get ready for real world" (REAL WORLD OF KINDERGARTEN?!?), then it will be hard to convince them of the merits of sending their child to romp around the forest.

Coming next: Waldkindergarten and Creativity.

Question of the Day: Could it work in America? What is stopping it?

Brief photo-essay

The past bit of time.

Last weekend I went to Munich to visit one of my good friends from the Camino. I might have mentioned earlier that I love street music, and this weekend proved to be no exception.




Slacklining in Munich


Really cool idea. Outside the Jewish Museum in Munich, to which I took my friend. One floor: AWESOME. The other two, smaller ones: disappointing





During one of our typical "Noel sits on my shoulders and we dance around to Anton aus Tirol" parties




As a part of the German-American Thanksgiving Dinner we made last week. After persuading them that there exists great American food other than burgers, we ended up making a number of delicious things, culminating in star-shaped home-made brownies and vanilla ice cream.

Laundry-naire & WYR Bus

More inventions. If anyone has the capacity to actually make these (or just make them look nice), I give you license to be a co-creator. Go ahead and make it happen. Just let me know. Coming up next: DDR Wii toothbrush for kinder.

The laundry machine is the second largest energy consumer among household appliances, and thus a significant contributor to global warming. Switching to air-drying on a clothesline or rack is an easy way to cut energy usage and also save money. With "Who Wants to be a Laundry-naire?" you can turn a chore into a game show! Watch the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" style gameshow on the clip-on screen, and buzz in your answers by pressing the letter keys beside each clothes line (can play with a partner...good incentive to turn laundry into a social event with other family members). As you clip your laundry article to the corresponding line, find out if you are right (earn points!) or wrong (earn 0), and play on until all your clothing has been hung.

The Would You Rather Bus

1.

2.

Public transportation reduces traffic as well as greenhouse gas emissions. How can we get more people to utilize public trains or buses? Make them more FUN, with built in "Would You Rather" questions. Every minute or two, passengers will see a different question, asking them to choose which of two options "they would rather." They vote by pressing the red/blue button on their seat, and shortly after, a red or blue light above their seat will indicate their vote. All the votes will be tallied, with the final counts lit up beside each of the two answer options. Instead of bus passengers sitting and looking bored, they can bond with their fellow bus-mates!

**

I actually have real updates and waldkindergarten reflections to write also. Forthcoming.

I think I have to stop doing these inventions because I have too many ideas and not enough time / patience with bad picture quality.

So, children by 14

A tipi in the wald


I just love this picture.



Sankt Martin
We celebrated this last week with all the waldkindergarteners and their families. Apparently, it's a holiday with Catholic roots, but it reminded me of a mix between Halloween and Hanukah. As the story goes, Sankt Martin (a soldier) was riding when he came across a poor man, to whom he gave his warm coat. To celebrate, we walked through the forest with cool tissue paper / paper mache lanterns (made in class over the past few weeks), sang songs, performed a little play, and at the end there was a big bonfire, around which we roasted stockbrot (raw dough on a stick) and drank gluhwein (hot, spiced wine). From what I glean, the key themes are Light and Charity.



Also, all the families brought in canned and boxed foods to donate to a local shelter.



THINGS I DO WITH THE KIDS:

1. Sing the song that goes (replacing Jonas with EVERYBODY'S name, and then, like, every German noun):

Jonas jonas bo bonas
banana fanna fo fonas
mee my mo monas
JONAS

They are obsessed with this. We spend the whole way to and from the forest singing this.

2. Play the high five game that goes:
Up high
Down low
To the side
TOO SLOW!! (pull your hand away before they can slap it).

They are obsessed with this too.


3. Try to do Piagetian experiments
I make two balls of clay, equally sized. Plan to see how the different aged kids regard conservation of matter, by molding them into different shapes and asking, each time, which has 'more clay.'

Elissa (for starters): Which one has more clay?
Leticia (age 5): This one (points to the left. It looks exactly the same as the right.)
Elissa: Uhhh...okay (takes a tiny tiny bit from the left and moves it to the right). Sooo...now which one?
Leticia: This one (points to right).
Elissa: Umm (takes a tiiiiiny bit and moves it back to the left. Have not even begun the real experiment yet)...now, they're both even, right?
Leticia: No, now this one (points to left).
Elissa: Ummm, oh I know, why don't we just put both balls together and make a nice tree or something.

4. Teach things I learned on the Camino
Meaning, teaching them that chestnuts can be eaten raw. We had a huge bowl of edible chestnuts in the room, but we weren't planning to cook them in the oven on this particular day.
David (who puts many things in his mouth, wood blocks and toy cars included): Yummy!!
*** I convince the other teachers that it actually IS okay, not poisonous, and then we all spend the rest of the morning peeling chestnuts and eating the raw flesh. Big hit.

5. Join the Brotzeit Police Squad:
As I mentioned earlier, one topic of discussion and alarm among the other educators is Lil'y's brotzeit (namely, the prominence of its cookies and crustless whitebread deli sandwiches, and the dearth of fruits or vegetables or anything healthy. When I say dearth, I mean that she has 3 cherry tomatoes).

Day 1:
Lily is eating her standard sandwich next to Nuria, who has an assortment of grapes, apples and orange segments.
Elissa: OOH! Nuria! Fruit! I love fruit! What's your favorite fruit?
Nuria: Pear
Elissa: Oh YUM. And yours, Lily?
Lily: (shrugs)
Franzi (other Educator apprentice): Maybe apple or banana?
Elissa: Or WATERMELON.
F: Or cherry?
Elissa: But vegetables are good too. Ooh, I have some cucumber. Do you like cucumber?
Lily: (not overwhelmingly enthusiastically) I guess so.
Elissa: Well you must tell your mom: Mom, I love cucumber. Could you pack me some cucumber please?

Day 2:
Today, Lil'y has been given a little tupperware container of mandarin orange slices, already prepeeled and segmented it. Still, we (I) celebrate it like she has, instead, been given a Nobel Prize.
Elissa: LILY!!! FRUIT!!! YESSSSSS!!! (Pump fists in air).
Lily: Ooh, look at what else I have. Cookies!! (does little happy fist pump too).

Day 3:
Today, Lil'y is very happy when I come over to her.
Lily: Elissa! Guess what! Today I got TWO oranges!
Elissa: Oh GREAT! And look, Thimo and Luis (the two boys sitting next to her) ALSO have oranges! It's a big orange party!
Lily: (very pleased with self) That's because I gave them MY oranges!

6. Conversations in general
One thing I love about being able to speak German now, is that I'm able to actually have conversations with the kids. I.e:

Jakob (pirate): (demanding) Where did you hide the treasure?
Elissa: (anguished) Ugh, I just can't remember, my memory is so bad...I'm so old, I forget everything.
Jakob: How old are you?
Elissa: At least 60.
Jakob: Oh wow...but try to remember!
E: Hmm...Now I remember! It's under the old oak tree!
J: Ha ha, now we know where it's hidden!
E: Oh no! Why did I tell you?! I'm so silly!
Louis: How deep is the treasure hidden?
E: Hmm... I think 50 meters deep (NOTE: Good use of metric system!)
Louis: (cackles) Heh heh, now we know how deep it's buried!!
E: (anguished, once more) Oh no!!! Why did I say that? Now you're going to find my treasure!
Jakob: Will you help us dig for it?
E: I guess.
Louis: (shriek of glee) Heh heh!! She'll help us dig for it!
Conny (other Educator): What are you going to do when you find Elissa's treasure?
Roman: Use the gold to buy chocolate!
Jakob: Yeah!!
Louis: Yeah!!!!
Elissa: Mmm...I love chocolate. Actually, one of my treasure boxes has a lot of chocolate in it.
J: How many treasure boxes do you have?
E: I think three.
L: YES! Now we know how many treasure boxes she has!
E: Oh no! I just keep telling you everything! Can I have some of the chocolate, at least?
R: No!
J: Only if you help us dig.
*** (We all use sticks and manage to scratch the dirt, 3 cm or something)
L: Are we almost there?
J: It's 50 meters deep!
R: I think we're close!
E: I can smell the chocolate!!


Age, actually comes up a lot, and everyone always forgets how old I am.

Elissa: So this weekend, you must practice juggling at home. Practice makes perfect!
Jakob: Definitely! I will!
Elissa: Great.
Jakob: Can your husband also juggle?
Elissa: Uh. What?
Jakob: Your husband.
Elissa: Jakob, I'm not married! How old do you think I am?
Jakob: (thinks a bit) 15?
Elissa: When you're 15, will you be married?
Jakob: I think for me, 13 actually.