Woven Preschool Philosophy: Reflection and Intention

Several years ago I read the phrase "Woven Philosophy" and fell in love. 

I have grown to embrace the phrase and pride in the fact that our preschool isn't labelled under any specific curriculum or philosophy. The children and program are continuously growing and changing. This means that our approach, environment, and opportunities should be changing along with them. Instead of saying we are Montessori, Waldorf, Play-based, High Scope, Reggio Inspired or any other system of teaching, we belong to a Woven Philosophy. A method that takes pieces and parts from any philosophy to fit with the children's changing goals and growth.

I love aspects of all of these philosophies and many schools do follow them exclusively and that works for them! I don't feel there is a need in our community (or for myself) to create a focus or label for our preschool.

If you put two adults and twelve children into a room together, you are going to have so many different learning styles, strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and interests. People say variety is the spice of life and I think this is true in the classroom. If I only offer activities in a certain way, then I am possibly excluding certain children who need me to present it in a different way. Some children are going to miss out on certain skills if they are not interested in the activities offered, unless I encourage them through multiple approaches.

Intention and Reflection are the most important pieces to making my work successful. If I am not constantly reflecting on my day, conversations, interactions and activities, then I will never know what is working for my current group. I then need to intentionally plan the environment and routines based on the children's personalities, learning styles, personal goals, and relationships with their classmates.

Know the children and their backgrounds.

Know the families and community.

Be thoughtful about the environment.

Be thoughtful about the materials.

Find a balance that meets the needs of the group you are with.

Here are three of my favorite blog posts that demonstrate further how being intentional and reflecting make a difference in working with children.


Not Just Cute: Intentional Deficit Disorder
"Consider what you really hope for and turn that into intention.  Use your intentions and purposes as filters.  We can simplify our classrooms and our homes by knowing our intentions and living and teaching by them.    Begin to recognize that we don’t have to do everything.  We just have to do what matters most." -Amanda Morgan (Not Just Cute)

Interaction Imagination: Do Templates Kill Creativity?

"Can templates be a skeleton for children to hang their own creative skins on? Or do templates kill creativity?" -Suzanne Axelson  (Interaction Imagination)

Child Central Station: Sometimes We Craft.

"I have spent a lot of time in my journey has an early childhood educator exploring, growing, and learning, coming to conclusions of what I believe to be true, and the best path for the children I work with."  -Amy Ahola (Child Central Station)

Don't Be a Crab Apple.

As a preschool teacher I feel it is very important to remember to ask myself

"Why not?"

It took me several years to feel confident in stretching my thinking and questioning the rules that sometimes seem necessary. 

One of my first mentors taught me to question the "down the slide" rule. Why? or Why not go up the down slide? In my opinion every situation is unique with different children, different teachers, different equipment and all of this needs to be taken into consideration when exploring rules. 

Part of being a teacher is learning. It is not uncommon that I make up a rule that I instantly regret. I start second guessing. It is important for us as teachers (and parents) to question ourselves. We need to talk with other teachers and also with the children to figure out WHY?

A Crab Apple.

We have three apple trees on our property. One grows big yummy apples that we use to make applesauce. There are two other trees that grow crab apples. 

There was a problem this year with picking the apples. I'm not sure whose problem it was. Mostly mine I guess. 

I was trying to help them understand that the apples wouldn't be able to grow big and juicy if we kept picking them. We needed to let them grow so that we could eat them later. 

I was conflicted between:

"This is their space, let them explore."

and

"These trees work hard to produce these apples and we need to respect nature and not be wasteful."

It is always feels like the old cartoons with the mini-characters on each shoulder. 

You know the ones.

After two weeks of constant reminders and questioning myself, I decided to have a meeting with them about the apples. Now that the apples had grown bigger I showed them how one tree had bigger apples and the other two had small apples. 

I told them that since we would never be able eat the little apples they could pick them to play with, but not to eat. After a little bit of groaning I let them all take a bite of the tiny sour apples and they agreed to the deal. Finally everybody was happy.

Why not.

Getting Our Feet Wet.

This morning a giant puddle had appeared on our playground that 

we hadn't seen since "Crocodile River."

Off came the shoes. Why not?

Many of the kids were wearing pants. I helped them roll them up, but it was obvious everybody was going to need to change when we got inside. 

The next thing I knew they were adding the apples to puddle. 

I couldn't help but smile and once again I was confident that this was their playground not mine. 

Here is another post that I just dug up about asking myself  

WHY NOT?

Check out the Outdoor Play Party at Mud Mud Marvellous Mud for more posts about outdoor fun.