Tidee Fridee in the Woods Primes (K/1)

Right now feels like a good time to shine some light on some helpers because that is what Mr Rogers said to do when things in the news feels scary, “Look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping.” If you have been following our journey as a community you will know that one of the pillars of the forest primes classroom is that we “take care.” That can mean a lot of things, like taking care of people, personal items, and shared materials, or bugs, birds and fairies. This spotlight on two examples of the Woods Primes dedication to making their world a better place. First the long one (because it includes dialogue):

Tidee Fridee Feelings

Every Friday at school we devote a portion of our afternoon to cleaning basecamp. We call it Tiday Friday. Or Tidee Fridee… Whatever you want as long as you participate. The rest of the days we choose not to have big clean ups because most of the children’s work is evolving, great ideas take time, and most of our materials are biodegradable. Children spend large portions of their day cultivating their space and what they do here. We want them to learn that care isn’t just cleaning.

This fall, because the class had been working with the idea of “a quarter”, a teacher decided to split our perfect group of 20 into the four major areas to be cleaned. It was great to use a mathematical idea we had been talking about in real life, they love math! The children are really good at cleaning without grownup supervision, but one day a teacher decided to go with the studio crew to do a finer “sweep” for the little cardboard snippy bits, and crayons that inevitably get covered in leaves.

When the work at the studio was finished the teacher said they could look around for people that might still need help. A few went deeper into the forest to collect some known items, while the rest noticed that the kids working in the Loose Parts Jungle still needed help. Someone noticed that it looked like they were playing, not tidying, and there was something off about the crates. Usually the crates are stacked in a beautiful way, because one time they were asked to make the meadow look tidy for Amy when she looked out the window on the weekend. After that request, the rates were stacked in symmetrical towers, or a perfect pyramid, something creative. This day it looked a little more like a miniature milk crate stonehenge. 

Teacher: What’s happening?

Everyone: All voices at once ranging from crying and sad to slightly snippy and frustrated. 

M: We’re building

Teacher: But it’s tidy time.

M: We are tidying.

Teacher: (?!) Buuuuut, it looks like you are building. 

N: We are.

Teacher: But it’s tidy time.

R: We are really sad.

M: So we built a sad face. (Then gestured to the stonehenge made from black plastic milk crates.

Reader, this teacher tried, but couldn’t see it. No matter what perspective was taken, it looked like a smile: Two stacks of crates for eyes, and then two curved lines for the mouths mirroring each other to make the circle.)

N: We didn’t just build a sad face, we built a whole sad person because that’s how we feel

R: Because we are all sad that we are cleaning over here! 

N: I always clean over here!

Teacher: Woah, you folx are really bothered, this is a big deal to you. Thank you for telling me, and I also really want you to know that every speck of help you offer is helpful. I really appreciate the hard work you are doing over here. 

R: We know. It’s just that for the last bunch of Friday Tidays I have had to clean the Loose Parts Jungle. I don’t mind about cleaning it, I just really wanted to clean the studio today. 

N: Yea, me too.

M: Yea, we don’t mind cleaning it just doesn’t seem fair if we never get to clean other places.

Teacher: You know, sometimes teachers just split things randomly. I’m sorry this feels hard. We can try it differently next week. There are a lot of ways we can make groups for doing jobs, we don’t have enough time to make a change today, because we are almost done, but I would be really interested in coming back together next week to make a plan that feels good and fair.

Everyone agreed, and kids said they felt a little better.

Teacher: I have an idea for the hair. Can we use all the last planks as hair? Ooooh, and can I use this stack of buckets to be the lightbulb above the person’s head to remind us that we have some thinking to do next week?

The idea was accepted, and together everyone put hair onto the head of the sad person before the children headed off for some down time in their hammocks and the teacher to the tent for a deep breath. So much happened in that few minutes. Children were frustrated and speaking out to make their feelings known. Children were not complaining about doing chores, it was the opposite: the children felt that it was unjust that the adults took away their power to choose.

That’s when this teacher saw it. Reader, the circle of stacked milk crates was not a modern stonehenge, but the head of a massive stick figure gazing skyward on the hillside at the edge of our meadow. The body was made of multiple long planks and had large white stones for boots, and every single crate was used to make the head. It had a short stack of buckets for a nose, a stack of crates for each of the eyes, and sure enough, there was the frown. One board, unbent but pitched at such an angle that expresses how much disappointment was felt while completing this task. They were right. It wasn’t a sad face, it was a whole sad person, because that’s how it feels when someone takes away your voice. 

On Monday there was a followup conversation.

Teacher On Friday when you were talking about what you had made, I didn’t see it, but I didn’t tell you. When you were talking about your vision, all I could see was the wrong thing, but then when we all walked away, I looked back and saw what you were talking about, but there wasn’t enough time to ollie back together. How did you decide to Make this?

R We were mad, everyone had agreed that we felt that way then we built the frowny face. Then we agreed to go faster and that made the work harder because we were dragging planks and they were heavy. Every Friday day I take a walk in the forest to feel the feelings. We like to play “Trash Wagon” to see how much we can collect. It’s easier for it to be fun when it’s fast and it was hard to make it fast because everything was so heavy and took a lot of reassembling.

M I felt like it was fair, but kind of not fair, it felt like we had to show you how we felt. It was fair because all the parts of the forest are important to clean, and it felt like the only things that were in the loose parts jungle were nature stuff, and there’s not a lot of other stuff. I thought that we really didn’t have that much to do. Some people thought we were playing, it was like they didn’t understand. It felt like they were teasing us, but I know they weren’t… It felt like it was the only way that we could show it at the time. We should’ve gotten to clean whatever we wanted.

N It took a long time because we were trying to make it go slow. It’s a way to show that we weren’t liking what you guys were doing. It didn’t feel like you understood what we were trying to tell you, but now we know that you didn’t understand too. 

R When they said, “Don’t play,” it felt like they were teasing us because we didn’t get to do what we wanted, but they didn’t understand what we were doing. Also, we built it extra big like that because we wanted to double time show it and so that you didn’t forget about it over the weekend and we would have to talk about it.

Teacher Why did you keep working even though you were so mad?

M We kept doing it because it’s good to keep doing some thing you don’t want to do, then you don’t have to do it later. Also, if we didn’t do it, we wouldn’t be taking care and we didn’t want to take care because that’s important.

R We partly did it because it would be so big and it would be hard to take it apart to make a new creation. And if we didn’t finish, we wouldn’t have finished our idea and we wouldn’t have been taking care that that’s why we worked so hard.

Teacher I’ve seen kids use kid power to be kind and to take care of people and to lift incredibly heavy things, but I’ve never seen kids your age. Use their kid power in quite this way. You really trusted each other with your feelings and supported each other even though you were having your own hard feelings, you were really taking care! I appreciate you letting me hear you and for giving me a second chance when I wasn’t listening the right way.

R Like seriously. That is like a really, really big deal. I will take the compliment, Thank you, that really means a lot!

We still do Tidy Time on Fridays, but children listen to the jobs that need to be done and then make a choice for where they want to work.

Couch is Closed

In our indoor classroom lives an antique piece of furniture that has followed the forest people from the old campus. It has carved feet and decorative details and dimpled buttons across its back. When it was younger, it was covered with soft, perfect velvet- a particular shade of antique olive. In the beginning it was probably comfortable, supportive and soft; but over the years, the wear of close conversations and daily life are showing. The velvet has given away its fuzz in many places to reveal the secret layers underneath, and there is one spring hiding in the seat of the sofa that is far more eager to escape than the rest. (Those who choose to sit there usually do so with an extra pillow for defense.) This sofa is beautiful and perfect, but currently it is closed. 

Years ago when Center School was still on Montague City Road, children were interested in helping mend the most troublesome holes by sewing patches to cover the biggest holes. This year the woods primes have noticed that more holes are appearing, and are doing something about it. In our stash of needles, we have three that are curved upholstery needles. After a quick demonstration of how to use the needle, one person’s interest quickly turned into three people knowing how to use the needles. The next day those three invited a partner to help hold the fabric, which turned into taking turns making stitches and six people knowing how to use these wonky needles to affix multiple new patches.

Then everyone wanted to help fix the sofa, and children were literally begging to sew something. The mending of the sofa is paused right now to please the children. They pointed out that there were only three needles and it wasn’t fair that there wasn’t enough. Since then, children have completed multiple small patches and now everyone is working on stitching their name on a large patch of denim. The sofa just opened again today for delicate sitting and instantly someone sat down to stitch.