A Simple Reflection.....

From www.saraswatipreschool.blogspot.com

The other day I had a class reunion – my friends wanted to know how I applied whatever I learned in Engineering school to the preschool classroom?

Here is how it works….

I lead a group of 3 to 5 year olds in a classification activity in English. There are about 10 children. The children pick some animal pictures, say out what animal it is and where it lives, then stick them on the correct habitat picture– sea, farm or forest. A few rounds go smoothly with each child getting a chance to pick and paste. We are up to the last round, however, there are not enough animal pictures. I tell the children ‘we have a problem. I repeat in Indonesian, ‘teman-teman, kita punya masalah’. Everyone perks up to hear what the problem is.

“Boys and girls, I have only 8 pictures. If I give each of you one picture, 2 of our friends won’t get any picture to paste. Jadi kalau 1 untuk gian, 1 untuk Rayhan, 1 untuk Abi……, Rayya dan Putri tidak kebagian. Let’s think for a while…what’s the solution? Apa solusinya? Coba kita berpikir.”

The children immediately take on their thinking cues – putting the forefinger on the forehead - and are quiet for a while. After a while Panji speaks. Softly, he says, ‘kita kan harus berbagi’. The conversation switches language cause at this point, its not English language skills that matter, but processing the children’s creative thinking skills.

‘Menurut Panji, kita harus berbagi, bagaimana kita baginya, teman-teman?’

Panji : sesama teman kita harus berbagi

Rayya : diambil aja lagi

‘Bisa…jadi gambar yang sudah ditempel diambil lagi untuk teman yang belum dapat giliran

Rayhan: Kita ambil 3 aja

‘Maksud Rayhan kita ambil 3 terus dikasih ke temennya 3, terus yang lainnya gimana?

The children were quiet again…thinking some more.

Atau maksud Rayhan tadi 3 anak dapat 1 gambar? Kita coba ya…

Rayya, Putri, dan Abi, pick 1 animal – only 1. All three put out their hands to pick a picture.

wah, sepertinya kalau buat kelompok, kita harus diskusi dulu siapa yang pilih gambar, siapa yang menempelnya….kalau begitu kita buat saja kelompok berdua ya….

Gian : Aku sama Ekal

"Yang lain sudah buat kelompok berdua?…Nah sekarang diskusi dulu sama temannya siapa yang memilih, siapa yang menempel - who picks, and who pastes’"

"Ok boys and girls, let’s start with Nabil and Panji"…and the classification activity continues. Nabil cries and says he wants to paste some more although there are no more pictures.

"kalau gitu, seperti saran Zila, kita ambil lagi yang sudah ditempel…"

What are the children learning?

Definitely content of subject, as in, names of animals and their habitat,

a basic step to higher order thinking – classification,

some very important life skills as in being brave enough to express ideas, respecting others for their ideas, listening to others, ethics of working in a team, creative problem solving….

This is the kind of learning environment that children can gain so much from, and yet, very often, it has to get pushed away for more academic preparation because our education system demands so.

Back to addressing my friends’question - does this have any connection to my engineering degree…I am sure it does in many ways, some ways more obvious than others. We continue to work with passion, and trust that the things we do all fits together, and make our lives complete. SDC.