Garden School Tattler

For the past week I've been working on some private thoughts about the senses. I had to do a talk for MOPs and enjoyed it very much. It was on child development. I thought a lot about how children develop, and I mixed the natural world and the spiritual world to come up with a talk that was nicely received. (I later expanded the talk into the first of a series of columns for WFIE that readers can find by zapping the link WFIE.)

But the senses are far too interesting to let lie undisturbed, and as I was constantly fishing around for connections, probably boring everyone to tears, I got a nice email from one of the moms who was concerned that her child didn't like spelling. "It's a matter of how you approach it," I round about said. "She's an auditory learner, so she needs to come at it from hearing rather than a visual media." When I actually had time to think about what I had said, I realized that most of us come to a learning formula from one or more of our senses. In other words, there is a lead sense, and the others follow along. I'm an auditory learner with a tactile sense.

I immediately made Edith the guinea pig, which she is very tolerant of doing, and then I was reminded of my husbands habits, and then when the water stayed clean, I jumped on the kids.

Yesterday, we made sight boxes, touch boxes, taste tests, and a short what do you remember about hearing. We did the smell thing, but it's unrefined and the kids backed off.

I was sure my grandson Jack who considers food an alien necessity, an evil forced upon him by unloving hands, would balk at the taste test. Right along beside him would come Madison, Miss Kelly's daughter who regards food in the same manner. On the other hand, I thought Damon who would eat anything, everything on and off the plate would sail through the taste test without a mummer. I thought this because Jack and Madison are picky and Damon is not.

In the final analysis, Jack and Madison sat down and primly tried every taste, sour (lemon), salty (salt), sweet (sugar), bitter (cocoa) and nothing (flour) for a contrast, and mastered both the directions and the tastes with nary a pause. They were able to identify the taste with the food without hesitation. Their tests were over in 45 seconds.

Damon, on the other hand, couldn't identify two. He would have eaten the test, but he couldn't tell me what the tastes were. It was remarkably interesting. I supposed they all tasted the same. Would it be true that eaters don't care what food tastes like, and non eaters are keenly aware of tastes? It's an interesting idea and changes what a lot of us think about non eaters.

The sight winner was Yuta. He identified three more objects by sight than any other child. Most of the children identified six objects out of twelve.

The touch test was interesting in that some of the children just couldn't put their hands into the box at all. There was nothing icky in the box, but they wouldn't touch what they couldn't see.

The children who rarely play with a toy, rarely pick up a crayon, a block, or find a puzzle interesting were the children who had most difficulties with the test.

So the question remains: how do you approach the world and why do you use those senses? Is it a matter of circumstance or preference that has formed you? I'm slightly hard of hearing and have a minor uncorrectable vision problem, does that influence me or is preference more influential? Edith is a natural artist, does that influence her?

Then of course there is the more sophisticated question, "How do you use the sense to approach the world?" Are you passive or aggressive, etc. etc.

We've saved the information if parents are interested in what their children did on the tests.

So many questions, so many drums, so many monkeys drumming on drums, dum-diddy-dum-diddy-dum-dum-dum.

Anyway, that was yesterday's activity.

Today it's Medieval dress up, pancake breakfast, and a special fine arts project.

We've gotten some interesting responses from the field trip questionnaire, but we need more.

If you have any comments about field trips, please let us know. You can even comment on this blog. We are open to suggestions. Two key things to remember: Summer is important to children and because the bus is costly no matter what you do, and we only have it on Mondays and Fridays and share it on Wednesdays, we need to carefully consider where we go and why.

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