WLP

	Kira's Story
	When Kira, a quiet three-year-old, entered our classroom, she made a beeline for her hiding place. All that was visible were two little shoes poking out from under a cupboard door, a safe haven where she had learned to give herself a break from all of the sound and activity in the room. The youngest of six children whose mother had been hospitalized with a serious illness from the time she was two, Kira had discovered from an early age to hide from her very big feelings about her mother’s absence and about her own worries that her body, with its keen sensitivities to sound and touch, was ‘sick’ too. She began feeling safe talking to her teacher after she saw her set up the room so that all the children could create their own “private spaces” when needed, with hand made walkie-talkies to reach out to their neighbors. The underlying respect for each child’s needs and the flexibility within the room and planned activities allowed for Kira and others to feel secure and more in control of their feelings. It also led to a whole set of activities surrounding a large cardboard box, and all of the ‘prepositional’ concepts that could be linked to it – inside and outside (e.g. one’s body) next to, under, etc. Emergent curriculum!
	Eli's Story
	Eli, a very bright, hearing-impaired four year- old who spoke only in vowel sounds, had tantrums before every activity. Then his teacher, with the help of his mother, discovered that his refusal to attempt anything that wouldn’t turn out “perfectly” was related to his keen sensitivity to being a “mess and imperfect” compared to normal hearing children. From this understanding, sprang the “Oops” curriculum – planned activities whose process involved spontaneous, accidental actions: including painting with spills, drips and sprayed pigment, collage with dropped and torn materials, music-making with found and unusual items, planting with mystery seeds, and exposure to all the wonderful tales of discoveries made on the way to other things – penicillin, sticky notes, Christopher Columbus, Thomas Edison. We think that the confidence gained from encouragement with his peers to taking the risk of failure at an early age contributed to his later success at Harvard University.
	Walnut Lake Preschool 2075 Walnut Lake Road West Bloomfield, MI 48323 Phone: 248-339-6263 Email Walnut Lake Preschool