This week was a week of coming together. It’s sweet to watch the Spark and Discovery heroes play together. The Discovery heroes are serving as mentors and guides (e.g. getting to and from the playground as buddies, serving as “Creek Leaders” and “Crossing Guards.”) Meanwhile, the Sparks are also finding their voices to talk with the older heroes and share what they need (e.g. this week’s Town Meeting about cleaning the free time area and a couple of Peace Table sessions to iron out misunderstandings).
This week, in one of the studio questions, Discovery heroes considered the question: what helps you grow most on your hero’s journey? traveling on your own? or being part of a community? Acton’s multi-age studios are inspired by Maria Montessori, and are a key part of forming a tight-knit learning community where children and guides support each other to become their best selves.
Letting the Children Lead – Studio Maintenance Example
Last year, at times it was a challenge to convince children to engage in studio maintenance each day. So, the guides created a system of X’s and checks to encourage participation, and we created binders with checklists of tasks to encourage diligence. It generally worked, but not always with enthusiasm from the heroes. This year, after having provided a model of studio maintenance system last year, we challenged the Discovery heroes to create their own from scratch with one parameter: each “job” must have at least one fun task (there are multiple tasks in a job).
It was a great lesson for the adults that sometimes it’s best for us to get out of the way and let the heroes lead. For instance, most adults would never have thought mopping and vacuuming are fun, but the heroes do. These items are now in their tasks lists and make studio maintenance fun for them. Similarly, we had only asked them to create a system for their studio. Yet, they went above and beyond, and saw a need to address other spaces. They made themselves responsible for also cleaning up the free time area and library everyday.
Talk with your Discovery hero about their week at Acton:
- What’s a Town Meeting? What did you talk about this week?
- What’s the peace table? Have you used it yet? How did it go?
- What’s a hero board?
- What’s been the most challenging part of core skills this week?
- Was it fun planting an herb garden this week? Where will you keep it? Can you bring some herbs home for us this winter? 🙂
