Long Time To Grow, Part 2: Four- and Five-Year-Olds in School

[Music] this film shows what four and 5y olds are like while they're learning in part one of a long time to grow showed what we could learn from observation of these two and three year-olds in Nursery School this part allows us to observe what four and five-year-old consider important and significant in their world this is a complex and exciting world we grown-ups can gain admission to it if we respect it if we will hear and see in the children's terms theirs is a world of intense action and ingenious problem solving of humor and drama and a world too of violent feelings of fear and anger this film is made up of scenes of 4 and 5-year-old spontaneous activities scenes arranged in terms of what seem to us to be significant basic patterns in the children's development here are the ideas about development which form the plan of this film now let's begin with the fours as they Master their familiar world of vigorous Group Play of sensory pleasure of Make Believe of assurance with materials and words the group is usually vigorous and active sometimes the group is briefly quiet as in this discussion about yesterday's trip to the railroad station hey teacher let me talk I like the Diesels best for's language skill plus the fact this group has had two years of Nursery School makes such short meetings possible of course the teacher knows the discussion will be a little disorderly that it cannot last too long and that it must be clearly related to the children's own experiences we're strong as giant both group play and a slim bang Vigor are characteristic of most four-year-olds and colorful speech is part of all of their activities I'm going to jump so hard the skin of the earth will crack enjoyment of jumping at four is not competitive it's enjoyment of vigor of movement of Independence I can jump by myself but don't go away grown-ups think of clay as creative material sometimes the children do too but at other times it's simply part of the general vigorous activity Group Play doesn't necessarily mean cooperation four-year-old hostility is brief but warm the four-year-old relishes hostile language you stinky rat sometimes this hostile language becomes a pleasure in itself even after the hostility is gone we're going to bury Billy in this Hall we're going to break him up like a pig that says oink oink he'll turn into melted butter and we'll chop Billy's head off and eat him we're going to kill Billy like a pig and we'll eat Billy up for breakfast and it'll be no more Billy fors enjoy the fun of strenuous use of their bodies the seasoned climbers take pleasure in being adventuresome how's your world down there these traits Delight in group Enterprises and vigorous activity are intertwined with other traits one of these is sensory pleasure for instance it feels good to rush through the air this is how you explore your world and learn how your own muscles and your own senses work it's delightful to whirl round and round and fascinating to stop and find the world still whirling around you every time I turn around here I am children enjoy and explore all the senses it sounds like thunder hearing hearing sounds as sounds sounds as rhythms sounds as patterned music seeing seeing color and shape and pattern tastes and smells are enjoyed to the hilk this too is part of testing and tasting the world it's an interesting and exciting part of learning to feel the sand or the mud to watch and study and experience rain and snow and puddles or to create the fragile Perfection of a bubble grown-ups can easily understand the four-year-old's Delight in the color and Splendor and delicacy of soap bubbles it may be harder for them to realize that to the children the gurgles and tastes and wetness and slipperiness are an equally Charming part of this p process such enjoyment shows the creative value of raw materials instead of elaborate toys with little scope for discovery I want another can and another can and another can and another can look at the little pictures in the bubbles you must be the baby and I'll be the mommy is your bed wet baby domestic play is still at 4 the most important part of Make Believe As the children become deeply involved in dramatic play it is apparent that they are playing out their concepts of what life is of what people do the children may enjoy trying out the role of mommy or reliving the role of Baby Let's Pretend We're not playing pretend of course family structures may be sprawling and Casual the mother may have several babies all about the same age sometimes like real families the children's family scenes are as idilic and peaceful as these sometimes quite turbulent even here there's some sibling rivalry for the carriage now baby you shut up and go to sleep rolls May easily be switched the mommy is now the baby make believe maybe warlike my machine gun's much more delicat than yours here by the way in other scenes the teacher is right there but just out of camera range bang bang you're dead now you must be alive again this is our house and this is the way we want it girls may be involved in big building projects in connection with dramatic play but usually for 4-year-old girls and even 5-year-old girls like these the setting is the structure for family life we have to fix it so it won't rain in let's play it's night time and the grownups stay off hey this can be the door boys may prefer these roles now you Engineers now you diggers you kids all stick with me we got to build a sewer you guys get the shovels and we'll make some men this project of mixed four and 5-year-old boys went on for weeks here Group Play does involve cooperation of a highly elaborated kind with division of labor and fitting together of everyone's activities and long sustained purpose when the rain comes this hole will fill up and we'll have a puddle just like the ocean this digging Place had to be moved once because the diggers went deep enough and far enough to undermine the sidewalk it's clear that these children have observed oberved adults with real accuracy they really know how to mix concrete the child may be the Workman or he may become the steam shovel itself four-year-old's intentions and the demands of the materials influence each other things take form but they may not hold the form too well you generally start with a plan but you quickly change to another because of the way the materials fall and the new ideas they suggest these fives are painting on the floor perhaps of necessity because all the easels are in use but at the same time they're learning to work under varied conditions increasing skill brings wider scope with 5-year-olds the effect of the child's initial purpose is stronger there's a clearer and more definite plan and 5-year-olds can better control the tools and materials to suit their PL this is going to be for my mommy birthday as skills increase ideas are freed by the age of four children can handle blocks and dolls and so on well enough to make imagination concrete or to express quite fluently their feelings about situations they have experienced but with blocks as in painting there are still limits to the children's skill and they adapt to the demands of the materials and sometimes organize their buildings around chance design but by five the children can better make the blocks suit their purposes like this boy at this age the child can let his friends in the children can do things together joint block building develops as children see that they can combine ideas and efforts and materials and as they learn that they can talk things over together 5-year-old structures are made for a purpose but the purpose rests on shifting group ideas let's not have this be a barn let's have it a reaload station note by the way the five skill and deafness both in handling the block and in the ability to move around without destroying the building the children are likely to have quarrels but they can settle their difficulties and the project can go on if space permits children of this age like to leave their block structures standing to return to another time for younger children this was not important of course the line between four and fiveyear olds is not a sharp one one may say fours do this and fives do that in order to emphasize patterns of growth but growth is not the same for all children to be accurate we should say that what most four-year-olds do and much of what the fives are doing is an elaboration of two and three-year-old activities while some fours along with most fives are entering the world of older children some four-year-olds at the workbench plan things others still merely allow them to take shape as they did when they were younger most four-year-olds no longer nail just for the sake of nailing many like this boy set out to make something specific the four-year-olds use brisk direct methods they want quick results and technique is secondary this doll bed gets made in a hurry in one shop session not as a major project to be returned to from day to day the brace and bit is a new tool for these four-year-old children and they need real tools not flimsy toys 5-year-olds take pleasure in clear-cut performance and workmanship for this boy Mas and and railing are the distinguishing parts of a boat I need lots of nails he has worked on this boat carefully with pride in skillful execution many 5-year-olds are ready to take on a good deal of responsibility for the care of materials and tools on special occasions like birthdays or getting ready for Christmas the teacher can help children as young as 4 years old to work together planning for an event a few days off in the future the traditional and often mechanical kindergarten activities cutting pasting stringing find their proper place when the four-year-olds have something special to work for mine is all over the tree at 5 planning ahead is no longer limited to special occasions this puppet costume is as a result of 5-year-old planning 5-year-old concentration and 5-year-old skill and the result too of the teachers help at the right time the teacher suggests improvising a stage and assembling an audience so that the children may put the puppets to use while their interest is still at its height for this audience elaborate plot and dialogue are unnecessary the puppets are there and they move and this is enough up to this point this film has been emphasizing the elaboration by four or 5year olds of activities that first interested them when they were two and three now the scene shifts to activities which begin around the age of five and go on through the middle years as fives enter a more formalized enlarging World their games have Simple Rules they seek facts and wonder about death and life they begin to use symbols letters and numbers take on meaning just doing anything is no longer enough now you have to see how well you can do it and above all you have to do it according to the arbitrary and mystifying but completely entrancing rules of games you have to fall as your throne you have to freeze the pose the best pose wins what do you win now it's your turn to throw the others London Bridge is a ritual so well preserved by children's strict adherence to rules that it has come down almost unchanged from medieval Europe in classroom activities too like music the children now welcome more form and direction for many of these 5-year-olds this is a fourth year at school in their music periods when they were younger they experimented freely with these instruments now they enjoy or crating and combining their efforts at other times of course they still have the free kinds of music and rhythms in this musical game the chalk circle is an organizing device to keep the group in formation and to provide a place to put the instruments down at the musical Cube [Music] and [Music] five still like to have stories read to them but in Winter flip and his mother were kept in a box stall and when she wanted to sleep flip could be an awful nuisance yum when the teacher reads a story The Children Find humor interesting words and answers to many of their questions the barn found it hard to get the extra hour of sleep that he likes with someone walking around overhead stories may also be the occasion for group discussion of things the children have been wondering about even a rooster who thought that he got up early didn't like to be wakened by someone buing into a water pil the teacher is alert to the queue to plan a trip to a farm I know I thought cows would milk two ways by hand and buy the machine Manny I think it would be nice if we took a trip to the to the farm and saw the cows I'll show you the machine all right Danny I think really to do you can get on the Mach and you drive oh that's fun one time we did that didn't it's awful fun you can go see the cow we'll make a plan of course this is not their first trip of this kind they already know something about farms and cows they see machine milking and hand milking just as they had planned it's like a water pistol good score schs have science for four and 5ye olds not as something special but as part of their regular program you remember what his name is anybody remember what his name is I think I told you people once well he's called a hamster now let's put this down and see what he does see you see how it's sort of swelled out now oh there you got one on the other side do you want to feel feel the uh can you feel the food in in [Music] feel how cat well this kind of animal we don't catch we raised them right in the laboratory they he was born in the laboratory you got him in the laboratory that is in the [Applause] [Music] like this teacher understands children and animals he knows how to control and regulate the children's behavior skillfully when it is necessary if you make too much noise you're have to frighten them don't pick them up that's right you can touch him why don't you just stroke him and see how he is I think he's pretty ttin do you remember the hamster's tail little tail of the ham hand see if you can find a tail on the Green P no a tail does he seem to have a tail he doesn't have any tail he doesn't have any tail at all does he why I don't know why he just doesn't what do he what does he eat well shall we see we have several things here we got some lettuce prin let's see if he need some lettuce he's not trying in one lesson to tell the children everything about the animals rather he is helping them to observe and to see things for themselves four-year-olds take in only a little bit at a time these observations provide the basis for the generalizations that will come when they are older maybe he isn't noticing the cat just just put it in front of him this is teaching based on knowing how children learn on respect for children is people un using what the children say and observe he does like car he does well he switch to the C yeah maybe he likes it better maybe he likes it better than mother this is teaching based on making the point only when the children are ready for it unusing reasonable vocabulary but not talking down oh I don't have any pie I'll give you a piece I'll give you a piece here let's break him up so everybody has a piece to feed him there you everybody got would you like a piece yeah okay and don't don't get him confused now let's just do it one at a time these 5-year-olds are old hands at picture Lotto this game involves recognition and differentiation the children must be observant and note details in order to match the pictures does anybody have oh I [Music] it's I have four of them the teacher is taking things slowly the children are all eager to fill in their cards but the process is more important to them than winning picture recognition is one of the experiences that makes for Readiness for reading from pictures we move to the simplest of symbols Silhouettes are the objects themselves but the teacher does not spoil a child's pleasure in organizing or the fun of a game by pointing out that she is teaching steps to reading or by insisting on every child's taking these steps at the same time the children can respond unselfconsciously to these ideas and they face no threat of failure most 5-year-olds are learning to recognize their names and love to see them written here with symbols of the day's jobs table setting passing the cookies at juice to the children recognize the boxes and they can see the objects the labels are just there in time the words become associated with with the objects for the children who are ready but the teachers are not pressing the children yet into situations where they have to depend on these labels by the end of the kindergarten Year many children are six and some now Delight in counting in numbers but only a small part of the children's time at 5 should go into the use of symbols of any sort the teacher is giving the children Association experiences above all she's following the lead of their Curiosities she's not teaching them something for which she will hold them to account these are Readiness experiences which contribute to the child's ability really to use symbols when he is older is it tomorrow yet why did they call the 31st day why don't they call it the 30 last day let's look back now at the years from 2 to 5 these 5-year-olds are about to enter the school years to leave Nursery School and kindergarten behind but this has not simply been a rehearsal for those years to come each year is important in itself only a short time ago these sure and competent 5-year-olds were 2-year-olds emerging from home into the new and for a while overwhelming bigness of Nursery School 2-year-olds differ from threes threes differ from fours fours differ from fives because at each age the child brings a new organization of himself and a new way of seeing the world each year is an elaboration and Mastery of what went before each year is preparation for the skills to come but each Year's experiences are fresh and valid and significant to the child in their own right through these years the children come to know more and more they can do more and more they come to mean more and more to each other exploration and learning go on as growth goes on but both growth and children are vulnerable in Nursery School the teacher teacher is unobtrusively there to protect and help the child to supervise to free and to limit him she is there to respond to the child's wonderings and to help each child find his way to his own ideas at his own pace never again in these lifetimes will a single year mark such giant strides in growth and learning and experience and this is not surprising at the age of four a single year is a quarter of a lifetime the 5-year-old is more than twice as old as he was when he started Nursery School for the adult these years go by rapidly but from the child's point of view it takes a long time to grow [Applause] [Music] the [Music]