Do You Smell Something?

During my commute today, I was listening to the radio when one of the morning people mentioned (I don't know what lead up to it) that she loved the smell of new tires.  She admitted to being a tire junkie who would leave her children sitting in the shopping cart in the tire aisle of a big box store while she smelled the air.  This lead to a further discussion where another one of the morning people told about how he loved the smell of play dough.  I haven't played with it in years, and I will not use it in my classrooms when there are many better, less expensive alternatives, but I do remember that smell after 45 or so years.  A caller talked about loving the smell of the horse stables.  I do remember that smell from visiting my sister while she was feeding her horses, but I was usually jumping out of the way of what I was sure was certain death by huge horse to pay too much attention.

After listening to the conversation, I began to think of my favorite smell - that of my favorite present, a large box of crayons.  There were only 64 or so crayons in the box back then, but I still remember opening a new box, seeing all of the brand new crayons in neat rows, and smelling the crayon smell.  I have since learned that some of that smell is from the beef fat in the crayons, which should be off-putting to a vegetarian, but I still love the smell.

From there I went on to other smells from my past.  The smell of baking bread always reminds me of my mother's kitchen, where she made bread for the family.  When my husband is working on a project and is sawing or sanding wood, the smell takes me back to my home, where my father - a carpenter - had a wood shop in the basement.  Burning wood reminds me of Girl Scout camp, where we cooked over a fire during the day, and sang songs around the fire at night.  If I try, I can still smell the canvas of the tents where we slept.

 

So, you may ask, what does your love of the smell of crayons have to do with anything?  The point is that humans are very sensory beings.  Everyone has memories that can to evoked by a smell or a sound.  Young children, who are absorbing new things like a sponge absorbs water, are particularly interested in smells.  Too many programs for young children try to emphasize sensory items in the environment, but neglect the olfactory senses.  Does the program smell like disinfectant and bleach?  Does it smell like the diaper pail should have been emptied two hours ago?  Does it smell pleasant and welcoming or like the guinea pig's cage is long overdue for a change.  If the smell in not unpleasant, it is too often neutral and offers no stimulation.

 

There are many simple ways to help children experience the sense of smell.  While incense and candles are (of course) out of the question, there are many other ways to scent the air.  Children love to grind spices with a mortar and pestle.  Shop around - there are huge differences in the price of spices.  Do baking projects - cookies baking and bread rising have their own special spells.  Have the cook make real food - nothing is more welcoming that the smell of spaghetti sauce or soup simmering.  Flowers are a lovely addition to a room.  A pot of hyacinths in the spring will scent the whole room.  Herbs can be grown in pots on the windowsill.  Rubbing basil and other herbs is a special experience.  Smelly bottles can be made by soaking cotton balls in essential oils or extracts, putting the cotton in a bottle and hot gluing on the lid, and poking a few small holes in the sides.  The scented pine cones that are sold in the fall and winter will add a spicy smell to the room.

 

Adding a scent to a room is limited only by a teacher's imagination.  Just make sure that everything that is used is safe for children and, of course, that you talk about the smells if you should notice that a child is noticing them.  Also, remember that one child's delicious smell is another child's stinky smell, but they are both are correct.  Make some happy memories for your children, and they will remember you years later.

 

P.S. (Can you P.S. a blog?  I don't know, but since it is mine, I will).  After writing this post and finishing my day, I headed to Wegmans to get groceries.  I have been working 6:30 to 6:00 most of the week, with a 45 minute commute each way, so I was really dragging.  It was past 7:30 when I headed for the checkout.  At the end of one register, where there is usually a bin of some sort of merchandise, there was a bar of Yardley lavendar soap.  It has always been my favorite but it is very difficult to find now.  I held the cardboard box up to my nose and breathed in.  All at once I was visiting my New England relatives. Another breath and I was going to the Hopewell Jct. Pharmacy to buy a three pack in a pretty box as a gift for my mother.  Another breath and I realized that the cashier was looking at me funny, so I put the soap in my cart and checked out.  Tonight when I am home I will probably smell it again.

In my last posting I wrote about the problems that I see in today's electronic world.  I ranted about the way that people isolate themselves by being plugged into earbuds at all times, how people cannot walk through a grocery store without stopping to check their messages, about how children must have a video on at all times, and about how electronic toys are stealing children's imaginations.  I truly meant all of these things when I wrote them, and I still believe that they are true. 

But -oops! - several weeks ago we decided to change service providers for our phone, television, and internet in order to save money.  We were moving right on schedule, and the television service was installed with no problems, but the internet and phone did not come when they were expected.  I made a quick phone call to see when they were coming, only to discover that they were not coming.  I spoke reasonably, I begged, I pleaded, I even yelled (in a fairly calm manner), but to no avail.  Our paperwork had not been completed - much like talking to the children about a problem, no one had made the mistake - and we would not be hooked up for ten days.

My greatest concern was the telephone, since we have a number of family and friends who might want to contact us.  We do have cells, but they are the pay-as-you-go type, and can be expensive if we talk too much.  Still, I am reasonable, mature adult, so I should be able to handle this.  After all, for most of my life some of these items never even existed.

When one of my daughters was about thirteen, our telephone was out for a day.  She went through withdrawals, and when the repairman finally came I could have kissed him on the lips.  I have always laughed at this, or at least I did until I did ten days with no internet and very limited telephone.

The internet was really the worst, since I email my family, read blogs and articles, and google anything that catches my interest.  Believe it or not (and I had trouble believing it), Facebook was the worst.  I am used to checking frequently to see if my family, and especially my grandchildren, are doing anything new or noteworthy (or, in the case of my grandson, which body part he has hurt now).  I could check it quickly at work, but weekends were dry.  I couldn't see what the family or my friends were doing, and I couldn't voice my opinion on my friend's posts and pictures.  Even worse, I couldn't save the world by shooting bubbles at giant spiders or scheming witches.

I was happy to be reconnected and back to my internet.  I still think that we are too hooked into our electronics, but I am beginning to understand how people can become so hooked into them.  I have become accustomed to going online whenever I want to put a library book on hold, find a new recipe, follow the political news, or look for a new idea.  I will never go be one of those people who are hooked into the internet all day long, but I have found that I depend on it much more than I had realized.

Batteries Not Included? Good!

Young children today are growing up in a world that is radically different from the one in which I was raised.  Technology is growing is growing at an ever increasing pace, and things are becoming obsolete before our eyes.  I remember that my family got our first television on Thanksgiving day when I was four or five.  It was a black and white (as was every other tv) and we watched the Macy's parade.  Since I lived in Dutchess County, NY we were able to watch a total of seven channels - ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, and three independents from the city.  (In the hot summer, channels 2 (CBS)and 4 (NBC) ran into each other, so we didn't really have them)  Now children have any number of television sets in their house, each with flat screens, living color, VCRs, and 200 channels.  Our telephone was a black rotary phone, and we were on a party line with several other houses in the neighborhood.  Dinner was always cooked on the stove and typewriters were big clunky machines.  When we were teenagers we had the ultimate in new and cool - transistor radios!  When I was married, my Aunt Edie from Texas gave me the latest in kitchen tools - an electric frying pan.  To top it all off, when I was in college and married, I wrote long letters (by hand!) to my family and friends, walked to the post office to buy the stamps, and waited three or four days for the letter to arrive.

This new world can be confusing (another new version of windows?  I just learned how to save a file on the last one!), annoying (Why can't I have caps and punctuation on my text?  It is civilized!), and silly (Angry Birds?  On a telephone?).  Even so, I have found that email is much faster than snail mail if there is something that I want my family to know.  I love not having long distance fees when I talk to my daughters for hours.  Cable can sometimes be entertaining (as long as no one finds out that I love to watch Lizard Lick Towing).  I enjoy keeping up with friends on Facebook, but I am tired of people who post everytime that they brush their teeth.   Although I am an avid reader and love the feel of books and the time spent in the library, I am starting to develop Nook lust.

I have two major concerns with the boom in technology.  The first is that people are becoming more isolated from others as they stay plugged in to their electronics or sit and play on their computer.  There are so many wonderful sounds to hear outdoors, and so many good conversations are missed when ear buds are shoved deep into ears or phone owners are texting rather than listening or conversing.  There are so many wonderful things in this world which are being missed in favor of Angry Birds.  I realize how adictive these games can be ("I'll just shoot off one more set of balls to see if I can set the monkey free from the poachers and then I will ...."), but it is time to resist the draw of electronic.

My second concern is that electronics are taking the place of people and imagination in young children's lives.  Parents are concerned that reading scores among children are dropping in this country, so they buy their children electronic toys or videos to teach the alphabet or nursery rhymes.  The only trouble with this is that studies have shown that children do not learn from electronics, but from human interaction.  The best thing that a parent can do to help a child prepare to learn to read well uses totally free materials - a library and a lap.  Children learn language and reading readiness from people - people who read to them, sing to them, and talk to them about the world around them.  This is not the ravings of a cranky grandma; this is factual and backed by sicentific evidence.

When I began in child care (almost thiry years ago - oh, my!), the children played busily during the day.  The center was full of the sound of children making noises.  They were racing cars, playing puppy, shooting pretend guns (yes, I know that it is not politically correct, but that is a message for another day), cooking food, ringing telephones, roaring dinosaurs, being police sirens ... the list could go on and on.  Today, however, every toy makes a sound, if not several sounds so that the children have no need to do so.  The solution seems simple - remove the batteries.  For every battery that I have removed, a staff member or parent is waiting to replace it so that the "toy will work".  (I have discovered that a soak in nice soapy water or a ride through the dishwasher will usually render the electronics inoperable.  Since the toys need to be cleaned regularly, this is fairly easy to accomplish!).

Often staff members who are younger do not realize just how much these children have lost by having toys that make all of the noises for them.  A few weeks ago one of my younger staff members wanted batteries because one of the fire trucks no longer had a siren.  I refused the batteries and told the staff member that the child needed to learn to make the noises himself.  I did explain my rationale, and sent them back to play.  The staff member tried to encourage the child to be a siren, but he said that he could not.  The staff member then asked the child if he knew how a fire truck sounded.  The child replies, "Yes.  Put in the batteries and you will, too."  I rest my case.

1200 Words

As I was driving to work yesterday, the disc jockey was talking about a recent scientific study that was done by a psychologist (at least I think he said that it was a psychologist).  The study determined that the average person had 1200 words per minute going through his head.  I can believe this, since my head is often filled with songs, to-do lists, comments on things that are going on around me, and the Great American Novel that I am sure that I will write some day.  (I did spend some time wondering how he actually counted the words per minute - did each subject have to repeat everything that his brain was saying or could they tape them with some kind of CT scan?)  This would have just been another interesting bit of trivia if it weren't for one detail that I found very upsetting.  It turns out that out of those 1200 words, 1100 of them are negative.

Ninety two per cent of a person's thoughts each minute are negative?  I am a generally happy person, and although I occasionally have an unhappy or negative thought I cannot conceive of being so negative most of the time.  Is life so difficult?  Are so many things going wrong?  Is there no hope?

Unfortunately, I think that in many cases negativity is something that has been learned.  No one gives lessons in being negative, but it is something that is picked up as we grow.  When Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the score for "South Pacific", they included a song called "They've Got to be Taught."  The plot involved a Navy Ensign and a Navy Nurse who were romantically involved with South Pacific natives, but found that they could not act on that  attraction because of racial prejudices.  They sang about children learning to hate and fear others from their families.

Do we learn negative thoughts from others?  I cannot believe that children are born to be negative thinkers.  They are busy, inquisitive, emotional, friendly, frightened, hungry, loving, anxious...  Children can be many things, and each one has a different personality.  There are definately negative moments when a child is afraid, angry, mad, or frustrated, but there are many happy moments also.  How does a child learn to be negative?  Is it when he hears his adults speaking negatively about others?  Is it when he cannot measure up to his adult's expectations?  Is it when his adults are ignoring his accomplishments?  Is it when his adults are ignoring his questions or treating him like he is stupid?  Is it when he is so pampered that he cannot do anything for himself?  Is it when he is the target of jokes and comments?  I can still remember several times when I was young and an adult made fun of my weight or something that I had done.  These adults were relatives and friends of my parents, and I know that they were nice people.  Still, my only memories of them are the times that they made fun of me to get a laugh from other adults.  What a sad legacy!

The Bible tells us to "raise up a child in the way that he should go and he will follow it all of the days of his life".  Children are so precious, and so fragile.  Please, please make sure that the children in your life are treated positively so that they may have positive, productive lives.  As adults we have so much power to influence the children that we meet - make sure that you are a positive influence.

I'm In the City Now!

I am quickly approaching the fifth anniversary of employment at the center.  I have been very happy here, and enjoy the staff, the church members (we are located in a Lutheran church), and - most of all - the children in our care.  There have been some adjustments, however, now that I am working in the city.  (Note:  People who live here will tell you that this is not the city, that it is a suburb.  It does, however, have the name of the city as its address.  In addition, it has sidewalks, street lights, stop lights, lots of buildings, and big, smelly buses.  That is a city.)  I have never spent much time in a city, so my tenure here has been very instructive and I have learned a lot about life in the city.  The things that I have learned include:

1.  Dog owners in the city tend to carry baggies to deal with anything that their dog may produce during the walk.  This is a nice change from the country, where dog owners tend to just let their dog out the door.  I spend a good amount of time pooper-scooping my lawn, which wouldn't bother me so much if I actually owned a dog.

2.  The city has squirrels.  I know that they are a nuisance, and that people tend to dislike them, but I love to watch them run and play.  We have recently acquired a squirrel or two in Retsof but one at a time is not as entertaining as several.  We used to have lots of little red squirrels at our house, but that was because Alexander (one of our cats) brought them home from the woods across the street, and since Alexander is no longer with us the red squirrels are gone.

3.  I don't think that there are amusement parks in the city because every time that I get on the expressway someone is trying to ram my car.  Perhaps if they could play bumper cars they would leave mine alone.

4.  It take forever to get anyplace in the city.  Going five miles down the road can take fifteen minutes or more because of stop lights, bus stops, and kamikaze pedestrians.  At home we are only held up if Cuozzo's cows are in the road again.

5.  There are dozens of pizza parlors, fast food places, sub shops, and restaurants.  Does anyone in the city cook?

6.  This one is really scary - "People of Walmart" really do exist.  Most of them are very friendly and love to chat, but I am not sure that I want to stand too close to them.

7.  People get cranky when my attention wanders at long stop lights and I forget to watch for the green.  There are really more interesting things to look at than stop lights.

8.  I have learned that when the speed limit drops to 55 on the expressway, it is not a good idea to slow down to 55 if you value the rear end of your car.

 9.  There are elevators everywhere.  I think that there are only two or three in my county.               

10.  Often when I am leaving a store, the cashier or door guard will tell me to "Be blessed" or to "Have a blessed day".  What a happy thought!

Training a Director Really Needs

Today I was visiting an early childhood training organization's website to discover what workshops were available in the Rochester area and to register for any new ones.  As a director I am always looking for excellent training that would improve my teaching and my administrative skills.  Like many directors, I was multitasking; in this case I was mending a red teddy bear while I was reading.  The bear, which is the much loved possession of one of the three year old boys, often comes into the office to have his seams closed or his limbs reattached.

The workshop list contained trainings on many of the skills that child care directors need:  staff orientation, marketing, supervisory skills, fiscal skills, and child assessment.  The combination of trainings and red bear made me think about other imprtant trainings that child care directors could use.  The training catalog should include:

1.  Basic sewing - This course would give the director expertise in mending stuffed animals, dolls, and blankets.  A segment will cover clothing, since once staff members discover that the director can sew, they will bring in garments that need to be hemmed or to have buttons reattached.  (I have even had children bring me their clothes that needed to be mended.)

2.  Plumbing for Dummies - Learn how to replace a faucet, repair a leaking pipe, replace a trap which has developed a hole, and how to unclog a toilet that is full of tp, Legos, shoes, etc.  Plungers, snakes, and wrenches will be provided, but they will not necessarily be the correct size/strength.

3.  Beginning Carpentry - This course would give you the skills to replace hooks in cubbies, replace the backs on mailbox units, and wood glue the arms back on the rocking chair.  Included at no extra charge is information on assembling wood kitchen sets that come with one part missing and directions that were written by someone who has never seen the kitchen set plans or parts.

4.  Midwifery -  Provides the necessary skills to deal with birthing mothers, including hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, and (in one memorable incident) staff members. This course may be taken in combination with:

5.  Ceremonies - This course will help the director to recognize and handle all of the details that need to be considered when planning a pet's funeral.  Topics covered include picking out the correct size shoe box, stealing a receiving blanket from the baby room without being caught, the funeral procession to the playground (single file vs. double file),  and musical arrangements (how many songs should the children pick out?).  As a special bonus, there will be information on funerals that involve flushing fish.

6.  Treasure Hunting - Learn valuable information about removing stones, beads, Legos, etc. from noses and ears.

7.  Physics - Discover how to remove blocks, balls, and matchbox cars from objects that they could not possibly fit into.

More courses will be available on request.

Let's All Honk!

As a child care director, I attend leadership conferences.  This gives me a chance to network with other directors and exchange ideas as well as helping me to improve my directing skills.  (Like many directors, I became a director with two weeks notice and little administrative experience, so I learned by fumbling along)  A popular theme in administrative meetings right now is imitating geese and flying in a V.  The discussions cover how geese help each other, share the burden, and stay with the geese who are having trouble.  These are great ideas, but I think that we could improve by following other aspects of geese.

I know that many think of geese are a nuisance, but I love them.  I love watching the large V as they fly overhead on their way south or north.  My heart lifts when I hear them honking because I know that they are signaling a change in the seasons.  I love seeing them in the cornfields as they break their journey and look for corn that was missed in the harvest.  I love the special times that I spy snow geese near the Canadian geese.  My favorite time, however, is when the goslings hatch and start to venture out with their parents.

Recently, I was driving through a business park while taking a short cut on my way to pick up the center's weekly order at Sam's Club.  As I rounded a curve, I noticed that traffic was stopped in both lanes.  Was it an accident?  A breakdown?  A traffic stop?  No - it was a Canadian goose strutting across the road followed by eight fuzzy yellow goslings.  They were stepping across the street in a perfect line while about a dozen cars sat and waited for them to pass.  Even better, another goose was at the end of the line, marching sedately behind all of the others.  As the last gosling cleared the curb, he stopped in the middle of the lane, raised his head, and honked at all of the cars.  I chuckled about him all day long.

Why should we copy the geese?  They knew where their children were at all times, and kept them protected between the two adults.  I am not talking about turning everyone into the helicopter parents who never give their children freedom to grow or to make mistakes, but about those parents (and, unfortunately, caregivers) who never seem to know where their children are much of the time.  I cannot be the only one who has watched a little one wander around the mall while their parent is on their cell phone.  How does a parent leave a child in a Burger King when the family leaves?  How can a child care provider leave a child on the playground when everyone goes inside?  How can a bus driver leave a child on the bus for six hours while the bus sits in the garage?  The geese seem to do it better than many humans manage to do. 

Several days ago I was in Wegmans doing the week's grocery stopping.  A young child (4 or 5) was upset because his little brother had his toy and would not give it back.  The mother kept telling him to be quiet because his brother was using the toy.  The boy, who was becoming quite upset, went into the produce preperation area, which was empty for the evening.  The mother, whose child was now out of sight in an area that was filled with big knives for cutting up fruit and who knows what else, reacted by saying, "Good-bye, Bobby" and pushing the cart out of the produce area and into the grocery area.  Fortunately, the older brother, who was about seven, came back, brought the boy out of the preparation area, and followed the mother.  This is one child who would have benefited from being raised by a goose.