At last week's inter-garden exchange, the teachers were very curious to see our flag-raising ceremony. Because we raise the flag every day, but the process is very simple, accompanied by music, all the teachers and children sing the national anthem, and two small flag raisers will raise the national flag. We exchanged why we are such an arrangement, in fact, there is nothing special, but we have reflected and optimized some of the work arrangements and implementation in the kindergarten, and tried to remove those actions that we think are indeed superfluous, and only those things that are most fundamental and important for children are retained.
(Image from the Internet)
Taking flag-raising activities as an example, every kindergarten will have such a job, and many kindergartens will organize and implement it as a very important work. Most of the establishments schedule the flag-raising ceremony on Monday mornings. Since it is a ceremonial activity, there are naturally many content arrangements, such as speeches under the national flag, which are usually carried out by the head of the park or deputy director; there are also various commendations and even organizations for each class to take turns to carry out various display activities. Since there are many content and formal arrangements, it is natural to carry out various preparations and planning in advance, so the managers or project teams responsible for this work often need to spend some time to consider and plan preparations, such as speeches under the national flag, who is responsible for speaking? What is it about? Who will write the speech? The class that is the turn to show often needs to take the children to make various arrangements in advance in order to make a perfect appearance at the event site and so on. Because it has always been such a model, we seem to have become accustomed to such arrangements and activities, after all, it is also such a form in primary and secondary schools, even richer than the content of our kindergarten section, the content of speech is more level, and the content of the display is more exciting.
However, at the beginning of the opening of the park, we discussed and reflected on several questions: Do children like this flag-raising ceremony? Does such a flag-raising ceremony make sense for children? Does the speech under the national flag really understood and accepted by the children? Are the content and forms of those displays something that children need? Of course, we ourselves are also a very important part, so do we like this form and arrangement ourselves? In reflection, we feel that there are too many unnecessary actions, mostly adult wishful thinking, mostly adult self-righteousness. The solidified way of thinking and inertia lead us to think that kindergarten flag raising should be such a form, but this may not be the case.
To take an inappropriate analogy, I often think that today's early childhood education, many things we do are like taking a piece of fat meat and rubbing it on the side of a baby's mouth, whether it is suitable for his age, whether he can swallow it or not, and whether he has absorbed the nutrients in it, but at least we feel that his mouth is shiny, so we will feel that our education has played an effect and completed the process of education. At the same time, in everyone's concept, flag raising is more of a ritual activity, so it is basically organized every Monday to finish, and the curriculum of the kindergarten, the life of young children has not established much internal relationship, and will not consider whether it will touch the children's hearts in the end, and slowly become a form of routine.
Our flag-raising ceremony is very simple, there is no so-called national flag speech, there is no special arrangement for display and sharing, all the actions we feel superfluous are removed, and only the things that the children want to do most are retained, that is, flag raising. At the same time, we have put the flag raising on Mondays, but has become a normal event, which takes place every day. At the same time, the flag raising is no longer an honor for individual children to participate in our place, our goal is to let every child have a flag raiser experience during the kindergarten, and our principle is to give every child an equal opportunity to participate.
Flying the national flag is a very important job in kindergartens, and it is also a very meaningful experience for children. What is the most favorite thing for children to do when it comes to raising the flag? You must be able to pull the rope yourself and raise the national flag. Therefore, we are more from this need to consider how to do a good job of supporting children's needs. For example, about the selection of the flagpole, when the park was built, the construction unit installed a flagpole with a rocker, which looked very high-end and atmospheric, but this was not suitable for children to use, so we carried out a transformation, and asked the construction unit to weld a fixed pulley on the top to put on a rope to become a pull-rope flagpole, so that it was convenient for the children to carry out the flag-raising operation. In terms of organizational arrangements, we still retained the flag-raising ceremony on Monday, but only one more flag-raising ceremony than other times, and there was no other superfluous action, and from Tuesday to Friday, there was only flag-raising activities, nothing else. After each day's outdoor activities, children gather together to sing the national anthem in unison and watch the national flag slowly rise under the pull of the little flag raisers.
It seems that the whole activity seems to have become simple and unremarkable, but in fact, the educational value of flag raising is not only in the outdoor flag raising scene, there are many needs to be "kung fu outside the poem". For example, we implement the class rotation system, that is, each large shift is responsible for a month's flag-raising activities, so the turn of the class needs to discuss and plan with the children in advance on the flag-raising, and there will be a lot of discussion topics around the flag-raising, such as discussing with the children how to be a little flag-raiser, and in the process of discussion, the children will naturally establish a relationship with their own behavior and other aspects, and then germinate the awareness and behavior of self-management, and then so many children in the class. Only two people can raise the flag at a time, how to arrange it, whether to take turns or compete for posts, etc., the whole process will bring many experiences and gains to the children.
The "character enlightenment" in the evaluation guide is not accomplished by our preaching, but by letting the children experience and touching the heart in their own experience, so that every child has an equal opportunity, so that everything can be infinitely close to the children's inner needs. Therefore, today's education requires us to quietly observe and reflect on the status quo, dare to break the inertial thinking and stereotypes, dare to remove those unnecessary actions, return more time and energy to teachers and children, let them in a calm and calm life, accompany children to experience the process of each event, to find children's points of interest, and then through guidance, follow-up and support, give children more opportunities and possibilities for learning and development.