This is a farm covering an area of only 2,000 square meters, the farm on this piece of land has mountains, there are fields, in order to solve the problem of children's contact with nature education and agricultural development, the head of the kindergarten Ms. Amano combined agriculture and education, built a kindergarten on the farm, which is the "Valley of the Wind" in Tokyo, Japan.
18 years ago, Director Amano saw that the children lacked the ability to survive and create, and these children had serious dependence on life, in order to change this phenomenon of children, she founded this farm kindergarten.
Its name is "Valley of the Winds"
The Valley of the Wind Kindergarten is located around Tokyo, but it is surrounded by 2,000 square meters of mountains and fields.
Even Miyazaki himself said that this was more beautiful than the animation he wrote. Never done publicity, but it is difficult to find.
The children in this kindergarten began to work carpentry at the age of four, and the nails, hammers, and saws were all real guys used by adults.
Picking plums in the summer and digging sweet potatoes in the winter, children are not small flowers in the greenhouse, but good companions of nature.
Therefore, the children who graduate have super comprehensive ability and are the enrollment targets of major well-known primary schools.
A child once vowed to become a calligrapher when he grew up, and when he was in the sixth grade of elementary school, he won the first place in the national competition, becoming the youngest calligrapher in Japan.
Not only that, after the children are admitted to college, they will return to the kindergarten to volunteer, because this is not only the school, but also the children's second home.
01
The farm kindergarten's homework is to play
The "Valley of the Wind" is a mountain forest with dozens of trees, an agricultural experimental field for each class, fruit trees full of persimmons, apples, oranges, and pears, a variety of natural lawn squares where children can run freely, and some of them have beautiful names, "Hydrangea Square" and "Dandelion Square".
Animal friends in kindergarten
There was also a howling sheep and a rabbit grazing quietly in the kindergarten. Sheep are not meant to be kept for play, they can "carry" important teaching missions:
The three-year-old is responsible for feeding it every day, the four-year-old is responsible for collecting wool, and the five-year-old is responsible for making a simple loom out of wood and making small school bags and sweaters from the wool collected by younger siblings.
The children's self-made sweaters are warmer than those in the mall.
Rabbits are not brought here to watch, they are also good teachers. Its "open-air" room can move freely on the lawn, eating this side and eating that side, realizing the "nomadic" life of our Mongolian steppe peoples.
When the children have winter and summer vacations, they will arrange the duty schedule and take turns to take care of it every day: feeding, hoeing, bathing, just like family members, "petting" the little rabbits one by one.
Harvest happiness in planting
Each tree planted here has its own sacred "teaching mission".
There is a plum forest on the hillside, and when the plums are ripe, the teacher stands under the tree and shakes the trunk and shakes the plums down; children of four or five years old can climb up the tree and pick the plums at a high place, and the three-year-old children pick up plums under the tree with a small basket.
Although it is the late autumn when the fruit is ripe, he still wears short-sleeved shorts. Because "children exercise very much in kindergarten, they have to wear clothes suitable for sports." ”
The sweet potato fields of the children, the freshly harvested ground, are filled flat and ready for the next planting.
A huge cherry blossom tree is planted on the hillside, and the season of bloom perfumes the entire Valley of the Winds.
Many forest kindergartens in Japan have such small slopes, because the uphill slope can exercise children's foot strength, and the downhill slope allows children to experience the speed of the wind blowing in their ears. Sometimes children also hang upside down on trees, and seeing the world from a different perspective will make them particularly excited, and they can also perceive and control their sense of power very well.
In the beautiful and free environment of the forest kindergarten, the children's hearts are gradually opened. Treat people and things generously, quiet and natural, very polite.
02
Quarrel pedagogy
At the Valley of the Winds Kindergarten, children "don't learn Chinese or math, and the most important lesson for children is to play." Of course, only when the "young and young" will they start to learn Chinese, but two or three months of literacy more than other people's three years of learning to learn.
What is the reason for this? Let's learn from the "big animal making" project system for 4-year-olds and find out why! Large animal production refers to clay sculptures with a height of 50 to 60 cm.
Just looking at the pictures of animals is difficult to stimulate children's curiosity about animals, teachers will personally take children to the zoo to see elephants, zebras and other animals, only if they really see it can they like, can cultivate their curiosity about things, will seriously observe, will have enthusiasm to make. During the production process, the teacher will give the children real guys that adults use for carpentry, such as nails, hammers, saws, etc.
The teacher divides the children into groups of four, each of whom needs to complete an animal making. The teachers will deliberately put the skeletons, heads, limbs, and body planks of the large animals on the side of the classroom and let the children pick them up. At this time, the classroom will be a mess of twitter, eh... How come we have four heads here? How can an elephant have 7 legs? My giraffe has no head! The children had to sit down again and discuss, we want four people to complete an animal production together, so how many heads and legs does an animal have? Who's going to get the head, who's going to get the legs? It seems that at this time, the children will have a little understanding of what teamwork is all about!
The teacher will continue to release big moves, four people only give two hammers, in the case of insufficient tools, the children will start a new round of quarrels, and finally through consultation, reach a consensus.
In round after round of repeated "quarrels", the children finally complete the common goal, and at this time the children will be immersed in the joy of the artistic creation of a large animal, which is the power of unity, humility, cooperation and tolerance!
Throughout the experience, children not only learn empathy, but also deepen their understanding of partners, so that social cultivation is the fundamental purpose of education.
Large animal production is just a microcosm of the daily children's play in the Valley of the Wind, three or four-year-old children can learn more knowledge through such day-to-day, year after year, and finally, the children will send the finished work to the nearby nursing home, to the elderly who need warmth and companionship, so that the children's works and behaviors have been sublimated.
The director of the Valley of the Winds, Amano, once mentioned that the valley of the wind has a unique goal for children - "to be helpful to others, to serve and contribute to society."
Director Amano said that when children grow up and enter society, what abilities should they have? It is precisely in order for children to truly have the ability to face the future, they are doing everything in the present.
For 18 years, Mr. Amano has tracked kindergarten-graduating children into college to test whether the educational goals and meanings set have been achieved.
"Education is 'testing the market after effect', but you can't stop doing it because of this.