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What is music? Before, I thought that music was mysterious and unreachable, learning music was only for the music talents and in a systematic way.
Victor Wooten's talk "Music as A Language" deeply touched me. I couldn't help thinking that our children are born to be the musician, to be the dancer or the artist. They are intrinsic and competent. Our role is to find their talent and cultivate it. During their learning, it is no right or wrong in the process. Give children freedom when they were learning and exploring. We need to deeply understand children’s complex ways of knowing the world around them.

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Summary of Learning (session 2 Movement)

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Summary of Learning (session 2 Movement)

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I can never tell so much difference between hearing and listening until I watched Paulin Oliveros' TED talk. She said,
“The ear does not listen – the brain listens." "Listening is a lifetime practice that depends on accumulated experiences with sound.” We all know more about hearing than listening. we can hear use our ears. But we need to use our brain and our heart to listen to the music, listen to the environment.
For me, from now on, I would take more chances to listen deeply to the surrounding world and to our young children's voices.

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Different people have the different perspectives when they look their surrounding world. So different people have the different definitions of the drama. When our lecturer asked us to find the light in our space, everyone has their unique artwork. After learning this session, I started to slow down my paces when I was walking. I tried to observe the environment around me, using all of my senses, my eye, my ears, my nose, my fingers, my skin, my deep heart...... To my surprise I can find much much more sounds, sceneries, dramas on the very familiar places.

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Summary of Learning (session 4 Playing with Music)

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Summary of Learning (session 4 Playing with Music)

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Music can play an important role in our children's development. At early ages, music helps children express themselves and share their feelings. Even at an early age, they can sway, bounce, move their hands in response to music they hear. (Dr. Ibrahim H. Baltagi,  2020)
After learning this session, I began to realize that music is full of our living environment, if we connect with the place using the music language. As the educator, what we need to do better is to expose our children to the music environment to ignite all areas of development. Let them sing and dance in the music. They will learn to laugh, repeat words and create their songs, and move their bodies, appreciate their own dance.......

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Summary of Learning (session 5 playing with music, movement and drama)

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Summary of Learning (session 5 playing with music, movement and drama)

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As educator, we should know the vast amount of learning is available when children are connected to nature. and young children learn primarily through their senses. The natural world, with its constantly changing and stimulating elements, provides the ultimate sensory learning environment.
Creating environments that give our youngest learners the time, space, and opportunities to explore and investigate will provide meaningful learning experiences. We can create engaging and wonder-filled environments that promote learning through all eight of their senses-auditory, gustatory, visual, olfactory, tactile, vestibular, proprioception, and enteroception. (Gano & Krull, 2020, P1)

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Summary of Learning (session 7 playing with drama)

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Summary of Learning (session 7 playing with drama)

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Before, when talking about drama, I always thought it was about something far away to reach and always happened on the stage. After learning this session, I began to realize that drama is everywhere in our daily life, and it is always with us all the time. Dram actually is a way of expression through different kinds of performances.
For our young children, drama is in play, especially in pretend play. When children are given the space and time to play freely, their collaboration, creativity, imagination, inventiveness, problem-solving, coordination, physical strength is able to grow. Pretend play is a sacred part of childhood.
Outdoor play, a scarce opportunity for many children living in urban areas, can provide even more benefits for children’s development—physically, socially, and emotionally. With all that hangs in tenuous balance in our country, we as educators must be even more vigilant about every child’s human right to play in the great outdoors. (Wallin, 2019)

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we are playing with all language combined

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Summary of Learning (session 8 playing with all language combined)

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Summary of Learning (session 8 playing with all language combined)

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Within this session, I learned the power of silence. Silence sometimes is very important to get children's attention and to invite them to focus on the sounds and build their thoughts and understandings during listening. As I asked children to be silent and listen to the sound from nature, to my surprise, they told me lots of sounds they could hear in the music with their imagination.
I also learned that story telling is a powerful tool used by all cultures and is priceless in the Early Childhood Education and development. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr said in her "Dadirri" that it was their history to gather around the campfires and hear the sacred stories. When their children grow older, they themselves become the storytellers. This is the way the Aboriginal people "pass on to the young ones all they must know." (2015)

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We are discussing what is the spring breeze like.

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Reflection:

1 Sound/Music Activity: 　Listen to the sound of nature.
I put the speaker on the floor and invited children to sit in a circle, close their eyes, listen to the sound of nature carefully and tell me what they heard.
They listened to the music quietly and peacefully. Surely, they found lots of sounds of nature in the music, the bird calls, the running water, the sound of leaves and wind, they can even hear the footsteps, saying that were the baby with her mummy walking in the forest........
To my surprise, they are so patient when listening to the music and their imagination is beyond my expectation.
Next time I would invite them to the nature environment and listen to the real sound of nature.

2 Movement/Dance Activity: 　Yoga-The Tree in Spring
When I introduced my first activity to listen to the music, I asked children to sit on the bottom and cross their legs, close their eyes and keep quiet. Actually, this is the Yoga Pose: The　Lotus. When I told them that we had already learned the 1st Yoga pose, they were so excited and eager to learn the 2nd one. The 2nd pose is the Tree Pose and the 3rd one is the Tree sways in the wind. To my surprise again, they did all the yoga poses so well, much better than I expected. One boy even wanted to show me other yoga poses he knew.
For the next time, I can also move the yoga class into the nature surrounding. Let children do the Tree pose beside the real trees. That would be so meaningful for children. They can feel the power of the tree when doing the postures beside the trees.

3 Drama Activity:　Children's Poem--What is the Spring Breeze Like?
The poem is a conversation between a child named JIA JIA and her parents. They were talking about the colures of the Spring Breeze. When I tried to repeat the poem, most of the children can recite it. Some could even add some elements in the same formula. It was so amazing.
Next time, I would extend the poem to any other contents. Let children have more chances to create their own poem. That would be so great.

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Title:　Feeling the Breath of Spring

Ａ Short Summary of three experiences:

1 Sound/Music Activity: 　Listen to the sound of nature

2 Movement/Dance Activity: 　Yoga-The Tree in Spring

3 Drama Activity:　Children's Poem--What is the Spring Breeze Like?

Rationale:
These days, I have the chance to walk through a quiet path in the park of my hometown. It is surrounded by the bamboos and big tress. When I was walking on this path, I always slowed down my pace and I could feel the birds chirping on the branches, the spring breeze blowing on my cheeks. I enjoyed the serenity of that moment. And the early spring sunlight was shining through the dense bamboo grove, drawing various lines on the path, thin or thick, light or dark, straight or oblique...... swaying slightly in the spring breeze. Wright ever said, the Arts communicate in non-linguistic, expressive ways, culturally and through symbol.  (2003).  At that moment, I can feel the spring is coming to me, talking to me, cheerfully and gracefully. I can feel this artistic expression communicating with me in non-linguistic way.
In Yoga, this is the pose "swaying with the wind ": with both of the feet standing firmly on the earth, the body sway from side to side, like a tree, sway with the wind, gently but powerfully.
As an educator, I really wanted to share my feeling of the spring with children. I also wanted to invite these young children to be silent and quiet still to feel the spring also like me, and to express their feeling for this special season.
This is why I planned the three experiences for children to use their senses to feel the spring, use their body to express their feeling for spring and use their language to shape what is the spring breeze like.

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I really benefit a lot after engaging with this unit content.
For me, music, dance and drama were so mysterious and unreachable but now I come to realize that they are everywhere in our life and always be with us, when we have a pair of eyes that can find beauty.
Nowadays, when I walk on the country, I always try to slow down my speed, use all of my sense to feel the surrounding world, to find beauty of nature.
I always remembered what Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr said about Dadirri " it is inner, deep listening and quiet, still awareness." (2015) When I invited children listen to the sound of nature quietly, they were so peaceful and calmly, I think they also could hear the deep spring within them just like me.
I also have a different view about the atelier. The role of the atelier is a rich and well-appointed research environment. As the educator, we need to understand deeply "children's complex ways of knowing the world around them " to better craft and educational approach worthy of children. (Cooper, M 2012 P295)
After learning this unit, I know that when playing in the nature environment, children use their senses to explore their world and build nerve connections in the brain's pathways, which is crucial to brain development, and develop their all the learning and social skills. So, it is our responsibility to create environment to give our youngest learners the time, space, and opportunities to explore and investigate.
As for the arts, I have a better understanding of its aesthetic and diversity. As the definition in "A vision for the Arts in education: "They are culturally determined, personally constructed, and open to a multitude of interpretations and meanings." (Teaching the art, P11)
I also learned that make-believe play and self-regulation are interrelated. (Meyers, Berk, 2014, P3) Vygotsky regarded make-believe as powerfully influential in children's learning and, especially, in their advancing self-regulation. (1978)
Through this unit, I also learned to think about place in different ways. We need to learn the stories of the place, to think with the place and to explore a specific way of place-thought to reconciliate pedagogies.
I gain much more than I can write down now. I feel so differently when I am again walking on the grasslands, like Catherine Hamm described in Walking with Place: Storying Reconciliation Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education  "When I walk with the grasslands, I feel the warm sun on my face. I close my eyes to better focus on what is around me. I engage all my senses as I attempt to pay attention to 'who and what is this place with me.‘” （P26)

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Summary of Learning (session 6 Playing with Movement)

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Summary of Learning (session 6 Playing with Movement)

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I love music and I love sport. I specially love the sports with music, such as the aerobics, yoga, zumba and ballroom dancing, etc. Whenever the music started playing, I always move my body along with music. I can gain energy and excitement through dancing.
After learning this session: playing with movement, I started to realize that our young children love music keenly and that dance in early childhood learning is fun and rewarding. Young children are made to move and are natural wigglers. Dance provides a fun movement activity while developing concentration and attentiveness. Dance-play activities encourage young children to practice balance and motor skills while stretching the imagination. As dancers, children explore space and time in active experiences, sharing feelings and making decisions about intentional movement.
As the educator, we need to "Keep in mind that stillness in young children causes fatigue.  They do NEED to move." (Jan & Susan, 2018)

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Adena B. Meyers, Laura E. Berk, 2014 The SAGA Handbook of Play and Learning in Early Childhood SAGA Reference ISBN: 9781473907850

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-43367-0 — Teaching the Arts 2nd Edition Excerpt More Information
https://assets.cambridge.org/9781107433670_excerpt.pdf (cambridge.org)

Cooper, M 2012, The hundred languages of children: the Reggio Emilia experience in transformation, 3rd edn, ABC-CLIO, LLC, pp. 295–302.

Deans, Jan & Wright Susan (2018) Dance-Play and Drawing-Telling as Semiotic tools for Young Children's Learning Routledge

Diann Gano, Sharron Krull 2020 Natural Sensory Learning http://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/natural-sensory-learning

Hamm, C 2015, ‘Walking with place: Storying reconciliation pedagogies in early childhood education’, Canadian Children, vol. 40, no. 2, Canadian Association for Young Children, Calgary, pp. 56–66, viewed

Marisa Lark Wallin 2019 The importance of Pretend Play in Natural Settings Communityplaythings http://www.communityplaythings.com/resources/articles/the-importance-of-pretend-play-in-natural-settings

PAULINE OLIVEROS: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEARING AND LISTENING TED-ED https://youtu.be/_QHfOuRrJB8

Ungunmerr-Baumann, MR 2002, Dadirri: Inner deep listening and quiet still awareness, Emmaus Productions, pp. 1–4, http://www.dadirri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Dadirri-Inner-Deep-Listening-M-R-Ungunmerr-Bauman-Refl1.pdf.

Victor W 2016 Music As A Language TED-ED https://youtu.be/2zvjW9arAZ0

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"Come sit with me and wait for the squirrels! Let's make a song to call them." "First we need to get more acorns. They won't want to come to our house if we don't have dinner ready for them." "You're right. Let's fill the whole bag up, then we can cook and wait for them at the tree in our house."
These are the sounds of children at work and at play. Collaboration, creativity, imagination, inventiveness, problem-solving, coordination, physical strength-when children are given the space and time to freely play outdoors, truly the whole child is able to grow.

Even outside of the school setting, open, natural outdoor space is a treasured and limited commodity, especially in urban areas. Of course, there is a range of environments that can be referred to as "natural," from untamed forests and grasslands to nature preserves to designed and constructed public parks. Many children only have access to more structured outdoor areas, such as playgrounds, ball courts, and running tracks, which are less flexible spaces for imaginative play.

Studies have shown play is crucial for many areas of children's development-from physical strength to cognitive and linguistic growth. One 2008 study found that play contributes greatly to physical health-using more calories than comparable organized physical activities (Mackett & Paskins, 2008).

There is a growing amount of research showing that children who participate in complex, collaborative, pretend play are better able to regulate their emotions and implement creative problem-solving (Hoffman & Russ, 2012). High-level, complex pretend play can significantly facilitate children's capacities for perspective taking, which can facilitate abstract thought (Bergen, 2002). According to a study done in early 2016, the more complex and detailed a young child's pretend play is, the more advanced their cognitive processing needs to be-as their play stretches and grows, so do their brains (Li, Hestenes & Wang, 2016). The same goes for social skills-when preschool-aged children participate in pretend play that requires more complicated interactions with their peers (cooperation, collaboration, sharing, negotiating) they are practicing and strengthening their abilities to connect to other people in healthy, productive ways.

Setting the Stage for Play

Just as we deeply consider what materials we make available to our children in the classroom (open-ended, inclusive, differentiated), we ought to also be thoughtful about the space and supplies we provide for our students in their outdoor play and learning experiences. When looking at what children play with outside, think about the materials in natural settings: pine cones, sticks, leaves, trees, and rocks-as opposed to more fixed materials like slides, chin-up bars, and swings. These objects, like open-ended materials in the classroom (fabric scraps, blank paper, blocks) have more affordance. Affordance refers to the different functions each material can serve, or, afford (Fjørtoft, 2001).

For example, a stick can have a large affordance, and be used in pretend play as a wand, a ladle, or a cane. It can also be used in more game-based play as a baseball bat, or an obstacle in a course. When allowed more flexibility with materials in spaces with more affordance (i.e in natural outdoor spaces), children tend to engage in more complex pretend play. It is worth considering that the play that occurs in greener, more "natural" spaces can be different, and possibly more complex and developmentally beneficial for young children. When natural, outdoor play areas are not available to you and your students, consider bringing some open-ended, natural materials to the children in the space you do have (fabric scraps, rocks, seashells, ribbon, leaves, tote bags). You will be amazed by how different their play can become with these organic and/or undefined props.

According to the philosophy of Reggio Emilia, the learning environment is the "third teacher" in early childhood education, after the two classroom teachers (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998). This environment should include not only the indoor early childhood classroom, but also the outdoor environment. The environments where children play have an effect on them and the quality of their play.

A study of a Forest School, a school facilitated completely outdoors in England's Mersey Forest, found that it helped children connect with and learn not only about their natural environment, but also grow in "social skill development, confidence when interacting with the natural world, understanding, interest, motor skills, and leadership skills," (Ridger, Knowles & Sayers, 2012).

Having taught for many years at an urban preschool with very close access to nature (Prospect Park in Brooklyn), I was able to see firsthand the social-emotional, physical, and cognitive benefits of unstructured play in a natural setting for the children I worked with. When taken to the more open, natural setting in the park, the children's pretend play was dramatically more complex and sustained than when they were taken to the nearby playground. Children's conversations were richer, the groups of children playing together were larger, play scenarios were more sophisticated and were sustained over multiple days. The children collaborated, negotiated, and created complex scenarios and characters together.

In New York City, many early childhood centers rely on contained yards or nearby constructed playgrounds for outdoor physical activity, if they are provided the regular opportunity to be outdoors at all. Very few NY public school students have access to actual natural settings (i.e., uncontained spaces with trees, grass, or wildlife). In some schools, children may go days or weeks without spending any time outdoors at all, much less within natural elements. Disparate access to nature while in school is just another example of broader inequalities in our education system and our society at large. However, with the right resources, all children in urban areas can have opportunities to interact with nature (taking field trips to forest preserves, large parks, or similar sites)-investments that will shape the future of our city and the promise of its youngest citizens.

Pretend play is a sacred part of childhood. Furthermore, it has been proven to aid in children's development in many areas. Outdoor play, a scarce opportunity for many children living in urban areas, can provide even more benefits for children's development-physically, socially, and emotionally. With all that hangs in tenuous balance in our country, we as educators, caregivers, and parents must be even more vigilant about every child's human right to play in the great outdoors.

References

Bergen, D. (2002). "The role of pretend play in children's cognitive development." Early Childhood Research & Practice, 4(1). Retrieved: http://files.eric.ed.gov.ez-proxy.brooklyn.cuny.edu:2048/fulltext/ED464763.pdf

Edwards, C., Gandini, L., Forman, G. (1998). The hundred languages of children. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.

Fjørtoft, I. (2001). "The natural environment as a playground for children: The impact of outdoor play activities in pre-primary school children." Early Childhood Education Journal, 29(2) 111-117.

Hoffman, J., Russ, S. (2012). "Pretend play, creativity, and emotion regulation in children." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Art, 6(2) 175-184.

Li, J., Hestenes L.L., Wang, Y.C. (2016). "Links between preschool children's social skills and observed pretend play in outdoor childcare environments." Early Childhood Education Journal, 44, 61-68.

Mackett, R.L., Paskins, J. (2008). "Children's physical activity: The contribution of playing and walking." Children and Society, 22, 345-357.

Ridgers, N.D., Knowles, Z.R., Sayers, J. (2012). "Encouraging play in the natural environment: A child-focused case study of Forest School." Children's Geographies, 10 (1) 49-65.

Copyright © Exchange Press. Reprinted with permission from Exchange magazine. All rights reserved. Visit us at www.ChildCareExchange.com or call (800) 221-2864.

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The Importance of Pretend Play in Natural Settings

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The Importance of Pretend Play in Natural Settings