We have just started our unit on Eric Carle and insects, and I wanted to explain to you how this unit is important to young children.
Let’s start with Eric Carle. He is the author of The Very Clumsy Click Beetle, The Very Lonely Firefly, The Very Busy Spider and The Grouchy Ladybug, to name a few. Many parents, and even more school-age children, know his books. Eric Carle’s books capture children’s attention. Maybe it’s the art. His illustrations are collages of beautifully mixed paper. We watched a video the other day where he demonstrates how he makes the paper which he uses for the collages. He freely mixes colors, stripes, dots, lines. He layers paint on top of paint. He smears the paint together with his hands. If you have ever watched children paint, this is the way they want to paint. Too often there is an adult who says don’t mix the colors or be careful. But that’s not how they want to paint. For children, paint is a process of discovery. “Oh, look at that beautiful green I made.” They want to load up their paper with as much paint as possible. Often they just keep going and you can watch a beautiful scene disappear as they add more and more paint. Eric Carle paints like they do, and they understand it. He also tells simple stories around themes of hope, hard work and care. There is so much in children’s lives that moves them to the next spot before they are finished with what they were doing. Carle slows his stories down and repeats the text. The children listening can count on what happens next. They like that predictability because often much of their world seems out of their control. Often he tells his stories through animals, mostly insects.
Insects are part of the world of the little, which children feel akin too, especially girls. Four, five and six years old is the age of miniature. How many loose parts do you have around your house? All those tiny pieces – that’s what girls at this age love. Have you ever taken a walk with your child and while you want to cover ground, they want to stop and examine the ground? By studying insects, we hope to give children the message that the small things of the world are important. Small living things have their own needs, and some of those needs are a lot like their needs. Living creatures need shelter, whether it’s a home for a child or a log for an insect. Living things need to be in their world, which may not be our world. When children learn from the natural world, they have reverence for it. Mary Oliver, the poet, says “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” and I, for one, want children devoted to the natural world.
Rachel Carson described beautifully, in The Sense of Wonder, what we hope children experience in this unit on insects and Eric Carle.
It is important for a child to have direct knowledge, from an early age, of lives other than human – some of the thousands upon thousands of species that, even as he does, inhabit this earth. He should be aware of them, not as creatures described in books, or as a word in a crossword puzzle, but animals living in his own world, searching for food, caring for their young, struggling to survive in the face of difficulties. ~Kristin
