Summertime: Letter of Re-fresh-ment

Dear Friends of Our Children, 

Summer: the Season for JOY!

Happy summer to all! Summer is such a wonderful season and opportunity to celebrate the oldest and best ways to be with each other and especially our kids. Most of the year, we and they are programmed and scheduled and tested and stressed by a society marked by Developmentally-Inappropriate Practices! So here is a chance to relax a little, laugh a lot, sing, skip, feel hoppy and light hearted and hopeful. 

Most of us don't have the time to just do things for their own sakes! Like sing a song, paint a picture, take a walk, jog around the neighborhood, picnic in a nearby park or watch the stars at night. With our children, we
have so many possible joyful moments together. 

I was just on WOSU FM (our local NPR station) talking about creative education and I pronounced (in my usual impartial (??) way that I would rather have any child I love take a walk around the block with a person open, spontaneous, flexible, curious, cheerful and warm than take a trip around the world with a strictly programmed, stiff, close minded, authoritarian person. The walk around the block with YOU, wondering and wandering, observing and noticing, humming and singing, talking and swinging, stopping to smell the flowers, sharing and enjoying could be the GREATEST treasured day of summer for that child- for our children. 

So- as the days spin by too fast, I hope we don't lose this special opportunity to be with our children in loving, joyful and, yes ~~ tis a gift to be simple, ways!~~  

Happy summer, dear family of early childhood educators! 

Peace and Love, Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld