A Year of Soil and Song: How Twelve Preschoolers Became Small Stewards of the Earth
By Sandy Bailey and Erika Breton, Preschool Teachers, Hampshire Cooperative Nursery School and StoneLedge Stables
Every morning starts the same way. We stand in a circle and sing the same five lines: the earth is our mother, the sky is our father, the trees are our sisters, the rivers are our brothers and the animals are our spirit guides. Twelve children, ages three, four, and five, most mornings a little off-key, all of them meaning it.
This past year, we taught a “what we can do” curriculum. We kept a vermicomposting bin going all year. We fed our food scraps to the worms and watched them turn that “trash” into soil. We made bird feeders out of cast-away holiday wreaths, peanut butter, and birdseed, and hung them where the students could observe the visiting birds. We picked up trash on our walks, as a routine way of caring for the land that we became familiar with on our class hikes. These activities became expectations. They became habits. Just as the words of the song we sang became familiar through daily repetition, similarly did these behaviors.
We weren't always sure what our students took away with them from these activities. There are many other competing interests, needs, and social skills being learned simultaneously. So we found it very gratifying when we began to hear from our class families of examples of how some of these practices of caring for the earth were finding their way into their own homes. We heard from some families about how they now picked up litter on their walks. Some families began to involve their children in the process of sorting their household trash for recycling. For some families it meant just taking time in nature to appreciate the elements represented in our song. The sky, the trees, the rivers, and the animals who share it all with us. That’s when we began to allow ourselves to acknowledge that what we had been teaching our students had made them feel that they had agency for change in this world. The power inherent in their actions spoke to a population who often feel powerless as a result of their age and inexperience.
We asked the class once what we could do to help take care of the earth, and one of our students answered without missing a beat: Feeding the worms. Feeding the birds. Picking up trash. Three things, in order. She had absorbed our routines, and was eager to share her power.
We saw the same thing show up in different kids in different ways. We had another student who is prone to excitable energy. His body slowed and calmed when he explored the worm bin. He understood without being told that this particular interaction called for a different kind of hands. On the last day of the year, it was one of our shyer students who stepped up and led the whole class in our closing blessing, the same one we do every morning, except this time it was her voice carrying it. Her knowledge gave her the confidence to be a leader.
None of this is dramatic. Nobody's saving the planet on a Tuesday morning at a nursery school. But we think that's actually the point. If a kid learns at three that feeding worms and feeding birds and picking up litter are just things you do, that's not a lesson, that's a habit, and habits are what stick.
If you teach young children and you're wondering whether any of this is too small to matter, or too early to bother with, we'd say start with one thing. A song, a bin of worms, a walk where you pick up what you find. You don't need a big unit. You need something you're willing to do every day.
When we teach students, we hope that they acquire information about the world we share, so that they can become positive participants in that world. The sooner that they can believe themselves to be participants for change, the more power they will carry forward with them in a belief that they can improve the world in which we all live. No matter our age, our concern and care for this beautiful planet can manifest into positive action for change.
For more information, contact Sandy Bailey at Hampshire Cooperative Nursery School, StoneLedge Stables or the Equitable Climate Action Project at info@uvtpc.com or bit.ly/hopefulstories.
