Rhyming Prompt: December 30
When I was young, I knew that kindness was king
And acting with empathy made my heart sing.
My sister, her passion, once she started thinking,
Is making sure there is clean water for drinking.
My mother and father are wild for school!
They lobby for funding that makes teachers drool.
When it comes to causes it’s hard to choose one
But learning your heart can be kind of fun.
Take some time to today to explore what engages you;
What cause could you focus on this next year through?
Download the prompts for December 29-31 here as a PDF or here as a Microsoft Word Document (you may have already printed these—I’m just re-posting them here for convenience).
An image of the December 30 prompt printed on cream cardstock with a green border. There is a gold wax impression of a frog in the corner, highlighted in silver. The card is nestled in a lit Christmas tree.
Other Materials:
Books and possibly a device to stream the Internet. Your child may want to do some research on various topics.
Suggested Pose:
This is what happens when the only male in the house lets me have free rein of the children’s education: we amass an obscene collection of bios of only female trailblazers. I suppose we’ll have to correct that at some point. In the meantime, Frantz is encouraging the kids to read through these great collections of short biographies of revolutionary and radical women and to start keeping a journal for Rebel Girls to find inspiration for their own activism.
Frantz is in the book nook again, sitting atop a mound of pillows, with the prompt and several biographies of female radicals and revolutionaries in front of him.
Activity:
Today is all about finding a cause that engages your child. Work with them to brainstorm some possible causes on which to focus their energies this year, and plan out some ways they might be able to support those causes.
Rationale:
Over the course of the last month, we’ve explored a variety of different causes somewhat superficially. Now, we’re giving your child an opportunity to choose a cause to explore, independently, in more depth. Educators call this Project-Based Learning (PBL), and it’s a popular alternative to teacher-centered classroom education. The idea behind PBL is that it allows students to center their own interests, hone critical thinking skills while working to solve real-world problems, and develop self-motivation and collaboration skills. For this project to be most effective you’ll want help your child focus their interests, but you’ll follow their lead. Importantly, you’ll encourage them share what they learn as they go, giving them lots of opportunities to tangibly engage with the problem. This school of pedagogy has roots that go all the way back to Aristotle and his insistence that “we learn by doing,” and it has been further informed by thinkers like Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget.
While PBL has been popular for a long time, recent meta-analyses confirm its efficacy. In a 2019 meta-analyses, which synthesized data from 30 peer-reviewed journal articles published from 1998 to 2017, representing 12,585 students from 189 schools in nine countries, the authors determined “that project-based learning has a medium to large positive effect on students' academic achievement compared with traditional instruction” (Chen & Yang, 2019, p. 71). Moreover, they ascertained that the positive impact is consistent across grade-levels and regardless of class size. I’ve published on how effective I’ve found PBL to be in the college-level environmental humanities classroom, but I also use it really successfully with my pre-schoolers. It is absolute magic. It’s my theory that using a PBL framework to help our kids explore a cause that interests them, supported by a strong empathy-building foundation, will help create curious, self-motivated, innovative activists. Let’s see if it works.
Book Recommendation:
Today is a great day to read a book about a young activist. You can choose your favorite, or you might look for recommendations here. We’ll be reading some selections from Rad Women Worldwide by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl, which is a household favorite. We read a page a day over the summer, but now feels like a great time to return to it!
The cover of Rad Women Worldwide by Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl.
References
Chen, C.-H. & Yang, Y.-C. (2019). Revisiting the effects of project-based learning on students’ academic achievement: A meta-analysis investigating moderators. Educational Research Review, 26, 71-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2018.11.001