My Heart Is A Guide That Shows Me The Right Way To Go

Love Is For The Birds

It has been all about LOVE at the Farmhouse these days. The children have recently been studying the birds we see on our daily adventures and begin carrying birdseed to our feeders on campus. They are so excited to share food with the birds that we take to the kitchen. It is the ideal laboratory for science, math, and language acquisition.

While cooking, the children are exposed to new vocabulary, ranging from unfamiliar ingredients to cooking methods and kitchen tools. They are able to practice symbol recognition and sequences as they follow directions. The children count as they stir, measure quantity, estimate, and recognize numbers. They practice scientific observation, investigation, and experimentation. They predict and compare outcomes and explore how their mixtures change by blending, freezing, or melting the ingredients.

We decide to cook something up for our bird friends and the children work to combine cornmeal, coconut oil, peanut butter, and seeds. When they finish measuring, mixing and spreading, the children freeze their work for the following day.

Tracks of Love

The next day, the children are able to see that their mixture has become a solid and we are able to cut it into squares and venture out to find the perfect spot to leave the yummy treats for our bird friends to find.

Along the way, the children spy "love tracks" in the snow left by our deer friends and wonder if the deer will like the treats as well. In the following days we spy many tracks and guess which animals may have left us some snowy love.

Valentine Love

The children are thrilled to exchange love notes and sweet surprises this week as well. Excitement is at an all-time high as they enjoy a little party, decorating bags for their goodies and helping each other deliver their messages of love to each friends' bag.

My Heart Feels Like Sunshine

We explore love through literacy, sharing many books on the theme and learning to recognize the word LOVE on many pages. We share the work of one of our favorites - the late great theorist and visionary, Bell Hooks - in her story, Homemade Love.

We read a book by another wonderful author, Corinna Luyken, called, My Heart, and the children converse in metaphors about the different ways their hearts can feel emotion.

“My heart feels like a slide when I am having fun.”

“Yeah! My heart feels like a slide when I am sledding down the hill in the snow.”

“My heart 'growed 'on Valentine’s Day.”

“My heart grows when I put food in my belly.”

“Me too!”

One of the children gets excited and says, “My heart grows when I see Lincoln because he is my friend.”

In response, his friend reaches over and hugs him and says, “Mine does too, Miles!”

"And my heart grows when I see you two,” says the child seated next to them. This causes a chain reaction and everyone at the table shares how much their heart grows when they see each other.

The first child points to each child and says, “I love you, and you, and you, and you, and I love Mrs. Hemingway, and Mrs. Peckham, and Mrs. Davis!”

“My heart was opened up wide when I saw Maddie at the playground.”

“And my heart opened up wide when I gave her a hug.”

“My heart feels open wide when I am with my family, too.”

“My heart opens up wide when I see Fester, my puppy.”

“My heart opens up wide when I see my doggy, Couscous.”

“My heart feels like a whisper when I see a cat.”

One child forms a heart with her hands and says, "Sometimes my heart is tiny but it grows and grows and grows when I see all my friends."

“My heart is opened up wide when I wake up to the world.”

“My heart opens up wide when I am with you.”

“I give my heart away. I gave it to Arjun.”

“My heart felt like a puddle when I was sad because it kind of felt like rain.”

“I had a broken heart when Gram Gram went into the warm room and closed the door, and I stayed out in the cold room. My heart felt better when my mommy picked me up.”

“My heart feels closed when I’m sleeping.”

“My heart feels closed when people make me feel sad.”

"Some person’s heart is a fence to keep people out because they are missing their mommy.”

“My heart is a window that I can see love with.”

“Me too!” “Me too!”

One of the children says thoughtfully,

“My heart is a guide that shows me the right way to go.”

“My heart feels like sunshine in the summer because I love how warm it is.”

“My heart will feel like sunshine when you can come to my house to play with me.”

“My heart feels like sunshine when my mom picks me up from school, and when I come back to the Farmhouse.”

Our hearts feel like sunshine when we come back to the Farmhouse, too. Here's to more sunshine, more love, more hearts opened up wide, and more hearts being used as a guide.