Stars and teaching children
Children today live in a world full of uncertainty. Even we adults feel the effects of the many unexpected changes that seem to be piling up every day, and though we might not know what to do about them, it is important that we find ways to bring a sense of stability to the children who look to us for answers.
One morning I was teaching a music class for 20 kindergartners, and as part of the class I told a fairytale about a boy who took a thorn out of a horse’s hoof.
“What is a thorn?” one child asked.
“It’s like a splinter,” I said, “Only it grows on a plant or a vine.”
“I have thorns in my backyard,” one boy announced.
So do I,” said another.
“I don’t have a backyard,” said a girl.
“I don’t have one either,” said another.
Soon everyone was talking about whether or not they had a backyard. I changed the course of the story to include people who had backyards and people who didn’t, and the children calmed down, but I could feel there was till some interest in who had backyards and who did not. At the end of this class, we always sing a song: “Watch the Stars, see how they run.” It is a counting song, and in the lyrics they count stars. I still felt the impact of the discussion and I wanted to make sure that each child understood how special he or she was, so to start the song we imagined the sky full of millions of stars, each of them bright and shining, each of them lucky, all of them twinkling together over the earth, and over animals, children, over trees…I asked the children to raise their hands and name things that the stars shine on, and they came up with all kinds of wonderful creatures, and parents, and flowers, and the sea…
Their enthusiasm and eagerness to imagine the stars shining on everything was so sweet. Children are optimists and we need to help and encourage them. The current world situation can be very tough on all of us, but especially on the hearts and minds of the very young, and I am glad that we sang about stars and that their faces lit up as they named the many wonderful things on earth, including themselves, that the stars shine on.