Elections in preschool
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As trying to operate a play-based school, every single activity kids enter triggers us to ask ourselves: “Is this play?” Cause in principle, school and play are different concepts. Free play is spontaneous and unconditional, while education has rules, procedures and time frames. Well, we try to solve this by giving children the authority to decide what to learn, when and how. And in 99% of the situations, what they do is bring real world into class and end up with some kind of fabulous life-derived play! A good story on that comes from May 2014, when kindergarten kids came in school one Monday talking about the forthcoming European Parliament elections. Parents were talking politics in home and children brought it in school. And they started asking their teacher about. The academic way would be teacher to explain elections for the class. So boring! Our teacher’s way was to ask children “ok, why do you believe people do elections?” A nice discussion emerged. The bottom line, as set by children: “people vote when cannot agree on something”. Well, right on these days our school kids could not agree on the name of our baby turtle. Toddlers were calling him one name, pre-K class another. And kindergarten kids were calling him “Spike”. That was a perfect issue of not having an agreement! So? By bearing tons of enthusiasm, kindergarten class decided to organize elections in school, to solve the disagreement on turtle’s name! First thing, they called in three of their moms, professional lawyers, to explain class how elections are really held. After learning the process,
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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they asked all school children to suggest a name for the turtle. And they asked for every class to vote, despite knowing that all rest preschool classes were more populated than kindergarten… Three candidate names were proposed: Nicolas by toddlers, Patrick by post-‐toddlers and pre-‐K together and Spike by kindergarten kids.
Kindergarten kids began the elections process. First, they designed the ballots and formed the voters’ list.
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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Then made up the ballot box,
and constructed the voters’ private room.
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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Finally, they wrote the elections’ announcement to be distributed in each and every class of our school. Children from different classes prepared posters to campaign for their favorite name and hanged them all over the school.
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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Voting took place in Kindergarten Room, the most serious way you can imagine. The three lawyers/moms were serving as secretaries, making sure elections run smoothly.
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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All classes, except babies, were entitled to vote. Children not yet knowing how to write, could vote by drawing the name they liked most. Only toddlers were allowed to ask for help when entering the private area to mark the ballot.
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr
Elections in preschool
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After all votes were collected and counted, “Spike” was the winning name! Kindergarten kids had probably persuaded the majority of the school for their choice. They had run the best campaign, and remained so proud on that, for days! So, how would someone call this project? Is this play? or is this education? Well, to us, it is both. Children freely decided to enter into a real lifederived activity. They learned first hand a lot on how actual democracy works, but at the same time they had tons of fun doing things they loved, their own way. Adults interfered of course, but only because chldren asked them to do so. And all external rules brought in by them, were modified by class to accomodate the elections’ bubble children had in mind. And after this one-week project was over, kids, parents and teachers kept talking about, for days. And turned it into a small milestone for the year. But, even after having said all that, the question still remains: «Is this play?» John C. Yiannoudis
preschool & kindergarten
www.dorothy-snot.gr