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SCUOLA DELL’INFANZIA PARITARIA L’ALBERO AZZURRO CORSO MAZZINI 531 66054 VASTO (CHIETI) TEL: 0873367462 E‐MAIL: info@alberoazzurrovasto.it
PHILOSOPHY BOOK
BEYOND THE LINES From 6 to 11 years Ester Valentina Delle Donne – Maria Neri – Zaklina Bajramovska ‐ Claudia Gattella ERASMUS PLUS, AZIONE KA2, SUBAZIONE KA219 CODICE DI PROGETTO: 2017‐1‐ES01‐KA219‐037914_3
INTRODUCION To allow children to reflect on what they read and fall in love with the
contents, a common reading path has been set up with the partner countries of the Erasmus Plus project: Spain, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Italy. By mutual agreement we have planned the choice of the Little Prince. In Italy at the kindergarten "L’Albero Azzurro" we started with a pre‐ phase with the presentation of the project, so that the children knew the motivation that led us to work on it. The reading of the Little Prince book took place in various ways: reading aloud, animated reading, group reading by the children.
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THE LITTLE PRINCE RELATION Observation on the students approach to tale’s topics During the reading and deepening of the tale “The Little Prince” written by Antoine de Saint‐Euxperì, students increased their competences and developed new points of view about the meaning of fundamental feelings as love and friendship. The approach was understand the difference between world materiality (empiric sense of the term) and the feeling not so physically existent but essential in the same way. However, students have immediately linked the connection between the material world and the internal phenomenon of the human soul, as love and friendship. Even if it was clear that feelings deepness is difficultly describable because of his way of being, it was underlined the link of deeper sensations of human soul and real world: understanding love is not able to be drawn was just the first step, then we have reached the conclusion of something that cannot be seen shows all of his meaning in a rea image, such as mommy face, which is the symbol of a no‐sense emotion, born in the deepest part of a child’s heart. Friendship has to be considered differently. In comparison with primordial and innate love, friendship valor was more difficult to understand, because is something not so discount. Usually, mostly younger students, who are less used to normal life things, have find challenging understanding differences between 2
them. Love is a primordial stimulus which create an immediate bond, for instance between a mum and her child, instead friendship is identified later in childhood or even during adolescence.
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PEDAGOGIC MOTIVATION Read means learn to understand, to answer to your own questions, to link arguments and different concepts, to exceed the comprehension difficulties. Read, more deeply, means collect and then choose: it means to take on a fundamental instrument to move in society. How can you stimulate the reading pleasure and habit in children? Despite schooling and improving the level of education raise, the popularity of books and love for reading in Italian citizens have not increased much. It’s wrongly thought that the reading crisis depends on television, but, if programs did not only follow the taste of worst audience, they would be a positive stimulus of reading, in tender age, too. Reading gets better the thought ability and the language production. It orients the individual in the world and in the reality. In order to stimulate the child on reading it needs: to full the book of affective meaning; to make it belong to the quotidian sphere; to associate learning to playing; to choose the suitable books on the age; to respect taste and interests. 4
The first goal is to have a library in each class, to make the books become reachable and used in different purpose: maybe to build a grounded path, or a little house... they will begin to get closer to reading by using books with several images (pets, normal use objects, etc.) from the age of 1 to 3, and pass later to nursery rhymes and fairy tales. When the child will develop his language and comprehension ability, mentally and emotionally, he will be able to read books for kids and naturally childhood classics. In the end we would like to remember the “Nine ways to teach children to hate reading” written by the amazing writer Gianni Rodari: •
Present books as alternative to tv.
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Present books as alternative to comics.
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Tell children that once upon a time children red more.
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Retain children have too many distractions.
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Blame on children they don’t love reading.
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Transform books in torture tools.
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Refuse to read for the child.
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Not to offer a wide choose.
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Order to read.
The raise of children reading interest, thanks to various project realized in our school: fairy tales project, reading laboratory, theatre laboratory and more, gets to an important goal: the book is our best friend where we can find new ways to interpret, observe, get in touch to our world. The loud voice reading by teachers and parents made the children get closer to them creating beautiful moments to remember in their special shared experience. Besides the interference of mass media, we are always trying to find a way to reach our told goals.
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Our considerations on reading with children start from some actions that if done together can lead to the conquest of the pleasure of reading:
Some of a general type There’s everything, in a book. Just open it. Children know that when they will read a book they will be absorbed in a different dimensions created by setting, characters, plot and time that make them reflect on our world in a metacognition way. This is the most important thing to love of reading. Every single new reader will know that reading will be a beautiful adventure in conquering a new world, made up by that one book. The path will be founded on discover how to become aware users of the own choice in reading. Every book has to be considered as a “treasure”. The books will become the jewels of our way to conquer every new world hided in them, and make them as the start and arrival. The infinitive story of the human history known through the book we will choose. If the project won’t be aseptic and stuffy, the children will become users of the giant reading world.
What can the school do?
School has to educate to love books and make the children understand that it won’t never cheat on them.
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You can always come back to read a book. That page will be waiting for you, always. It’s there for you. School has to create a thread between families and society (school, public services, and so on).
In this way will born nets in which every member will have a specific role and will be useful, extending the book in every possible ways of expression: pictorial‐ graphic, musical, linguistic, logical, mathematics, scientific). Kids have to be allowed to choose titles and publishing house, to sharpen their tastes and to get comfortable with their responsibilities: if they will like it, it will be their fault. If they won’t, it’s also their fault. Individualism has not to surprise us. It’s normal to have different and various interests and to let them come out in order to express their selves. Globalization has to be fought, and we have to teach kids to learn to feel their tastes.
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With this prerequisites, it enters in every day didactic starting from a shared project, a simple learning unit made up by the following target. General targets: maturity of the identity – conquer autonomy – develop competences – education to European citizenship
Specific targets: national indication of nursery school curricula
Own self and the other •
Strengthening autonomy and self‐esteem.
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Working in groups.
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Knowing the territory, in particular the library and its way of functioning.
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Respecting preset rules.
Body, movement and health
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Moving in different kind of spaces, not only scholastic ones.
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Taking care of the habitat and common objects in order to keep everything tidy.
Discourses and words Listening and comprehend: narrative novels, fairy tales, tales, stories, poetics texts. Talking, describing, telling in words their own lived experiences or listened stories. 8
Identifying the differences between the ability of listening and talking, of reading and writing, distinguishing the sign from the world. Images, sounds and colors •
Reading images.
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Drawing, describing individually or in groups.
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Reproducing experiences, through various experimented languages.
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Singing.
Knowledge of the world •
Raising new interests.
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Observing the world around them.
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Locating fact and experiences in time and setting.
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Setting objects and people in spaces.
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Elaborating personal projects.
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Using investigative scheme of “5 WH”.
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Commenting, individuating links, making comparison.
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Remembering and rebuilding experiences through the help of different types of documentation.
What can the families do? Parents represent the first step of education. They must be an example for their kids, in order to teach them the pleasure of reading. If they will read in front of them, they will understand that’s something good to do. They can create reading rites, daily or exceptionally.
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Parents can create a space whole dedicated to reading: in this way they will permit the exploration of the book for and with the children, through the empathic reading the family can collect and work out again their emotions together. This is a great investment, because, how Galimberti, the Italian philosopher, says “the young people of today is not able to denominate their emotional status, they don’t know how they feel, they just realize they don’t feel very well.”
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INSIDE THE BOOK: the story and the philosophical messages of the Little Prince We have read and worked with every chapter of the book and the reflections we have made have led us to some deductions. Starting from the text "The Little Prince" we have developed a work articulated in various phases that have led us to reflect on some issues; in particular we have placed our attention on the theme "I take care of ..." and "the friendship for you what does it represent?" We have heard and read the story of the Little Prince. His was a long journey, full of interesting encounters. Many are the characters that the Little Prince meets and many places unknown to him. We want to introduce you to the characters through our drawings.
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The king personifies the attitude of pride which, in the long run, leads to isolation from others. Thus, even if we believe ourselves strong or powerful, our qualities are useless if we do not relate to others and we do not make our capacities for the common good available to others. The vain man is anything but humble and modest. But even these, in the end, live in the most complete and empty solitude and need someone to tell him continuously how beautiful it is. The bizarre figure of the vain helps us to reflect on the trivialization of interpersonal relationships, which sometimes become obvious and are limited only to appearances
The drunkard arouses great melancholy, is completely alone, consumed by his own weakness, unable to face his mistakes if not wrong yet.
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The businessman with his obsession with counting the stars has the illusion that he can own them all and deposit the corresponding value of the bank. This makes us understand how wealth can never be an end in itself, but must be oriented to a higher purpose. The lamplighter spends his time turning on and off the streetlights methodically, he is used to mechanically carry out this activity, even if absurd, and does not have the strength to change his attitude, as he finds it easier to follow the rule, without asking himself if this really makes sense. It is not enough, therefore, to be diligent, but we must have the courage, every so often, to stop and reflect on the sense of our frenetic action.
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The geographer knows the geography of all the other planets, but he knows nothing of his own, as he has never explored it. In fact, he is a scholar, while the task of discovering the seas, rivers, cities, mountains and deserts touches the explorers. He is concerned with documenting what has been reported to him by others, but refuses to make an effort of direct experience and knowledge, rendering his activity sterile.
In each of these characters we can also find something positive. Thus, for example, the king realizes he cannot ask the subjects without being generous, the vain is kind, the drunkard has not lost the sense of shame for his weakness, the businessman is still able to be amazed, even if only for a moment, in front of the naturalness and simplicity of the Little Prince, the lamp�lampman impersonates the diligence and, finally, the geographer's patience. Once again, therefore, the Little Prince makes us reflect on the fact that the people around us, even if apparently they seem negative, still hide a positive quality to be valued. Page after page the story of the Little Prince teaches us to live, love, to understand the world around us: you live well only if you make the feelings prevail. Every man is responsible for the fate of others, and all together we are responsible for our planet.
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the characters we loved the most One of the characters we have chosen is the fox who taught us the value of friendship… The fox taught us that occur: being there means that we must be available even if we are far away to trust and trust: the prince tames the fox and only that fox will be important to him. a friend is someone unique and unrepeatable for us, a person who makes us feel good and we want to make us feel good. someone we care about
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to trust
occur
friendship
trust
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remember
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Another important reflection on friendship was the one concerning the gift and the giving of oneself. In this regard we asked: What do I do with a friend to make him understand that I care about him?
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Instead, when isn’t a friend able to make you feel so good?
WE ARE MAD ON EACH OTHER Then, we’ve reflected on our considerations and we understood that each of our actions corresponds to an emotion that can be positive or negative ... that can make someone happy or sad.
True friendship is full of patience and mistakes can also be forgiven
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But we are happier if we take care of the other
It is through the figure of the fox that the Little Prince is able to understand the feelings he feels for his rose: "I think he has tamed me," says the protagonist of the story. He understands that by taming the fox, he makes something out of his body, his factuality and corporeity, become so "unique in the world", because to tame, for the author, means to create intersubjective bonds, to come out of the Self to be something else. In fact, the fox will be the only character who will cry for the Prince's farewell. The words Saint‐Exupéry tell us that only our spirit perceives the singularity of an individual, of a thing, is the essential invisible to the eye; people, things are enclosed in appearances and only taming them will reveal and appreciate their singularity, so that even the nothingness that is in the desert can be beautiful. "From you the men", explains the Prince, "the men cultivate 500 thousand roses in the same garden, and they do not find what they seek" "Men do not have more time to know anything. They buy from the merchants the things already done. But since there are no merchants of friends, men no longer have friends. If you want a friend to tame me. " The prince will still meet a controller
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who can not explain to the Prince why human actions, as well as a cynical salesman of pills that take away the thirst "to recover time." Hence the tragic conclusion and the conscious death of the Prince who lets himself die from the bite of a snake to go back to his rose, "You know ... my flower ... I'm responsible for it. And it is so weak and so naive. He has four thorns to protect himself from the world. "He leaves his pilot his smile, his message, and a sea of stars to watch, also offering the comforting image that up there, somewhere, the little prince will take care of his rose being the essential invisible to the eyes. Do the roses in the garden rose have the same aspects as the Little Prince one?
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An other aspect that gave us something on think about is the loneliness the Little Prince has felt during his voyage, without being afraid of anything. We associated it to the metaphore of a voyage with ourself and our own feelings. We imagined alone on an isle or a planet, for one whole week. The first thing we’ve done was to feel free: of doing whatever we wanted (playing play station, eating chocolate bars, running without obstacles). We’ve confused our needs with our wishes. If ypu will spend a whole week on a planet, by yourself, what would you do? Which are the negative aspects? Which the positives?
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We reached the conclusion that often we link our happiness to concrete objects or withpout sense actions. We give importance to things that are not in relation with our deep soul. Joy has to be something spontaneous, born in our heart: to make it possible we have to feel capable of feeling end expressing emotions. Feelings are related to time: it needs to have time of being bored and thinking about what we are. Maybe it will be useful walking, riding a bicycle, seeing a sunset, or just doing nothing. The exercises and the game we played to recognize our feelings are useful to overreach the boring moments, to live in serenity our bonds with families and friends. Do the emotions the Little Prince feel be drawn? Why? Are there things which can be see/feel not with heart but with eyes?
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BEYOND THE LINES The most important message of the Little Prince: learning asking questions Children usually make philosophic questions, drove by a inquisitor soul typical of childhood and curiosity of discovering their reality. Through a path of philosophical input, or for better saying ludosophic, it can be taught the question method as the research method, like natural curiosity expression. The Little Prince background helped us so much. Following which way can the philosophic potentialities be understood by children? They have not to talk alone, but dialogue with others, and elaborate hypothesis together. In the whole tale he has make all his questions, without forgetting anyone. Questions are mind gym, through them you can become superheroes. We, as children, love so much making questions, but usually we stop on “Why”. Together with our teachers we tried to answer them. Where we weren’t able, we made researches, to understand deeply. Every question take us on new knowledge. Being able to make question is learning to be curious. 59
Why?
What does it mean?
What?
When?
Where?
And then?
Who?
How?
And if he would…?
May I make you a question?
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