How Providing Space Can Help Your Child Achieve the Infinite...and feel BIG!

To all my friends and followers:  I have found two wonderful blogs http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com  http://themethursday.blogspot.com
Each week a theme is posted and we are challenged to address it.  It is a lot of fun and I hope to be participating in it on a regular basis: accepting its intellectual challenge, while posting what I hope you will find interesting and provocative.  This week's theme:  Space and the infinite and Big.  I am attempting to combine the two.

Two images (both from books) come to my mind as I contemplate 'a sense of space':

• Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" - I think about it all the time and how important it is to have this space I call mine - a space to explore, accept, reject, manipulate, rest and create.
• There is a wonderful picture book "Five Minutes Peace" where all a mother elephant wants is ...five minutes peace!  Even when soaking in the bath...

In terms of "Big": Everyone needs to feel "big," special, and in control and our kids are no exception.  Whether they are competitive or not, they are placed in situations all the time where their work, their ideas, their physical prowess are compared to others.  We, as parents and educators need to help them feel "big".  One way is to respect their ideas, presentations, and quirks, and another is to foster a sense of self, which can be done by giving them 'space.' 

Kids need a sense of space at home and in school:

• A place that is safe;
• A place they can work and manipulate curriculum materials;
• A place they can let their minds wander to absorb something said or seen from the corner of their eyes;
• A place where they can explore "Who am I?" "How does what I know and how I feel fit in with this?" "How do I react to...?"   
• A place to heal (when needed), to absorb, to brainstorm, to plan...
• A sense of space is needed to navigate around the school building, the gym and locker rooms, the playground, the neighborhood.  Kids have to know where they should and should not be - for all sorts of safety and social reasons.
• A sense of space is needed when negotiating math concepts when playing with lego's blocks, train tracks, toys, books, and arranging clothing in drawers and closets.

How do can space and the infinite meet?

When a child has a sense and feels the security of space, he or she will be able to take more intellectual risks.  They will be able to more comfortably embrace "the infinite" world around them, "the infinite" possibilities in front of them.

What can you do?

• Help your child create his or her own space at home.  If they share a room with a sibling, work with them to design and create their space.  Maybe it means a tent (of sheets, chairs, or an their own camping tent); maybe it means a desk (with or without a screen).  As each kid is different their design will be different too.  
• Help your child create a sense of space in school.  This can be helping provide materials to decorate a desk or a locker, maybe even decorating a book bag, or book cover.
• Help your child learn to create a mental space into which they can retreat for brief moments when necessary to think, maybe to retreat to before impulsively reacting, maybe to retreat to when in need of energy or courage... 

How do you create your sense of space?  How do you help your kids create their space?  I hope you'll share and brainstorm with us.




Space and the power of infinite possibilities ... what a wonderful way to grow up learning about the world and exploring your place in it!