by Arno Zucknick

I came to the IHVO Certificate Course as a career changer. Though I was not unfamiliar with the topic of giftedness, I was more aware of it with regard to youths and adults. In order to take part in the course I was required to spend one day per week (for 2 years) at a kindergarten for practical work experience. I did so along with my usual work load as a freelance teacher in adult education, and I worked in two different kindergartens consecutively. This is how I familiarised myself with the age group 3 – 6 years while learning how kindergarten work “goes”.

I was well accepted into both kindergartens. There was no monetary compensation for my work but a few of the colleagues in the team showed interest in the topic and supported my projects.

Jerome speaks well

Jerome (3;8) caught my attention the very first day. He was the only one who answered the question about his name and age in a complete and correct sentence (“My name is Jerome and I’m 3 years old, too.”), while other 3- or 4-year-olds would say their name and then show their age with their fingers.

His verbal skill sticks out. Without difficulty he casts his thoughts into compound sentences with main and subordinate clause. All the while his speech is fluent, not like that of many others in the group who, as very small children often do, need to take a breath in between parts of a sentence.

After a few games and talks with Jerome and a talk with his parents I started spending half an hour with Jerome alone on some of the days I was at the kindergarten. The rest of the time I was dealing with the group as a whole.
The topic presently on his mind is writing, so that is what we are doing together.

My pedagogic approach to working with Jerome

The fact that we are working together is not a result of Jerome’s wish to do so, but it was my initiative. Thus I find it important to remind myself not to hold up any didactic expectations. My work is result-oriented only in the way that I intend to offer an activity that is fun for Jerome and that addresses his present interests. Furthermore I aim to be as attentive as possible and observe him as well as myself closely. He can quit any time and has no obligations whatsoever. It will always be up to him whether we do something on a specific day and spend another 30 minutes inside, while the other children are already outside playing.

I also want to avoid any kind of teacher-student scenario. We will be dealing with the topic playfully and the focus is on the shared activity, where the older and more experienced part only stands by the younger one’s side providing some hints and suggestions here and there while letting the younger one lead.

Our sessions did not take place on each and every day I spent at the kindergarten. Sometimes I was in another group, on some of the days I was under the impression that Jerome just was not quite up for it, or the day’s schedule was so tight that he would have missed out on getting to play outside during the first half of the day if we had stayed inside. Jerome has a normal desire for physical activity and our activities were not to get in the way of that.

Our first sessions

Since Jerome also loves drawing, it usually went like this: we would draw a picture on a freely chosen subject and add corresponding words to the sketch. At the first session it was his friend’s name ‘Felix’ that interested him. He was already able to write it. So Jerome went ahead and made a drawing of Felix and added his name in writing. I drew my own picture of the two of them with the clothes that they were wearing that day and wrote their names on top of the figures. Jerome then added the names on my picture in his own writing and also wanted to write my name on it. I wrote it for him to see and he copied it. Up to now we have been writing in capital block letters only.

Right at this first session I noticed that Jerome sometimes writes in mirror writing, apparently without being aware of it. I pointed it out to him avoiding to call the wrong direction in which he was writing ‘wrong’, but instead used the term ‘mirror writing’ and showed him, that you see the word in mirror writing correctly, when you hold it up against the light and look at it from behind the sheet. That blew his mind. He had written my name correctly and, when I proposed that he write it in mirror writing, he did so without a mistake on his first attempt. I found that amazing, especially with regard to the ‘N’ in ARNO.
We also discovered that for some of the letters it does not make any difference which way you write them. Mirror writing stuck around for a while and I kept pointing it out to him when he had used it again.

At that same first session it also emerged that he was able to spell the words he was writing correctly. He did so, without having to be prompted, every time after he had written a word. And he pronounced the letters correctly when naming them, for example “enn” for “N” instead of the pure nasal “nnn”. I was officially impressed.

Topics that came up in the following sessions included “pirates”, “underground” (train), “names of other children in the group”, “owl”, “elephant”. When we were working on “pirates” I was once more reminded of his large vocabulary when he called a sword I had drawn with a curved blade “a sabre”. During the same session he explained to me how a plane starts, namely that it has to roll and accelerate on the “runway” first and then finally “lifts off”.

When dealing with the “underground” (train) he was fascinated by the corresponding street sign with the letter “U” cut out in white. This negative-method of writing a letter by drawing its outlines and colouring the background, leaving the letter’s inside untouched and thus white, really tickled him.
We then did the same thing with the “S” on a green backdrop, as appearing on the “S-Bahn”-sign (S-Bahn = Stadtbahn = city railway). That was a little trickier but he would not be discouraged.

At a further session we had newly bought plastic letters with magnets attached to them. When I laid the words “mama” and “papa” he first said “I can’t read that” (as written words they were new to him), but then he managed to read them by deciphering the letters one by one. He was visibly having fun figuring something out that was unknown to him. Then he wanted to lay words and had me read them out to him.

He proceeded to laying extremely long imaginary words, using up the entire alphabet, and had me read them out. It did not bother him a bit that the words I vocalised were no real words. On the contrary, he was excited to see that any given combination of letters could be read out and thus be turned into sound. And was he having a ball listening to the funny sounds that emerged and watching me twisting my tongue!

Due to room shortages we had to do one of our sessions in the dance and gymnastics room, so we took all our writing and drawing materials with us. However, this day Jerome did not feel like writing so much, he had trouble concentrating. Maybe it was the different room with all its many objects and musical instruments lying around.

That day he seemed to be up to something else: he wanted to test me. He began by playing around with the instruments and at one point even ran out of the room, as if to check whether I would come running after him. And then there was Robert, a boy from our group, showing up and distracting Jerome. I suggested that it might be a better idea to just quit for today and go playing outside; he thought so, too. In the dressing room he took up the topic himself, wondering who else in the group might have a name that starts with “J”. So he climbed on the bench and worked himself through all of the coat hooks, reading the names on them. He identified the names of Josephine and two or three other children from the neighbouring group.

Our sessions usually lasted 30 to 45 minutes. Then we always went to join the other children outside.

Results and observations

After the first seven sessions I made a preliminary assessment. The work with Jerome had been great fun for me. He himself had looked into reading and writing and learned to write a few new words.

The simple fact that Jerome had not lost interest along the way is a major success for me personally. The playful approach is not my forte and I do not experience myself as very imaginative in that respect. I tend to grasp subject matters more on an analytic/abstract level which makes exercises and repetitions tedious for me. Consequently I do not easily come up with creative tutorial ideas on a child-like level.
It was therefore quite adequate to have Jerome lead the way, simply going along and throwing in a piece of advice or giving some help here and there. This approach appears to have worked.

Jerome showed great sensitivity in some moments, especially when he was under the impression that I wanted to test him, as for example when I would ask him to tell or explain something because I wanted to see whether he had really understood it – these were occasions when he acted with great self-determination, clearly deciding for himself how far he would go with that.

It was mostly I who initiated the individual sessions. As far as I can remember he only once brought it up himself and asked “whether we were writing again today”. At the same time he never turned the offer to do some writing down. Jerome shows hints of the typical characteristics indicating giftedness; for example his complaint that he often feels disturbed in his present activities and he would wish for a room where he can withdraw.

The shared times have intensified Jerome’s and my relationship. We are quite close and he considers me his friend, which I’m very happy about.
For the future I wish our trusting relationship develops further and we both keep having fun and being inspired by one another.

Jerome wants to learn reading and writing for real, but playfully

At our last session I asked Jerome whether he wanted to learn how to read and write “for real”, which he did. The parents had told me that he often joined his brother (1st form) in doing his homework assignments from school, so I considered it just the more to be the right time to work on the alphabet with a little more structure and focus.

For this I created a little folder with separate sheets for each individual letter. In the upper right corner it had the respective letter – large and only in outlines – to be coloured, then the main section was free for a drawing and underneath there was space and a line on which to write a sample word that started with that letter.

In the recent past there have been signs of jealousy and animosities between the children in the group because of my increased focus on Jerome.

I had a talk with Jerome and we managed to come to some agreements that would ease the problem – one major part of the deal was, that I would offer activities for the whole group along the line of cognitive advancement.

More about this particular problem and my talk with Jerome see in:
On-on-One Advancement, Mentoring

In the meantime it has been Jerome’s 4th birthday.

The folder I had prepared and which Jerome and I call ‘primer’ has been well accepted by Jerome and we are working with it. Interestingly and surprisingly for me, it is not the drawing part that Jerome is mainly interested in. He largely focuses on writing. In our more productive sessions his concentration is astonishing and oftentimes he will write long compound words like “Jagdfieber” (hunting fever) “Haferbrei” (oatmeal). He does need some help here and there, but on the whole he writes the words very much by himself, he will occasionally ask whether he has written something “the right way around” or not (mirror writing) and then he always wants me to read the word out to him.

The words we chose to write usually come up during our conversations at the beginning or they are from what he tells me about his life. “Oatmeal”, for instance, came up when he told me that he had eaten a humongous bowl of oatmeal that morning.
Another time he tells me that his mother had told him about how she used to cross the border entering the “DDR” (Deutsche Demokratische Republik = German Democratic Republic/GDR). Now he wants to know what that means – DDR – and how to write it. I spell it for him and he writes it. The “D” immediately catches his attention because “it is almost like a T” (the sound of it) and then it cracks him up that the “T” is in itself the whole word “tea”.

He still enjoys the long imaginary words consisting of chaotically arranged sequences of letters, which I have to read out. Sometimes he writes them, sometimes he lays them using the magnet letters, which we have been using in almost every session ever since we got them. Most of the time these words contain long sequences of consonants which can hardly be pronounced and it is hilarious for him when I try to articulate them. Consequently we keep running into the problem that it cannot be done.
When I took this as an opportunity to tell him about the difference between vowels and consonants and asked him to squeeze in a few vowels he did so without hesitating and got it right without any further help.

After the first 7 sessions there has been a new observation:

Jerome initiates the sessions

It has been noticeable that Jerome, if we haven’t done anything in a while, starts urging me that ”today we write again”. He appears to find the sessions stimulating and he demands this activity quite explicitly if the last session seems too have been long ago.

The sessions generally are the more productive the more unstrained they are. Jerome will become clumsy and demotivated the more I try to structure the session and work systematically on the alphabet. That is how after two more sessions with the primer we are no further than the letter “C”, even though he already knows quite a few more letters and even uses them. I keep having to remind myself that there is no “test to be passed” and that I can legitimately go with his intuitive and playful approach.

Jerome gets to know the entire alphabet

For three months we have been working ourselves straight through the alphabet using the primer, and we are now at the letter “S”, where all the other letters have come up on the way by now, because they were part of the sample words we had dealt with in connection with previous letters. It has taken us 9 sessions to get there.

It is fair to say that Jerome has by now got acquainted with the entire alphabet including the umlauts. He uses the word “alphabet” as if it were the most natural thing to do so at his age.

In the recent past the occasions on which other children wanted to join in on a session have become fewer, which has had a positive impact on Jerome’s concentration. I assume that those who had joined in realised that it just was not for them to be working on letters all the time and to be so focused.

It is a pity that there are not more children in our group who share the same interest in focused work on the letters. It would have been much better for Jerome. This way we were stuck with the one-on-one scenario.

See: Integrative Focus Kindergartens for the Advancement of Gifted Children

Throughout all our sessions I was able to observe Jerome continuing to work with undiminished interest and great concentration. Oftentimes he virtually stormed through the primer “completing” one letter, then the next.

And he showed great imagination in finding corresponding sample words and never avoided long words. For the letter “N” he chose “Nussschokolade” (nut chocolate). “D” made him think of “Durst” (thirst) and he quickly noticed that, while “Durst” was easy to write, how could it be drawn? His solution was: a glass of beer. And he could then even write the word beer on the glass.
Peculiarities as for instance the sibilants (hissing sounds) “ch” and “sch” (engl: sh) or the principal occurrence of a “U” after a “Q” did need explanation but were then used correctly, no further help necessary.

It was so refreshing to experience his readiness of mind. One time he wrote an “S” in the middle of a word in mirror writing, and I vaguely pointed out to him that there was something wrong with the word. He immediately identified the “S” as the culprit, held the sheet up against the light looking through it from the back, and said: “That’s the right way!”.

When working on the “Q” he had chosen the word “Qualle” (jellyfish). The direct progression from “L” to “E” gave him the idea that the “E” is simply a combination of “F” and “L”. We then explored more such “letter combinations” as in ”P” being a part of “B” or “R”.

Jerome knows how to learn now

In the course of the project he developed a number of learning strategies all by himself. For example, every sheet he made outside of the primer he would insert in the primer together with the corresponding letter sheet. When writing new words he would research certain letters by going back through the pages.
Another strategy was to try a letter which he knew but was not sure about on a separate sheet first and have me confirm it. Only then would he transfer it to the sheet in the primer. If – as sometimes happened – there was not enough space to finish the sample word he would just start writing around the corner by rotating the sheet.

All the while he kept surprising me with his large vocabulary. About the jellyfish he told me that it had “Tentakeln” (tentacles), and before I knew it he was writing the word “Tentakeln”.

He also liked making use of alternative ways of writing, as with the plastic letters, which would be laid out to form words on a magnetic table, or the newly bought board with embossed letters that were hatched on the surface so that they could easily be transferred onto paper by rubbing a pen on the sheet while holding the sheet down on them. All of these materials he handled with the greatest of ease. At the same time he clearly felt when it was time for him to make the move and play outside. He would say so clearly, and the session was over.

What has been achieved?

Unfortunately my work with Jerome had to come to an end. With regard to the requirements for the Certificate Course I had to move on to another kindergarten to broaden the basis of my practical work experience.

I had the chance to talk to Jerome’s mother at the Summer Festival. She spoke very positively of my work with Jerome and thanked me for it. He had liked it and she, too, was of the impression that it had done him good. Since he did show a very curious mind at home, too, she was sure it had been a very valuable activity for him.

From my point of view the shared time has been beneficial for both of us. It will certainly have been a good thing for Jerome to get the attention and to focus on a major interest of his while being competently accompanied. I would conclude this from the fact that – aside from the first few sessions – the sessions were always initiated by him.

With my help he has successfully learned how to write (if only in block letters for the time being); mow he can take it from there all by himself.

See also: One-on-One-Advancement, Mentoring

Published in German: June 2012
Copyright© Arno Zucknick, see imprint
Translation: Arno Zucknick

Many gifted children are interested in letters and subsequently in reading and writing long before they enrol at school.
See also: Examples of: Early Interest in the Alphabet and in Reading.

The following accounts were given by some of the pedagogues who attended our Certificate Courses and demonstrate how the children’s impulse to deal with letters can be seized and supported.

All children’s names in the accounts have been changed.

• • Reading and Writing in Kindergarten
  • Project “Letters” – Activity for Small Groups
  • Jerome Practises Writing
  • Selin Is Underchallenged (German version)
  • A 3-Years-Old Wants to Write (German version)
  • A 3-Years-Old Wants to Write (Abridged Version) (German version)
  • I Think: „Reading Is for School Children“
  • Pablo (4;5) Is Already Interested in Reading Too (German version)
  • Word Club with Sarah (German version)
  • René (5;4) Is Learning How to Read (German version)
  • Tamara(5;5) and the Characters of the Alphabet (German version)
  • Early Intervention for Literacy (German version)
  • Alena (5) Studies Letters – When Should She Enrol at School? 
  • Pia (5;3) Wants to Learn to Read and Actually Wants to Go to School Too (German version)

by Silvia Hempler

One of the girls in my group (Linda, 5;0) has come to my attention.

She disposes of good verbal expression and keen perception. She talks a lot and enjoys doing so, tries to direct the other children’s playing situations, such as role-play, and has great difficulties adapting herself. She sticks out, due to her relatively poor social behaviour.

Her mother reports that Linda could distinguish left from right at an age of 2. Her preferred literature at that time were the reference and text books of her father, who was then undergoing an RN-training. The other kids in her nursery group had to experience quite a few fisticuffs, because they wouldn’t play doctor the way Linda had told them to.

After working with Joelle Huser’s observational chart, I would like to highlight the following aspects:

Linda has command of a large vocabulary. She reports, for example:

At the moment Linda is learning Polish. She often asks me to tell her special words, so that she can translate them, or she lists words she already knows and translates them.

She doesn’t make any grammatical mistakes and expresses herself well.

She is also rather quick-witted, never at loss for an answer, both in positive and negative situations.

She often comes up with logical explanations, giving grown-ups the impression that she feels superior to them, being seemingly unfazed by consequences of her bad behaviour. She will say something like:

I’ve also noticed a particular mathematical-logical intelligence in Linda. For example, in a conversation with me about the size of craters on the moon, she asked me spontaneously:

She is able to add in steps of 5 and will only accept to do puzzles with 100 pieces.

Concerning her special interests and activities she spends most of her time with:

Firstly, there are her parents‘ professions: RN and midwife. She seems to be constantly learning from her parents‘ experiences.

She is also very interested in horses. She knows the entire terminology around horses, riding and care-taking of these animals.

She also ponders matters concerning our universe and space.
Once I showed her why the moon isn’t always full with the help of a book, she immediately understood, looked at me and said:

At the moment, she is collecting information explaining the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Next to her special areas of interest and exceptional abilities, I’ve noticed how Linda lacks empathy and attention for the interests of her peers in age.

Example situation:
Her friends are busy doing craft-work. Linda will continuously interrupt them, until they finally give in and join Linda in that role-play in the doll-corner, she wants to play.

She may even tend to support her goal by scribbling on her friends‘ art-work, just so they will give up their current activity.

Please note the article: Girls Having Their Way (in German)

Linda shows no inclination of adapting to a (social) situation or holding herself back. Whenever she doesn’t get what she wants, right then, she will turn aggressive and start hitting the other children.

Example situation:
A child says: „I don’t want to hear that song. We want to dance.“
The child gets a stuffed toy dog beaten around its head.

Linda wants to be the leader of the group. She always has ideas and knows how to organize well. Yet, she lacks consideration and a collaborative mindset, and uses her (leading) position for her own interests.

She has a great sense of justice, but here also, her own interests will always stand at the centre of her attention.

She will say „I’m sorry!“ to any form of criticism.
This is her method of trying to avoid any further arguments on the matter. She’ll turn red in the face and her eyes will well up with tears, and the normally talkative child will only be able to reply with „yes“ and „no“. Insecurity is written all over her face. It can be quite difficult to build her up again, then. Often, she’ll turn very quiet for some time, or she’ll say what the adult wants to hear, being extremely friendly.

(She hates clearing the table.)

The team again and again has doubts as to Linda’s higher intelligence, because she tends to hide her abilities very well.

Also note the article: Concealing Abilities and Interests.

Unfortunately, my own professional abilities – just after the 1st seminar-phase (IHVO-Certificate Course) – seem not to suffice in this extremely challenging situation.
Her weak social interaction abilities seem to preoccupy her so much in group situations, that she doesn’t find time for other activities. She seems to be trying out different strategies, without coming to the intended result, for which she always sets rather high goals. But these are all only assumptions.
We may also not be offering her enough inspiration, in order for her to reach a certain level of contentedness.

After the 2nd seminar-phase, I decided to offer Linda a drawing course, in order to meet her interests, and to support her social integration into a small project group. She was supposed to have an opportunity to practise, improve and develop her behaviour towards the other children, and simultaneously acquire a new skill.

My ideas are:

– the drawing-course,
– exhibiting the children’s art-work inside the kindergarten,
– constructing a game,
– visiting an arts exhibition.

We used the book „Für kleine Zeichner“ (For young artists).

Reasons for planning this project

By means of focused observation, and by watching her in every-day situations, I have noticed, that Linda evaluates her abilities and deficits by checking them with the adults.

Her abilities in figurative drawing, for example, were poor, leaving her quite frustrated, but she would keep on saying:

Since she was using one typical tone-of-voice of hers when she said that, I decided to offer her help and constructive criticism instead of offering praise. I could immediately sense her positive reaction and gratitude. She let me help her and stayed by my side for the rest of the day, continuously asking me questions.

So, that was when and why I decided to offer a drawing course, in order to deal with two matters at once. Since Linda, as mentioned before, also lacks social interaction abilities, often comparing herself with the other bright girl in the group, Sandra, and showing hardly any interest in other playfellows, I picked a wide variety of characters as participants of this project.

The group is made up of
– a Turkish boy, who just simply wants to learn and be productive,
– a girl of average potential with little self-confidence,
– a gifted girl, who has serious problems with her motor skills and her emotional stability,
– two boys of average potential, yet highly motivated and always keen on new activities,
– a talented Turkish girl with poor language skills, who can draw very well and is otherwise extraordinarily developed,
– Sandra and
– Linda.

Luckily, I managed to motivate all the children I had chosen to take part in the project. Partially because they were interested in drawing, partially, because the children knew that I myself enjoyed drawing. They liked most of my drawings, which appeared to make me expert enough, in their opinions, to instruct a drawing course.

The constellation of the group appeared especially favourable to me, because it combined a broad collection of very particular character traits, and I was hoping for great social learning possibilities for all participating children, especially for Linda. I wanted her to experience, that the others had great abilities as well, and that she would reflect her old behaviour mode (If the other children don’t do as I want, I’ll hit them) and find new approaches.

Her self-confidence (I’m allowed to make mistakes) was to be strengthened. She was to be introduced to new fields of interest and supported in this.
Since I was in charge of monitoring the group without interruptions, I was able to work with reasonable impact and actively assist in difficult situations.

We began by drawing a person

The book mentioned above helped us a lot. Its clear shapes and simple line drawings let the children soon experience success with their artwork.

At first, we drew the simpler person, shaped a bit like a matchstick man. In the next attempt, we added a neck and a face, then a shirt and some trousers, and finally hands and shoes.
We spent about two weeks dealing with the human body and varying details.
During the entire period, Linda felt visibly comfortable within this group constellation. She watched very closely and attentively, and seemed to have understood that other children can be scared as well, and also, that they have weaknesses and strengths, just like she does.

This realisation process did not go about without conflict, but Linda learned that her drawings were not worth any less, because we didn’t put the last drawings in the folder, where we usually put them, but actually hung them up in the hallway of the kindergarten.
For this occasion, Linda and I designed a poster to direct the parents‘ attention to the group’s artwork, which it did, and due respect was paid along with plenty of praise for all of the children.
During the drawing course, the children realized, that writing is probably just as important or useful a skill as is figurative drawing. Writing, they realized, was also a form of communication, with which they could earn praise and gain attention.

Their own names on the drawings thus gained importance and, besides drawing, little samples of writing were generated.
During this time I discovered a game at a trade-fair, which combined both skills: drawing and writing.

Game Instructions:
There are cards you lay out, small symbol-cards, as well as letter-cards.

Each laying-card shows a picture resembling a word, for instance, a ball.
Each symbol-card shows a (small) picture resembling the first letter, for instance a bear stands for B, an ant stands for A, etc.

First you turn over a laying card, for example the ball-card. Then you try to lay out the word with the symbol-cards, and finally you match the correct letters underneath, so you have written the word BALL.

You can play different variants of the game as well.
Possible versions:
– Find other words (than those on the playing cards) and try laying them in letters,
– Use only symbol-cards or only letters,
– write out the words (with a pencil),
– make sentences out of words.

I introduced this game to the children and asked them to construct a game like it themselves. They were motivated by the fact that the drawings had to be realistic enough for most people to recognize, or else the letters couldn’t be matched.

So, this is how we went about it

We would think up a word and sketch the matching letter as well as a drawing for it. Each child had a task in the project, either making a drawing or writing the matching letter on a little card. Afterwards, the tasks were switched – those who had first drawn, would then write and vice versa.

Finally, each child had to create a bigger card, combining the drawing and the letter. During this phase of the project, we would turn to using the drawing-instructions-book, pictures and special books with lots of images as well as a table of the letters of the alphabet as aids.

Results

For me, the most important result of the project was, that it enabled an all inclusive learning process. Each child of the group experienced a form of success.

During the entire project, I never had the impression of asking too much or too little of them.
Linda’s progress with drawing a horse: Phase 1-3
Linda’s results:

• • Linda has learned to show her abilities. Especially referring to the horse-drawings. She helped the other children find words and let me help her design a poster together with her, on which she wrote all by herself.
    The other children saw that Linda could read, and accepted it as something completely normal, so that Linda herself could also accept that she had this ability.

• • The pictures and the books with images offered interesting topics, which Linda could work on as well (dinosaurs, insects).
  • She immediately understood and used the first-grade alphabet table.
  • Linda also understood that she couldn’t always force her opinion upon other children. Yet, understanding doesn’t imply being able to put this lesson into practice. She is still working on it and every now and then she actually succeeds in maintaining her self-control.
    I have had many conversations with her and given her examples from her own experiences and situations she would judge as negative. The teamwork sessions during the project did the rest, after all, Linda does observe closely.
  • Linda has also learned to let Sandra do her own thing. Because of the alternating tasks, both girls couldn’t always work together. During the project, I was able to have conversations with both girls on the topic of friendship, realizing they had quite different views on it. Linda has understood that Sandra needs more space and freedom and will now sometimes even let her do things alone (e.g. have breakfast).

Sandra is a very versatile, multi-talented girl, who is very popular, due to her extremely good social behaviour. Linda wants to be loved as well, and being able to accept herself just the way she is, remains a great challenge for her and it will require a lot of support.

She is on her way now, finally. But her self-esteem is still quite low. She needs time in order to cope with her year-long experiences (I’m different and people don’t like me like that), and re-evaluate, re-arrange and classify them anew.

We should pick up where we left off in our last parent talk, which we had after the first seminar-phase. With them I would like to figure out what Linda’s needs are, and find out how she can realise her own plans and dreams.
Topics for the talk could be:
– What does Linda really want and need?
– What are the things she does only to get attention and praise?
– What could our kindergarten offer her, in order to support her, to enable her to use her skills, so that she gets the recognition she deserves?
– Which tasks and chores can she be in charge of at home (You are important)?

Last, but not least:

The children are still very interested in learning how to draw. They frequently grab and use the aforementioned material in their free-activity time.

At our last meeting of the drawing course, we talked about visiting an arts museum in Wuppertal (North-Rhine Westphalia) in order to study different techniques and colours. We went there and took part in a tour for children.

A local artist from Remscheid, Wolfgang Petermann, invited us to his craft-shop and showed us his etchings – and since he was crafting on the root of a tree at the time, we decided to try it out ourselves at the kindergarten.

Linda continues to need support building up her self-esteem. I have noticed that I get through to her best, by directly confronting her with a matter, finding words for her feelings and going into conversations with her.

Linda will need further opportunities to work in small groups, in order to practise her social skills and also to learn to control her reactions.
We will also make a conscious effort to include her special abilities into our daily schedule, so that she gets more positive feedback.

Date of publication in German: May, 2011
Copyright © Hanna Vock, siehe Impressum
Translation: Sonia Wagner / Arno Zucknick