The Rules We Lived By: 2011-12

Each year our 3-5's class makes its own rules, a list that starts short, then grows longer over the course of the school year, sometimes as a result of situations coming up that we want to address, sometimes as an exercise is catastrophic thinking, and sometimes as a game we play during circle time. If you want more details on how we go about making our rules, click here.  

I know there are a lot of very smart people out there who believe that it's important to keep rules short and sweet for preschoolers, many opting for some version of "Treat your friends gently." That's not the way we do it. Woodland Park belongs to the children, it is their community and their education. This is one of the central ways by which they shape their preschool world via a democratic process of consensus, everyone having their say, everyone contributing, everyone discussing. These rules, to me, become not a mechanism for behavioral control, but rather, taken together, a statement of intentions: a practical vision for how we would like to live together. When I point to the list as it hangs on the wall and say, "You and your friends agreed . . ." I am simply reminding them of their collective ideals, inviting the child to re-commit to that vision.

More than any prior year's class, this group "rejected" rules proposed from the floor, willing to raise their hands in the face of overwhelming opposition to say, "I don't really like that rule." And when that happened, the proposal is set aside, because unless all of us agree, it doesn't become a rule. We also found ourselves wanting to really understand certain rules, amending and adding to them (in the list below, the parenthetical statements represent these amendments) especially the "No hitting" rule, making sure we all really understood what that meant.

All of these rules have stories, but I especially want to point out a couple.

At the end of the day, we come in from outside to read a story and sing our goodbye song. Some of the children always race into the classroom ahead of the rest of us. During the Halloween season, these children started waiting for their classmates in silence in order to shout, "Boo!" as each entered the room. This became an almost routine practice, loud more than scary, that went on for at least a month after the holiday. One day, however, they were particularly effective and caught Siena off guard, genuinely frightening her, so much that she broke into tears. As she fell into an adult's lap for comfort, I could see the look of genuine concern on the children's faces -- they hadn't meant to scare her. I think it was Archie who then raised his hand and proposed the rule, "No saying boo, except at Halloween," and his classmates agreed to give up their game, a commitment they stuck to for the rest of the year.

The "No potty talk" rule comes up every year. Usually, it starts with one child dropping a "poop" or a "pee" on us, followed by someone else saying, "That's potty talk!" I'm always a little surprised that we can get consensus on this, but we always do, especially when we add, ". . . except in the bathroom." This year, we twice took the entire group into the restroom so that children (their parent's were so proud) could have their "potty talk" stories read aloud during circle time.

Now, without further ado, here is the 2011-12 list of rules for the Woodland Park Cooperative Preschool's 3-5's class:

No pushing (especially into something hard)

No poking (especially with pencils or spider webs or in the neck)

No hitting (especially with boxes, seaplanes, knives, hands, sharp hammers, apples, trucks, pumpkins, dressing up clothes, jackets, toilet plungers, boards, stuff, with shoes in eyes, umbrellas, or with very hard things)

No kicking

No splashing paint on faces

No taking things from other people

No bumping cars or trains into people

No throwing weapons

No playing weapons

No putting paper in our mouths, or play dough or shoes or paint

No putting fingers in people's eyes

No name calling

No eating poo

No squeezing people

No throwing zippers in eyes

No rough hands on people

No hitting sharks or bears on people

No throwing boots at people's faces

No hitting cars

No painting other's paintings or drawings or other stuff without asking first

No dirty water in your mouth

No putting tape in hair

No crashing people

No taking down decorations

No punching people

No drinking bath water

No real dinosaurs at school

No whacking people in the face

No making the earth move

No putting goo in people's mouths or hair

No scratching people hard

No drinking toilet water

No spitting

No yelling at people

You can't say you can't play or come in

No potty talk, except in the bathroom

No pushing with the corners of pictures

No pinching

No shooting people with Batman guns or spooky vampires

No stomping on feet

No throwing bowling balls

No hitting heads

No pushing with blocks

No poking eyes

No throwing cups

No taking people's iPads

No saying "boo" except at Halloween

No crushing feet

No throwing apples and bonking people

No sitting on people

No pulling hair

No squashing hands

No throwing boots in people's eyes

No throwing tooth brushes in people's faces, or markers, or gooey sticky stuff

No saying, "I hate you."

No throwing people's clothes unless you ask first

No getting behind Teacher Tom's chair

No stepping on people's hands

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