Reflection
Experiment 2: Children's book
This past break, I spent the week babysitting my three cousins. I drove them to school, worked on homework with them, and made dinner, but the part I loved most was bedtime. Now that I think about it, that’s the part of babysitting that I always love the most. Partly because the kids are soon to be asleep and my job is soon to be done, but mostly because I get to cuddle up in bed and read a book with them. My little three year old cousin insisted that we read the same book every night, as (I soon realized) he had probably been doing with his parents for the weeks leading up to this one. He had memorized every word. I made silly voices for each character, dramatically flipped pages, and listened to little Louie as he recited the words with me. My mom is a teacher, and an English major, so I’ve always known the importance of reading books. I’m quite sure she read to me while I was still in her belly, and she didn’t stop reading to me until I got old enough to read to her. It felt good to continue that with my cousins.
I think that my childhood of book loving and reading has played a strong role in my attitude towards my experiment #2, the creation of a children’s book. It has been a surprisingly heart-warming experience. Well, I don’t know if heart-warming is the right word. I have done the cold hard research, worked on the assignments, and learned what I need to know. I think a more appropriate word is hygge, a Danish word I’ve been thinking about lately that loosely translates to cozy, special happiness. Hyggehouse.com says that “hygge literally only requires a conscious appreciation, a certain slowness, and the ability to not just be present – but recognize and enjoy the present.” I love that. And I’ve felt that as I’ve begun to create my children’s book because it’s taken me back to my childhood. I’ve been able to reflect on the love that I experienced when I read with my mom, the happiness I found reading with my cousin, and the importance I feel as I create this book.
Not only that, but it has encouraged me to think about the preschoolers that I originally made this lesson plan for and who are now the intended audience of my book. It brings me such joy to think about each of the 10 students that I spent multiple hours with each week and to consider the best way to make this book for them specifically. They deserve the world.
And that is the long and sappy and far-too-wordy explanation of why I’ve enjoyed this experiment. I’m excited to potentially continue working on it for my project. If I do continue to create this experiment, I’m going to test out the book on various audiences (my mom is a preschool teacher of typically developing students, I babysit a kindergartner with autism, etc) to get direct feedback of things that the kids like and dislike, as I don’t know exactly what to revise without knowing what my audience wants. I am excited to eventually deliver the full project to the preschool at which I volunteered last year and give it to my old students. I will need to make a shutterfly/photobook type children’s book with typed text. Also, I will be doing extensive research to include an informative parent’s guide to sensory eating with valuable tips and helpful data about the disorder. I think this is a crucial part in the book that links it with the original lesson plan and the preschool at which I worked. The teachers there went out of their way to teach healthy eating habits to their students and their students’ families, and I would love to help contribute to this.