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Jelita Rubina Kayani

Jelita Rubina Kayani - Director Small Wonder Children's House

In my years of running Small Wonder Children's House, what has never failed to amaze me is how a child's mind works.  How absorbent, creative and flexible.  They are like white pieces of cloth; they are just waiting for life experiences to colour and pattern them.

 

​I am reminded of a famous piece that was reviewed by Robert Fulghum, which became a classic.  I’ve summarised excerpts of this piece to share.  Have a read below.This essay breaks the standard rule that important things are supposed to be difficult to understand.  The simple rules in life that we learn in Kindergarten come up repeatedly in our lives as long as we live in far more complex forms, to be sure  -  lectures, politics, courts of law, company rules and handbooks.  

 

Across our lives, we will wrestle with questions of right and wrong, good or bad, and truth and lies.  Again and again and yet again, we return to the place where we first learnt the basics of being a citizen of the world, simple rules of life taught to us – in Kindergarten.

Jelita

Jelita's Note
All I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten (reviewed by Robert Fulghum) 
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All I need to know about what to do and how to be I learned in Kindergarten.  Wisdom is not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpit at playschool.
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  • SHARE EVERYTHING

  • PLAY FAIR

  • DON’T HIT PEOPLE

  • PUT THINGS BACK WHERE YOU FOUND THEM

  • CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS

  • DON’T TAKE THINGS THAT AREN’T YOURS

  • SAY YOU’RE SORRY WHEN YOU HURT SOMEBODY

  • LIVE A BALANCED LIFE – LEARN SOME AND THINK SOME AND DRAW AND PAINT AND SING AND DANCE AND PLAY AND WORK EVERYDAY SOME

  • WHEN YOU GO OUT INTO THE WORLD, WATCH OUT FOR TRAFFIC, HOLD HANDS AND STICK TOGETHER

  • BE AWARE OF WONDER - Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.  Goldfish and hamsters and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die.  So do we.

  • AND  remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK

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Take any one of these items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm.

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