Getting ready

It was time for the next trip around Israel. The children gathered chairs and arranged them into rows to create a long bus. As an observer, I could see that this imaginative experience showed careful planning and thought on the part of the teachers. Instead of being the ones to create the experience, they encouraged the children themselves to organize the room. Heavy chairs were lifted and pushed into place. The set up took much longer this way than if the teachers had simply stacked the chairs and arranged them in the rows, but putting this task to the children made it a richer educational experience.