At the start of this term, ECE staff had the chance to attend a two-day professional development conference on teaching Philosophy to children. We have begun our sessions with our K3 and K4 students, and the children have loved them.

On Monday, 22 October 2018, the third session took place in our classroom and we asked the children to think about different sorts of pets they might want. We had a small group discussion, where children shared the pets they had, or knew about. We then presented three ‘scary’ pets for the children to choose from – a pet lion, a pet shark, or a pet spider!

The idea was that we wanted children to make a choice, and give a reason for their choice. So after getting the children to close their eyes and have some thinking time, we asked them to vote on their choice of pet. They placed a marker with their name on it on the pet of their choice, and said (in English or Chinese) “I chose a shark, because…”.

The children had such thoughtful answers! Some chose a lion, so it could protect them. Some chose a spider, because they wanted a pet that was poisonous. Some chose a shark, so they could swim together. All children made a choice, and all children were able to talk about why they made that choice.

As we continue to run these sessions, children are getting used to agreeing and disagreeing with one another, giving reasons for making decisions, thinking about interesting questions in different ways, and hopefully they will work up to the stage where they are coming up with questions on their own. We are looking forward to continuing these philosophy sessions over the year!