Bats/Morcegos/Murciélagos

I fear that since Helena Iara was born, I have been a very poor scribe of this blog.  Other things seem more important, and the time I have to work has been dedicated to other things.  None the less, I am proud to post this new film this morning, which uses new 3D animation technology that we had never used before.

Pierre, the boy who recorded this song and invented the story, goes to the Salgueiro community pre-school in Rio de Janeiro, like many of the other kids who created movies that I have shown recently on this blog.  He is, however, a little older, and participates in the after-school homework assistance program.

More music from Rio de Janeiro

This song, "Bats" by the six year old Pierre, is yet another in the series of music by little kids from poor neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro state.  The story told in the song, about going into the woods to find bats, seemed to demand a new style of music, one that fit with the storytelling style.

The moral Life of Babies

I found this article in the NY Times Magazine fascinating as a way to think about how babies think about the world.  Since Shine a Light has begun to work with little kids, it strikes me as important to see them as moral and intellectual agents, not merely as little learners, sponging up what adults teach them.  The article begins this way:

Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was placed next to a pile of treats. At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.