Welcome back, BCD Preschool families! From the reports of your children, it was a relaxing, low-key spring break for you. Your children came back energized for new explorations and meaningful learning!
Before we talk about this week, however, let’s finish up discussing our important (and fun!) few days just before our break. Alaska Day was a great treat for us. We enjoyed our community time outdoors in the snow. Highlights for us were sledding, making snow sculptures, and hot chocolate. The weather has not always been our best friend this winter, and it was especially wonderful to be able to embrace the best that winter had to offer by enjoying this great day with our school community!
We also participated in a Courage Assembly with the Lower School. Our class prepared individual posters, coloring in pictures of themselves in a brave moment, and writing a word to describe that. Mustering up even more courage they stood before the entire Lower School and explained how they felt! Your children were not afraid of the dark when daddy fixed the light, brave when mommy hurt when our baby was born, brave when seeing mommy get hurt when riding her bike, and courageous when taking the dog out for a walk in the dark. It was with this social/emotional leap that your children began their spring break.
sketching at the easel
We returned ready and eager to pursue the investigations that, during our pre-break brainstorming sessions, the children said they are curious about. Our investigations will evolve following the children’s interests. Mostly we will be exploring transformations – a wonderful, abstract concept that will involve seed to plant; egg to chick; cocoon to butterfly; tadpole to frog; and winter to spring.
preparing our science journals
We prepared our individual science journals that we will use for our observations, and began our study of trees with the “K” of our “K.W.L.” (what we know about trees, what we want to know, and what we learned.) We wrote our “K’s” on a poster board (reinforcing that we communicate our ideas by writing) and read some books related to our investigations (reinforcing that we get information from books.) We also discussed what we might see on our nature walk, and documented those thoughts.
noticing the conifer leaves (needles)
On our tree walk outside we compared broadleaf and conifer trees, we noticed the roots and the trunks, we noticed flowers/leaves still on the tree from the fall, and we collected pine needles and branches to bring back and sketch. We felt the wax on the pine needles, and felt the texture of the bark of different trees. We also saw birds, and talked about the fact that some of them live in trees. All the while we were observing, comparing and discussing, using our eyes, ears and fingers, and even our sense of smell to learn more about our world and to find ways to order the components of trees to make sense of them.
studying things found on our walk
Back in the classroom the children discussed what we did on our walk, and why. To model thoughtful reflection and the collection/recording of data, we documented our observations.
Dream Cloud by Eric Carle
In addition to our factual books about trees and nature, we read several storybooks by Eric Carle to prepare for our trip to the Eric Carle Museum. Carle writes delightful concept books with whimsical and glorious illustrations. We also did a sequencing project by analyzing story structure and determining what happened first, second and last.
sequencing the parts of a story
Many of you may have read about the pedagogical innovations happening in Finland, namely eliminating “subjects” from the curriculum and integrating concepts, knowledge and skills to show how all learning is connected. This is exactly how we present learning in our BCD Preschool classroom. As we are noticing the weather and signs of spring, we are learning how to say the weather in French. As we learn about nature (science), we classify and sequence (math), we write in our journals and we read information books (Language Arts).
For those of you viewing this blog on your iphone or ipad, you can view the pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bcdtech/sets/72157650694710455/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bcdtech/sets/72157650682025501/