Our PreK Community Continues to Grow...

Happy Monday! The children arrived at school today and immediately became involved in classroom activities. They are becoming more comfortable with our learning centers, with each other and with the overall PreK program. We had a special day of building community. We are meeting more of the faculty in Lower School and becoming more familiar with our schedule.

Today was our first day of Spanish. The children enjoyed meeting Catalina, our Lower School Spanish teacher. Catalina will be leading Spanish class in our PreK classroom three times during our seven day cycle. Catalina loves to sing and dance and brings so much joy and warmth to her Spanish lessons. The children really loved the first meeting with dear Catalina!

Today was also our first day of music class with Jason. The children went to the beautiful music room in groups of 7 or 8 and Jason set up three different stations with musical instruments; wood, metal and hand drum unpitched percussion instruments. Jason encouraged the children to explore the instruments. He guided the children and asked them to see if they could feel or hear the vibrations of the instruments. The experience was phenomenal and the level of wonder and discovery was so present!

At Morning Meeting, we began a conversation about how we are the same and how we are different. The children looked at each other's facial features and we observed our similarities and differences. After this conversation, the children listened to the book, Two Eyes, A Nose and A Mouth. This book highlighted the beauty of our facial differences. Reading this book aloud with the children served as a vehicle to facilitate important and meaningful conversations regarding the differences within our own classroom culture. The children then used mirrors to look closely at themselves and then were asked to use pencils to draw a self portrait.

 

 

 Sharing Family Books is a wonderful way for the children to develop closer connections with each other. We learn so many important  things about each other's families,  cultures and  traditions through sharing our special Family books.  Today Marcellous and Hayden shared their Family books with the class.  They were proud to talk about their families and developed confidence speaking in front of the larger group.