Sunflowers Visit PreK...Building Community

Building a sense of community cross divisionally is an important component in our work of building community. The teachers of the Sunflower class (Early Childhood Division) and our PreK class have been talking about making connections and providing opportunities for the children to develop relationships by spending time together in each other's classrooms,going on walks and playing on the playground together. The Sunflowers visited our PreK classroom today and the visit was fantastic! Our PreK children were so excited to see and play with old friends and were especially thrilled to be spending time with teachers whom they knew or had in past years at AFS. Nancy and Paul were welcomed with joy and open arms by our PreK children!

Our children were warm and welcoming hosts. We had talked about what it means to help people feel welcomed and the children seemed to feel so proud of themselves in this role. We began with a circle activity where we introduced ourselves and shared something we enjoyed doing at school. It was fascinating to observe how nurturing and sensitive our children were with the younger children. We realized how important it is for children to have the opportunity to practice many of the social skills that they are developing everyday. The satisfaction on the children' faces of helping a younger child successfully build a tower was heartwarming to see and we all realized that we need to make these cross divisional connections happen more often.

We opened our classroom and the children were interested in playing in the dramatic play area, blocks, playdough, books and math center. The children shared and took turns and were helpful in showing the younger children how materials work. It seemed to really feel good for the PreK children to be the "older" kids and to be the ones guiding others.

The Sunflowers were kind enough to bring cheese and crackers for snack and we had a fun smorgasbord adding fruits and pretzels to the buffet! One of our PreK children helpfully assisted as one of the Sunflowers washed their hands! The sense of pride and self confidence was quite apparent!

This experience reminded us of the value of mixed age groupings for children and of the growth and joy that comes from within.