Winter Concert

The Winter Concert was wonderful! The children took great pride in this performance and were so thrilled to share this special time with their family and friends. The feeling of community and connection to our Lower School friends was felt by all! The feelings of joy and happiness that is experienced from working together in a collaborative way will be a special memory that our children and families will hold dear. Thank-you for your continued support of our program. Enjoy the photos!

Emily Visit To PreK

Maggie's mom, Emily is a priest and she visited with our class today to talk to us about her role as a community helper. We learned many things about Emily's work as a priest and the children were very interested in her work as a community helper. Emily's beautiful robe was especially interesting to the children they had many questions about when she wears the robe as well as why she wears a robe. Emily said that her robe is like her 'uniform' that tells everyone in the church that she is a priest. She leads Sunday services in her robe and loves the special feeling of getting dressed up in something so beautiful to lead the Sunday services in. We learned that Emily loves to help people in her family community at church and often visits people at home and in the hospital who may not be well enough to go to church. Emily wears her robe only in church on Sundays.

Emily showed us the special things she takes with her when she is visiting with someone at home or in the hospital. She loves being a priest and most importantly she loves helping people and praying with people.

Enjoy our photo album that captures this wonderful visit!

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PreK Visits Abington Memorial Hospital

The excitement of taking our first field trip together on a real school bus was felt by all! The energy in the classroom on the days building up to the trip was quite amazing to observe and the pure joy of the thought of riding on a school bus filled conversations at lunch, snack, meetings and quiet rest time! We were reminded about the simple things in life and the importance of honoring and celebrating what is truly important and meaningful to our children..

Visiting Abington Memorial Hospital was a wonderful way to extend our study of community. Throughout the past several weeks we have explored community in the context of our classroom community, our connections and relationships with people in our AFS community, places in our Jenkintown community, what it means to be a community helper and how certain community helpers work to keep every community in safe. Visits from firefighters, police officers, nurses, therapists, SPCA volunteers and principals were just a few of the community helpers who visited our classroom and talked to our children about their role in the community. Visiting our local community hospital seemed like a perfect way to continue to support the children's interest and learning about community. Several of our children had selected a health care community helper to research and we observed tremendous interest and joy as the children played with their doctor and nurse dress-up props whenever they were open in our Dramatic Play area.

The volunteer department of the hospital offers a wonderful, age appropriate private lesson that acquaints the children with many aspects of a hospital visit. The children watched a brief video of children coming into the hospital for an overnight stay and seemed to get a glimpse of what that experience may look like. Seeing children in hospital night -gowns, resting in hospital beds and talking with their doctors and nurses helped to bring this experience into a much more realistic light. The children tried real stethoscopes and listened to each other's heartbeats. Our session focused on healthy bones and keeping our bodies healthy and we were fortunate to have a orthopedic nurse lead a in-depth session on this topic. The life size skeleton was a favorite for all and the children had the opportunity to look at ex-rays, casts for the arm and leg, and crutches. We discussed healthy eating and exercise that supports the development of healthy bones and the children received a fun activity book to take home.

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PreK Visits Nurse Heidi

Our visit with nurse Heidi in her office was most interesting ! Heidi showed us several of the medical tools she uses each day as students come into her office and she tries to help them feel better. Heidi has several posters on the walls of how the body works which stimulated conversation and questions throughout the time of our visit. The children are continuing to develop a deeper, richer sense of community at AFS and their comfort level during our visits has grown tremendously over the last several weeks.

Enjoy our photo scrapbook which tells the story of our visit so well!

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New Discoveries - Science Room News

SINK AND FLOAT

One of the important parts of a engaging science curriculum is for young children to make their own individual discoveries. I find that putting lots of materials out and giving the students a brief introduction to an idea works best. So, for our last science class, I introduced the concept of "sink and float". I gave each student a container full of water and many small objects to test. After initially testing many items, the fun began in earnest. Students created boats out of objects, tested if placement in the water made a difference, asked for additional items to test. After they were all done, they created a lab sheet to record their experiment. Watch for an upcoming display of their work!

Harrison's First Visit To PreK

Learning more about each other's families and connecting in a deeper way has been a ongoing theme in our world of PreK this year. We have grown so much as a 'family' and our connections with each other and our extended families has enriched our lives. The children love sharing their family books, family stories and especially family visits.

Paula's family is visiting from Toronto and they stopped in to introduce Harrison to our AFS community. The children welcomed Evan, Nicole and Harrison with open arms and filled their visit with much love and warmth. The children were incredibly generous with their gifts of affection and attention and this was a memory that will forever be help close to mom-mom's heart!

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Mariana and Jack Visit PreK

Cristian's mother Mariana visited our class to talk to the children about her career. Mariana is a physical therapist and we learned many interesting facts about her work. "She helps people who lost their leg" ( Miranda), " She helps people learn to walk" ( Sania), She teaches people how to walk again if they get their leg taken off" ( Annabelle). Marian read a beautiful book titled We Go In A Circle by Peggy Perry Anderson which is a lovely, simple and sensitive story that reveals the interconnection between everyone involved in hippo therapy and the benefits they all share from the experience.

Marina had the children try a few different kinds of movement and exercises which helped us all relate to what is may feel like to have for example, one leg amputated. The children stood on one foot for 10 seconds...20 seconds... 30 seconds.....children closed their eyes and tried the same exercise.... they hopped on one foot and closed their eyes....

Mariana's patient Jack was kind enough to visit with our class and talk to us about his amputation and prostheses . The insight that the children were experiencing from this visit was quite remarkable and the level of sensitivity that was expressed through wonderful discussion was a model which we feel so grateful to have. Involvement with our families and communities in our learning about life has been a very powerful experience for all of us this year.

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