The week before break we were lucky enough to celebrate Week of The Young Child! As an educator of young children its always a time to reflect on the purposes in the classroom. My goals with each blog is for families to catch a glimpse into their childs day (as many children this age dont bring school happenings home in conversation.) But I also understand that sometime the goals and objectives in the classroom are not always stated in our happenings.
Children learn so much as they engulf themselves into the curriculum of the classroom, and our goal is to do this in the most natural setting. Having children experience a science lesson about matter, paired with math lesson on quantity is done through an exploration of baking their own snack. Mixing colors, learning the color wheel in arts or learning mnomoics like ROYGBIV within our own language arts is achieves holistically through art experiences with paint. Children naturally entrust themselves through risky play, and build on their autonomy as they navigate themselves in the classroom and with their peers.
The point of Week of the Young Child is to remember and remind us that these things are happening within the walls (or fields) of our school and that early education in this way is so crucial for the children of our world!
As we came into this week we set our focus on our impacts on the earth in preparation of earth day!
We prefaced what earth day is, a day where we celebrate our planet and look into ways we can care for our world. We read Trashy Town by Andrea Zimmerman and took a walk around our own "Trashy school" to collect litter.
We also introduced a compost bin into the classroom, and spent a few days figuring out what this bin was and what could and could not go into it! We found our outdoor compost bin as well! Next week we will continue our study on our environmental impact and focus on recycling and reusing, before we hop into a growing and garden unit. On Friday buddies joined us in our earth day celebration in the woods! We made a mud "Birthday" cake for the earth, read the Earth book by Tod Parr and continued our celebration with a picnic on the field!
We created our "Share Box" using a recycled shoe box and left over collage material. This share box will go home every few days with a new child, allowing each child time to share some important pieces from their home!
We celebrated Avas birthday on Thursday! Happy Birthday Ava!
