Category Archives: Curriculum

Using an “Open Door Day” to Share the Values of School Experiences with Families

A few times a year, the teachers at LCP work together to plan an “Open Door Day” for families – a day in which family members are invited to be part of classroom activities.

These events are organized around a specific topic – often an area of learning in which families have recently expressed an interest. In this model, each classroom is set up with activities that relate to the learning area under consideration. Signs are available for families to read about possible questions to ask and/or things to look for as they play with the children, and samples of children’s work are on display.

In addition to this classroom time, a brief discussion is planned for families to participate in as they arrive.  While this discussion is in progress, children have a chance to start their morning using their typical beginning of day “rituals”. Families are oriented to the topic under consideration, and have an opportunity to ask any questions they may have. We also set up documentation in our shared hallways featuring children’s work and projects. By mid-morning family members begin to say their goodbyes. Handouts are placed in all the children’s cubbies so that the whole community shares information, even if family members didn’t have the opportunity to stay and play.

Our first “Open Door Day” this year was centered around prewriting. The goal of this Open Door was to highlight the complexity of the writing process: the values of child-led experiences with writing, some of the many diverse ways to support the physical development necessary for writing – including sensory play, and fine motor activities – that do not require writing tools or table work. Before the Open Day, we invited children to “write a message” for their family members to see when they came to school. These were then posted to our hallway display. We always prepare the children for the reality that not everyone will be able to come or stay for the whole time, and invite children to re-visit displays and experiences with their family members when they arrive or leave school over the next few weeks.

We hope you’ll take a look at these photos from our recent Prewriting and Fine Motor Development Open Door Day.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What I Did this Summer at Learning Circle Preschool

We’ve just finished another wonderful summer experience at Learning Circle Preschool!
The Summer Science and Arts Program at Learning Circle Preschool is an integrated arts enrichment program with a focus on the natural sciences, storytelling and puppetry, art, music and creative movement.

Each day, the program includes time for children to participate in activities featuring science, the visual arts, construction and music/creative movement, along with time for snack, free play activities and outdoor play, in a highly individualized and nurturing setting. Teachers observe the children’s interests and, guided by an understanding of child development, organize the curriculum to extend the children’s thinking and knowledge about topics of importance to them.

Teachers are partners in learning with the children, and model the curiosity, research and documentation skills, ability to ask questions, and engagement over time that are hallmarks of deep learning. Diverse experiences, learning styles and interests are all valued as children and teachers cooperate together to create a “community of learners.”
The result is an experience that is both fun and serious – children actively involved in playing and learning at the same time.To see this in action, look at the pictures in the gallery.

On the last day in session, parents are invited to join the program for presentations and activities planned by teachers with the children.

It’s not surprising that, given the natural environment surrounding the school, the children were very interested in investigating woodland habitats, especially the wide variety of birds we heard and saw daily around our playground. Children also developed their observation skills as they examined the many types of insects, worms and spiders inhabiting the playground and other freer areas around the school. Butterflies capture everyone’s imagination!

Teachers offered some basic gardening experiences to the children early in the program so that we could all take care of our gardens over time. Our first task was to think together about what new plants would need, and to prepare some gardening spaces. We planted seeds and plants during the first week, including chard, beans, peas, tomatoes, pepper, and a variety of herbs. We planted flower container gardens as well, with a variety of sizes and colors of marigolds. Everyday jobs have included watering our gardens and checking to see if our other plants need water. The garden did well enough for children to enjoy a few harvests.

We found that the group of children attending this summer were all very interested in creating and constructing with a variety of recyclable materials, tape and glue. Children worked on individual projects over many days, and decided to work on one collaborative project (a fire truck) all together. This took a great deal of planning, coming to consensus, problem-solving, working together, listening, and researching in addition to the construction itself!

If we shared one “big theme” this summer, it was about forces in motion. What is wind? What makes a wave? Why do some objects roll and others slide? How can we design ramp systems for balls to roll faster or slower? How does a pump work? How can we move water from one container to another?

There are always many stories unfolding when children come together and begin to form a classroom community. Some of those stories attract the attention of the group as a whole, and these become central themes that teachers can support with conversation, materials and time. The examples above are only a small sample of the many experiences the children shared this summer.

Many of these summer “stories” and interests will inform our decisions on experiences to continue to offer children this fall, as a new classroom context begins to unfold. We look forward to continuing this learning dialog!

Enjoy these summer program photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What Can We Do with a Leaf?

This is a wonderful time of year for collecting diverse materials from nature for play and education. The “loose parts”* that we can find all around us offer many diverse opportunities for sensory play, focused observation and exploration. We concentrate on color, shape, symmetry and other properties, and research into where these items come from, grow and change over time. And when we encourage the open-ended creative and imagination-rich exploration of these materials, children can show us eye-opening and varied ways to use them to realize their ideas.

Most recently the children have been especially interested in using leaves. How many ways can we use a leaf? Can we combine them to make something new? Can we sort them? How are they the same and how are they different? Do we enjoy their textures when they are fresh and when they dry out? Have we watched them falling from the trees or blowing in the wind? What sounds do we hear when we walk through leaves? What else can we notice about our leaves?

By watching the children and listening to their ideas, teachers can get a window into the children’s thinking and motivations, and can extend opportunities.

Books can be sources of inspiration and information. Here are a few that have been in the classrooms recently:
A Leaf Can Be by Laura Purdie Salas
Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber
Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert
Red Leaf Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert
We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger
Autumn Leaves by Ken Robbins

*There is a growing conversation among educators about ways to incorporate “loose parts” – materials that can be used by children in their own unique and open-end ways – in support of play, divergent thinking, problem solving and learning that is child-driven.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

The Learning Circle Preschool and Kindergarten offers visits to prospective families Saturday November 6, 2021 and by appointment through the fall

Now is the time to think about registrations for preschool for the 2022-2023 academic year! It may seem early if your child is just 2 years old, but now is the time to start planning for preschool.

Parents looking for preschool or transitional kindergarten options for the academic year beginning September 2022 are invited to tour our classrooms at 3 Blue Hill River Road, Canton on the morning of Saturday November 6th, 2021. We ask that interested families call or email the school to set a time for an individual indoor tour for the morning of the 6th. Weather-permitting, the playground will be open for those waiting.

The Director, Katrina Selawsky, will be on hand to describe the program and answer any questions you may have about the school, its mission, and the enrollment process.

Learning Circle Preschool, accredited by NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children) offers morning programs with two, three, or five-day options, afternoon enrichment programs, an option for early arrival (7:30 a.m.) and extended day options that run until 4:30 pm. Facilities include three state of the art, open, sunny and spacious classrooms, a welcome room with library and a spacious playground at the foot of the Blue Hills, and features a highly individualized, creative, and engaging curriculum.

With a curriculum inspired by the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, children enjoy engaging, hands on experiences that build a strong foundation for learning with individual attention and project work in small groups, respectful and nurturing interactions, opportunities to plan, reflect on, and work on projects over time, and an integrated language arts, creative arts and science curriculum. Features include:

• An emergent curriculum model developed from observations of the children’s play
• A focus on projects and collaborative learning
• An integrated approach to learning using the graphic arts as tools for both cognitive and social development
• Carefully organized and aesthetically pleasing classrooms and common spaces
• An understanding that the school environment can teach, and sets a tone for a comfortable and engaging place for learning.

The children’s work is extensively documented using photographs, the children’s own drawings, dictations from the children, and videos of classroom projects in action. This documentation helps teachers develop curriculum meaningful to the children, and helps children remember and share their experiences together. Documentation also gives family members a concrete picture of each child’s day at school.

Parents enjoy on-going communication, detailed documentation of each child’s growth and development shared in a portfolio system, newsletters and other written information about the program distributed regularly, parent meetings and discussion groups on educational and parenting issues, and a welcoming attitude towards parent participation in the program.
Class sizes typically range from 10-14 students, each with two highly qualified and experienced co-teachers. Decisions about placements for the fall of 2022 will begin to be made in December.
Please email the Director, Katrina Selawsky at info@learningcirclepreschool.org or call 781-828-4800 for more information or to arrange a tour of the facility if the November 6th date is inconvenient. This year, tours are arranged for late afternoons (when most children have gone) or Saturday mornings.

Learning Circle Preschool
info@learningcirclepreschool.org
www.learningcirclepreschool.org
781-828-4800

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

A Turtle and Tortoise Project with a Focus on Helping Keep Wildlife Safe

In her article, The Project Approach to Early Childhood Education, Lilian Katz, PhD. highlights how projects support children’s “dispositions to be curious, to make sense of experience and to explore the environment.” Projects offer children opportunities to investigate a topic in depth and they are an important approach to learning at our school.

The teachers here at LCP incorporate many features described in Dr. Katz’s article: choosing an interesting and meaningful topic, encouraging children to generate questions to investigate, making predictions, comparing and reflecting on results and representing theories and ideas through a variety of media. We also stress the collaborative nature of projects to help support a “community of learners” in which we value the ideas and contributions of each child while reinforcing that our experiences are enriched and deepened by the perspectives and insights of others.

Take a recent project on Turtles and Tortoises. The project began when a child at lunch mentioned that his family re-uses their straws. Children asked why and he said that they do it to “save the turtles” All the children were interested in hearing more.

As children shared what they know about turtles, it became clear that some children wondered about how a turtle and a tortoise are different, and wondered if all turtles live in water. So before thinking more about how straws impact turtles, the group decided to find out more about both turtles and tortoises and clarify the differences between them. In the process, the children generated a list of questions they wanted to research.

Where to research? Teachers offered a variety of books with information and small groups looked at photos and other related information online. (Although as a school we don’t use computers much, we do take advantage of photos, live cams and other videos from museums, researchers and other reputable sources to enrich classroom research).
Children then took opportunities to express what they learned through clay work and drawings.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As children collected answers to some of their questions, conversations returned to the problem of straws for turtles and to thinking about how the choices people make have impact on the health and safety of wildlife.

The children generated a list of possible next steps and actions to take, including contacting the New England Aquarium to see if someone would talk to the children or share resources, and making a flyer that could be shared with other people about ways to help keep turtles safe.

The children worked together to dictate a letter to the Aquarium and sent it. Although the letter itself did not receive a response, a call made to the Aquarium did lead to a conversation between New England Aquarium staff and teachers, leading to new ideas and  resources for the children.

The children worked together to create a flyer and helped distribute it to everyone in our school. There was some talk of bringing the flyer to our local libraries so that the children’s message could impact a larger community – a firm decision about that hasn’t been made yet.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Just as Dr. Katz suggests in her article, the Turtle and Tortoise project offers children strong motivation to develop their academic skills as they expand vocabulary, document through both pictures and words, measure and compare, make predictions, and collect information from books as they make connections to their personal experience and knowledge. And this project offered children the opportunity to take personal action on behalf of the turtles – to use what they found out in a meaningful way to try to make a difference and help.

Some projects will last all year. Others, like the Turtle and Tortoise Project, have a clear beginning, middle and end. Not every project will involve every child. But it’s exciting to watch them develop!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.