At Home Sweet Home, adults and youth use observational methodology to understand what children seek to learn as they construct their own knowledge through play. Adults will ask what can be done to model and support children's capacity to problem-solve. This can and must be accomplished without resorting to didactics, which would violate the Reggio principle of respect for the child and the key roles of the child and adult as co-researchers.Adults seek to understand the child's schema: both the category of knowledge and the process of acquiring that knowledge. Care is taken to understand the social context that supports the child's perceptions. Adults will design and place provocations in the children's path that will challenge their abilities and enhance their learning. This is the essence of the Reggio child-initiated/adult-framed model embraced at Home Sweet Home.
HSH Teachers utilize weekly staff check-ins to share their observations, including identifying emerging themes in children's solo and peer play and their points of inquiry. Strategies are created to expand themes within the frame of activities consistently offered at Home Sweet Home and to create additional provocations that would serve the children's curiosity. This may be as subtle as including vocabulary and creating a pattern or as broad as designing an integrated Art and Science project or field trip.
January through March 2012 Thematic Inquiry - WEATHER
- Parent Book Share: Kerry/Mazen "How to Make a Rain-Catcher"
- Cierra/Artensia hold space and time in Morning Meeting for child discussion and facilitate daily weather reports, with each child holding the responsibility of assessment and reporting.
- Sky with children co-creates a "rain-catcher" in the Art Studio using Kerry/Mazen's book.
- Mother Nature (undoubtedly listening) adds variety with a week of hard rain, intermittent weeks of heat and a morning of intense fog. This weather engages the children and supports teachers to know that the group has the interest to support depth work.
- Cierra, Dan and Maria collect vocabulary and using cues from Morning Meeting co-create with children a textural collage Art Piece that visually represents "fog".
- Artensia and children graph rain levels collected in the rain-catcher.
- Sky facilitates playground sciencing with ice and water to highlight concepts of "melting", "condensation" and "evaporation".
- All teachers and Big Friends hold space and time for continued dialogue with children to hear and respond to their perceptions abut "weather". Big Friends are coached to not correct children's perceptions, but through intentional listening to coach children to stronger use of language.
- Kathleen is the teacher-lead on the next field trip: Lafayette Reservoir Play Day on Wed., April 11th. Anticipated outcomes include kite design and flying, parent/teacher/child BBQ pot luck.
Parents are requested to hold time weekly to read the panels and the blog and to intentionally observe the Art, photographs, and books offered in the learning environment; and to read the whiteboards daily - to better understand the ongoing learning embedded in the child's experience at Home Sweet Home. Rather than simply ask a teacher - parents who hold sacred space weekly to process with their child will gain greater knowledge over what is their child's agency, passion and challenges as they construct their own knowledge during their time at Home Sweet Home.
How children learn at Home Sweet Home Preschool is as critical as what they learn. In evidence, as children explore through this current Weather theme, are the following content standards adopted by the State of California for Kindergarten.
CDE - Content Standards Kindergarten
Speaking and Listening Standards
1. Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
Reading Standards
Print Concepts
1. Demonstrate understanding of the organization and features of print.
a. Follow words from right to left, top to bottom, page by page
Mathematics Content Standards
Algebra and Functions
1.1 Identify, sort and classify objects by attribute and identify objects that do not belong
Measurement and Geometry
1.1Compare the length, weight and capacity of objects by making direct comparisons with reference objects
Physical Sciences
1. Properties of materials can be observed, measured and predicted.
b. Students know water can be a liquid or a solid and can be made to change back and forth from one form to another
Earth Sciences
3 Earth is composed of land, air and water.
b. Students know changes in weather occur from day to day and across seasons, affecting Earth and its inhabitants
Investigation and Experimentation
4. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.
a. Observe common objects by using the five senses
b. Describe properties of common objects
c. Describe the relative position of common objects ("above", "below")
d. Compare and sort common objects by one physical attribute (e,g,, color, shape, texture)
e. Communicate observations orally and through drawings.
