Our 4/5 classroom promotes positive interactions between teacher/child, a sense of belonging to a community, and a love of learning. Children are encouraged to socialize with their peers and play with a purpose. The curiosity and developmental level of each one of our preschoolers is different. Our goal is to arrange our room, lesson plans, and activities in such a way that each child develops at their own rate. In this classroom we offer more days and hours during the week and a focus on kindergarten readiness.
Here’s a peek into the classroom:
Meeting Time
We provide meetings throughout each day to help set the tone for respectful learning. These meetings establish a climate of trust, motivate students to feel significant, create empathy and encourage collaboration all while supporting social, emotional, and academic learning. During this time our 4/5 students focus on a number, letter, color, and shape of the week. On Wednesdays we have our faith based lesson and special visitors. Meetings also incorporate literacy through story telling, music and movement, and classroom responsibilities.
Blocks and Building
Playing with blocks helps children develop their vocabulary, improves their math skills, and teaches them about gravity, balance, and geometry. While building, children are utilizing size, shape, weight, leverage, and balance concepts. As our children explore the blocks and building area, their play will become more and more complex.
Safe Space
The safe space is an area where our children can go, on their own, to change their inner state from upset to composed in order to strengthen learning and self-regulation.
Writing and Art Center
We plan creative activities with your child’s overall development in mind. Here are some ways that our art activities help support our 4/5’s development. We provide various materials to support large and small muscle development, as well as eye-hand coordination. Crayons, markers, and paintbrushes help children practice the fine motor control they will need for writing. This area allows the children’s active imaginations to take form and invent new ways to create. In addition to building creativity and motor skills, these areas help nurture vocabulary, writing to convey meaning, and emergent reading concepts.
Manipulative Center and Table Work
When our 4/5 students are engaging in table work or at our manipulative center, they are refining their fine motor skills such as: grasping, twisting pieces together, and pulling pieces apart. Math, inquiry and engineering play a part in these activities as well. The manipulative area also encourages self-talk, discussion, and language development. Children who are allowed to work independently often engage in self-talk, which promotes self-regulation skills and can help gradually lengthen a child’s attention span.
Library
Our library area is for taking a “picture walk” through the books, learning that letters make up words and for using context clues to determine what the story is about. Often in this area, we hear our students retelling stories that they have heard at home and in class.
Science and Sensory Exploration
Providing such activities for our preschoolers allows for them to process and respond to all sensory stimulation such as: sight, taste, touch, sound and smell. We help facilitate such exploration and naturally encourage children to use scientific processes while they play,create, investigate and explore. Providing sensory activities such as these allows children to process different sensory information, to create stronger connections and respond to the information learned. For our students exploring in the science area helps develop a child’s resourcefulness, particularly their skills at goal-setting, planning, and problem-solving. It also nurtures intellectual curiosity, helping children acquire new ways of asking questions and understanding the world.
Home Living
Our students engage in pretend play to help develop many skills. When they engage in pretend (or dramatic) play, they are actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. Through cooperative and imaginative play, they learn how to take turns, share responsibility, and creatively solve problems.