“Who wants to tell a story?!” By far, the most common question asked at the lunch tables in the Early K. Stories hold a lot of weight here. These students have caught the excitement, they love stories and they feel the power in sharing a story. Why does it feel so good to hear …
Can a garden of our imaginations help us work with our real garden on the Opal Playground? We are working hard to get our school garden up and growing this year. The Early K and the Preschool share a garden box that our two classrooms are responsible for. We have been …
Ellen Galinsky in her book Mind in the Making shares a list of concepts that she feels are important in early literacy. She writes: “It’s about expression. Catherine Snow says it’s important to remember that a central purpose of literacy is to communicate. That means not losing sight of the forest for the trees and …
Today we had our first Friend Explore. Explore is a time we have daily in the Early K where students choose a part of the classroom they would like to explore through play; Friend Explore is an idea we are experimenting with – it is a time for students to focus on exploring new relationships …
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." -William Butler Yeats So much has happened, can it really only be the end of the second full week of school? Students have moved through their initial apprehension for the most part, have begun to learn each others names in earnest …
So far we have had two days of school in the Early K and I feel like I have learned and been reminded of so many things, so many treasures. Reminders like how quickly we make assumptions about people – students in our class – and what we expect they will do or like AND …
I always find myself at this time of year, in the small quiet moments of the day, reflecting on and evaluating what has or has not happened this year. I evaluate myself, my choices, think about the students and the path we took together; where we came from and where we have ended up. Some …
Read more “Reflections on Small Moments – implications of our work”
As a class, the children in our Opal 2 community are asked to form relationships with each other by virtue of being members of the classroom. These relationships evolve over the course of the year, some new, some renewed from previous years. Some children form deep connections, some children work through great struggles. Being aware …
We have been fortunate this year in that we have had a resident apprentice teacher working with us who is a storyteller. Avery has a great love of telling stories, but also an intense curiosity about the role story telling can play in a child’s education. We worked out a three week story telling unit …
In Opal 2 so far this year have learned to appreciate bugs, to be comfortable with them and truly, to love and care for them. We think they are amazing and beautiful, wise and strong. We are ready now to broaden our view and to think about bugs in context – in the context of …