Learning through studies
Our preschool classes engage in at least one big study per semester. The idea for the study comes from the students as they express their interests and explore with one another. Here are a few of the studies from the last several years.
“Wind”
Miss Jen and Miss Amy
During our morning meeting one of the kids noticed the artwork on the wall was flapping. She asked, “Why is that moving?” We turned the question back to the class. They suspected the wind was coming from outside. After discovering the windows were closed, they began to investigate the room, but came up with nothing. For days and days, we observed our art move. They searched high and low and then finally located the origin of the classroom wind, a floor vent.
This discovery sparked the children’s curiosity and led to months of discovery like: searching for vents throughout SMP and graphing our results, exploring a wind room, creating blow art with a straw, going on a wind walk with scarves, measuring wind gusts, observing how wind affects different objects based on their size and weight, listening to wind and drawing what we felt (Light breeze all the way to hurricane wind), discovering the thermostat and discussing why we need them and how they work, inspecting the furnace and guessing how it pushes air up to our classroom
“Friendship”
Miss Kristine
Each school year, all of our students engage in a study of Friendship. Preschool is often the first opportunity for children to participate in and navigate through socializing in a group setting. This study helps the children to see their peers as friends and begins to foster an understanding of how to nurture a friendship.
In daily meetings, the teachers wonder: What is a friend? How many can we have? How do you know someone is your friend? How do we care for our friends? From these discussions, the classes create a Friendship Promise. The promise is made into a poster and hangs in each classroom as a reminder to take care of each other; it becomes a useful communication tool throughout the year.
Other activities include things like creating friendship bracelets to share with one another, learning the language needed to figure out how to share materials, and watching puppet shows put on by the teachers that demonstrate how to be kind. We also make friendship drawings. The children, with the help of our teachers spend time looking at and making observational drawings of each other. It is amazing what they are able to see and understand about their friends!
“Bodies”
Miss Leslie and Miss Amy
During a class meeting the children were building “Mat Man” – a song we sing to learn about the parts of our bodies. One of the children posed a question: “What is the coolest part of the inside of you body?” An exciting discussion ensued with the children all sharing their thoughts about their bodies. The teachers brought in books and posters about the human body for the children to explore, and we invited a doctor to come and talk to the children about the different parts of the body and how they work.
Over time, the children became interested in different parts of the body like the intestines and blood. We followed that interest and did a science experiment that modeled how platelets move in the blood stream. We completed our study by creating a life-sized body using loose parts from our art room to represent the internal organs we had studied.
