Developmentally Appropriate Practice

Morgan and I spent part of our day organizing, cleaning, creating curriculum, and planning field trips. We also spent a good chunk of time working on the bigger picture. We took an online course offered by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) about Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP). One of the ideas that resonated for both of us is that DAP is not a recipe. It's a way of recognizing and building on the strengths of children, using joyful and engaging learning experiences. It's about valuing play as a crucial place of learning and understanding the importance of context (for students, teachers, families, and communities). We talked about where we are meeting these goals and where we could improve. The whole experience reminded me how grateful I am for our little school and our community of supporters. Thank you for giving us that space!

Morgan's PK and K Class

* Worked on cutting and gluing skills.

* Worked in our writers' notebooks on different ideas as follow-ups from our stories read with the older children.

* Talked about what their favorite things about Fall are and what they would like to do for some activities this upcoming week. They were excited to be able to have a say in their learning!

* Explored shaving cream, coffee grounds, clay, water droppers, slime, looked for bugs and wooly bears!

* Worked on different counting and letter identification games.

* Sang songs and finger plays!

Tracy's 1st - 4th Grade Class

In math, we have been working on creating a ballpark estimate to help us check our answers for accuracy. We also talked this week about perimeter and area. Our second grade class has been working with different addition strategies like making ten and using helper double facts.

Everyone has been very excited to share their writing projects with the rest of the school. This week we learned about Florida, African Dance, and Ocean Life. The rest of the students had lots of questions for the presenters. We even got to sample some key lime pie.

In reading, we paused from our regular reading groups to read about rocks from Conservationist Kids. We read some articles in depth and practiced looking for key information from others. It was a nice review of some science vocabulary we have seen before. We are continuing our word work as we look at word roots and word families.

Theme: Human Body

We did some close examination of our skeletal system this week. Two students repaired our mini skeleton, and the children noticed all sorts of interesting things about the skeleton.

"It looks like it has a tail."

"The arms and legs each have one big bone and then a pair of bones."

"The jaw isn't really attached."

We poked around our own body to find our vertebrae, tried to count our finger bones, and discovered different types of joints. We discussed the shape of bones and played with paper cylinders to discover just how strong they can be. Ask your child how many blocks balanced on their cylinder "bone."