Perky Preschool

We ended the week with one of the most important events in preschool. They had a sleepover and truly had a meaningful and memorable experience!   This night served several important developmental and emotional purposes: Builds Independence Spending a night away from home helps children practice being independent in a safe and familiar environment. It boosts their confidence and helps them feel capable of managing themselves without parents for a short time. Strengthens Social Bonds A sleepover allows children to bond more deeply with their classmates and teachers. These shared experiences can strengthen friendships and build a sense of community within the classroom. Teaches Responsibility Children learn to pack their belongings, follow routines, and take care of their personal needs with gentle guidance, all of which are foundational life skills. Strengthens Relationships Socially, the sleepover strengthens friendships and creates shared memories that help children feel conne...

Children use imagination to write poems and create artworks in wonderfully instinctive and unfiltered ways.  They are not constrained by thinking or grammar rules and truly believe simple things in life.  This kind of imaginative freedom allows them to create words and images that we might not even consider. They use personal experience and reimagine things. They write freely without filter and   mix real life with fantasy to create rich, expressive writing. They can use this form of writing to develop self-confidence and connections with themselves and others.  In Artwork, they use their creative imagination to create symbolic representation that we, as adults, could never have imagined.  Children represent the world how they feel it, not just how they see it.  Their artworks become a portal to an entirely new worlds. In this unit on  how we express ourselves,  preschoolers will be encouraged to use: Open-ended materials (like...

  APPROACHES TO LEARNING (ATLs) Preschoolers develop sets of skills and strategies that aim to help them become self-regulated and life-long learners. They develop different ways that help them "learn how to learn". RESEARCH SKILLS The preschoolers went through the process of gathering information to support their inquiry about living things.  Each group focused on one animal group. They worked collaboratively with their group and used different strategies to ensure that each member did their part as a responsible member.   COMMUNICATION SKILLS After the research, they (synthesized) sorted out the information. They wrote down the important details to share.  Lastly, they took turns reading and explaining their presentation.    THINKING SKILLS As thinkers, they used their knowledge and critical thinking skills to answer questions. They confidently responded to each question from the class.    TAKING ACTION It is the goal of the IB to develop studen...

Communication is important to develop understanding. As we begin with the Finding out stage of our inquiry, the preschoolers gathered together to sort the different animal pictures. They were encouraged to talk about their sorting and explained how they decided to sort and why.  As these little inquirers are still expanding on their English vocabulary, they were supported with a variety of prompts. Together with the developing language skills, they are also still developing a deeper sense of thinking skills to build foundations for later problem-solving skills.  Asking a lot of open and leading questions as prompts helped support the inquiry.  At the end of the activity, the preschoolers came up with 6 animal groups: mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, insects and fish Together with their group they used and schemed our class unit books.  They looked at resources to find information about the animal group they chose. They supported one another to understand the inf...

Let's Tune In! It was a busy but productive week for these little 's cientists '. It didn't take them a long time to delve in instantly with the new unit on 'How the world works'.  To prepare them to new inquiries, it is important for us to unlock words that will be used throughout the unit.  Living and nonliving things The students did a sorting activity and it took a lot of discussions - agreeing and disagreeing. Finally, we all decided to simply group the pictures into two: living and nonliving things.    The preschoolers described the characteristics of living things: .. they grow .. they need food and water .. breathe .. they can feel .. need to rest or sleep .. they can move Brain Frame: Telling Frame Together with their partner, they created a visual tool that helped them organize their thinking. Through this exercise they were able to form connections from the topic to other ideas and concepts.  They started practicing their communication skills as they ...