Everyday the class follows a certain routine. For the first 20 minutes the children take their own attendance and sit at tables with table toys or work on small motor activities such as lacing until all students arrive. Then, circle time is next. Students go to rug and say the "Pledge of Allegiance", sit down and review the month, calendar date and count up to that number.The children discuss the weather by charting and graphing. Last, the children sing the months of the year song. Next, comes story time. After the children are dismissed into play centers: house, blocks, reading/writing and math.
During center time a child will come up one at a time to complete a project. The children rotate play centers every 12 minutes. While the children are playing one of the three teachers go around and try to help the children interact with each other and scaffold fun building, writing and cooking ideas. After about 50 minutes the children will be directed to clean up and get ready for snack. After snack the children will either have playground time or music time. Overall the curriculum covers all uppercase letters, colors, shapes and numbers one through ten.
We focused our observations on two three year old girls who have very different types of play skills. We observed Vanessa who was born, August 29th, 2009, she is very loud and outgoing. Vanessa enjoys learning in whichever way she can. Julia often wants to be the leader in any social activities. Vanessa is a very intelligent, kind, helpful and inquisitive preschooler. We also observed Julia who was born October 3rd, 2009. Julia is very shy and quiet, she does not often talk in class. Julia follows along well with directions and shows her intelligence level without verbal communication. Julia always has a smile on her face and plays alone nicely. Vanessa and Julia both are very intelligent and enjoy the fun learning in school. The children both listen, share and play very nice but yet exhibit very different types of play skills.
