Judging from our first week, many fun days lie ahead for our preschool!
In keeping with the change of morning start time (we begin at 9:30 instead of 9 a.m.), our prospective schedule has been revised. Because our lunch time could not be pushed later, and with a careful eye to transitions, our morning includes Free Play time and Time Outdoors and our afternoon features some of the shorter segments including music and movement activities, games and journaling. The rhythm of our day is to provide structure and predictability, but I've also found that in these first few days, the children are just discovering the school and each other. To that end, I've been a bit more relaxed about the afternoon and am actively listening to their conversations in order to best follow their lead and introduce activities which are meaningful to them.
One example of this is a discussion we had this morning at snack about camping. One child shared her impressions about 'camping at the river'. After lunch while the children were playing in the bean bin I brought out the Kid Tent and put it up. Lo and behold, they turned it into a 'tent car' and we all drove together through the sky. While we never seemed to land anywhere, we all had fun driving.
Our time outdoors in the sandbox was so much fun. I had hidden bits of seashells under the sand--some pieces were very large, others quite small, and let the children dig for "treasures". They were repeatedly collected and then returned to the sandbox for hiding once more. Yesterday we took a tour of the garden at rest and planted a little patch of crocus bulbs. We'll see what becomes of our work.
