This week is very exciting for us because all the plans are now in review with the county. We are just days away from getting a shovel into the ground. We will let you know the second that happens. In fact, you may hear us shouting from the mountaintops!
We are also thrilled that we have received a grant from the Creative Curriculum Technical Assistance Project through Child Care Services Association. This grant will allow our teachers to be given the opportunity to learn and utilize the Creative Curriculum materials in our classrooms. The Creative Curriculum is a research-based program that helps teachers plan and implement a developmentally appropriate program. There are five components in the program: How Children Develop and Learn, The Learning Environment, What Children Learn, The Teacher's Role, and The Family's Role. The five components are then applied to interest areas such as art, dramatic play, discovery, music and so on. It is meant to be a blueprint that we can interpret and incorporate into our established program, which works perfectly for us. We hope that we will learn from this, but we also feel that we will be affirmed because we are already a strong program.
One of the main objectives of The Creative Curriculum is observing children and creating curriculum that correlates with our observations. This is what we do and who we are everyday. We, of course, already knew that we were cutting edge prior to this acknowledgment. Which leads us to this week's glimpse...
GLIMPSE: The Portfolio
From our inception we have struggled with finding an appropriate way to report our daily events to our families. The idea of handing a mom or a dad a piece of paper at the end of the day listing how many "poops" or "pees" we had during the day has just never sat well with us. It is just not who we are. Instead, we have really struggled to find a way to first describe what we see, second apply it to our children developmentally, and finally to report it to the parents in a way that
is brief enough to happen every day, but also profound enough to truly capture the experiences our parents miss during the day. This has been quite a conundrum for us.
In 2007, we hired Silva Stumpf to be a lead teacher in our preschool classroom. She shared this dream of creating a better system and worked intensively with Jennifer to create what is now our portfolio. Each child is observed and measured in about thirty different rubrics that
capture social, cognitive and emotional development. How it works:
The teachers begin the year with an assessment of each child that is then updated and supported throughout the year as the teachers record their observations.
The teachers document their observations with written narrative as well as photographs.
The teachers in their team meetings discuss their observations and methods of improving their means of noticing the children's unique abilities and struggles.
We meet as a team several times a year to share our ideas school-wide.
In the end, we have developed a great starting point in our current portfolio. In the future we are planning to continue to think about new ways to SEE the children. Over the past two years we have gotten better and better at this. We can't wait to see where we take this system in
the future.
Thanks so much for reading along with us. We know that the question on everyone's mind is: Are you still on time to open in September? We want to reassure you all that as of this day no one has even suggested that we are running behind schedule.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Week 3: Ground Breaking Cake
We arrived today and were met
with the most wonderful surprise.
with the most wonderful surprise.
The children in our Preschool Class, along with our teachers Miss Laura, Mr.Sean and Miss May, and dear friend/classroom mom/school supporter Jennifer Goulet, all worked secretly this week to create the most incredible cake.
It is called the "Ground-Breaking Cake" and it is just fantastic.
We planned to present a new glimpse this week as well as a description of project-based learning, but after seeing the cake, and the plans that were created to bring the project to fruition, we have decided that the children have spoken for us.
We planned to present a new glimpse this week as well as a description of project-based learning, but after seeing the cake, and the plans that were created to bring the project to fruition, we have decided that the children have spoken for us.
For those of you who don't know us, Christa is the brown haired beauty in front of the bulldozer and Jennifer is the stunning blond. Don't we look happy!
Below we present a photo essay that we call:
"Project-Based Learning at the Little School."
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Hello Everyone and Welcome Back to Our Blog!
We have had an incredibly busy week as we have finished up our first wave of enrollment. Most of our current families have returned their intention forms for their currently enrolled children as well as their enrollment forms for their other entering children. We are so excited about having all of the siblings join us. For some of our families we are welcoming their third children into the school. It is such a blessing to have that kind of history with a family. In case we haven't said so already, we really love our families and can't think of anything better than spending another four or five years together.
We have also invited a few former families to return to us with new children. In all we have three alumni families returning to the school. It has been so much fun visiting with our now grown-up former students as they have proudly introduced us to their new baby brother or sister.
Those of you on our Duke waiting list should have received an email from us by today. This first note was a test email. Some of you have been waiting quite some time so we wanted to be sure that we had up-to-date email addresses for all of you. If you did not receive a test email you should have received a phone call from Miss Mary letting you know that we were not able to reach you. If you are a Duke family and you did not receive an email or a phone call we need you to call the school at 644-1818 and ask to speak to Mary so that we can be sure that we get your invitation to enroll to you. We will send out our official invitations by email on Monday, March 16, 2009 for all Duke families.
You will have two weeks to respond letting us know who you are enrolling and what kind of care you need. Please be sure to get your responses turned into us by no later than Friday, March 27, 2009. Please call the school office if you have any questions at all about any of this.
For those of you who are on the waiting list but not a Duke family, we will begin your enrollment on Monday, March 30, 2009. Please look for future blog instructions as we get closer to March 30, 2009.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
We have begun a conversation with the Orange County transportation folks about a new program. We will be offering LIMITED after school opportunities for elementary school-aged children. The program will be run at the Waterstone campus and its focus will be Reggio-Emilia-inspired, cooperative, arts-focused and SO MUCH FUN! We intend to make this the MOST fun and engaging after school program ANYWHERE. Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about this offering. We will update this information as we gather more information.
GLIMPSE:
This weeks Glimpse was a toss-up for us. We have two things that we really want to tell you about. In the end we decided to break our own rules and give you two looks into the new school!
Glimpse 1: As we dreamed about the new building we had so many ideas about things that children would find whimsical and fanciful. Many of our ideas were focused on ways to manipulate our light to provide the children with multiple opportunities to experience and interact with natural light in the classroom environment and out. We want windows that invite interaction with the outdoors. In our first idea, we asked our design team to place the windows in the classrooms as child-heights.
If you think about most buildings it is clear that they are designed with adults only in mind. We wanted not only the adults to realize that they are in a child-centered building, but the children to also be clear that the building is for them.
Glimpse 2: Once we started thinking about the windows our minds went wild and we began to try to imagine the classrooms from the children's perspectives. We wanted an environment that had both large and small spaces and places where children could go to where there was minimal distraction, or interruption. We also envisioned a place where children could see outside of their environment. We raised the idea of having a window that looked from one classroom into another. Our architect, David, took that idea and pushed it a little further- literally. He actually pushed the rooms out so that there is small nook in each room that is only four feet tall. The nooks abut the nooks in the next room and the adjoining walls are made of glass so that children in one room can see children in the next through the window. Each nook also has a small window that looks out onto the courtyard. Our hope is that we will use these nooks to invite interaction between the children as well as with the outdoors while also giving them a comforting, safe space to just "be".
We have also invited a few former families to return to us with new children. In all we have three alumni families returning to the school. It has been so much fun visiting with our now grown-up former students as they have proudly introduced us to their new baby brother or sister.
Those of you on our Duke waiting list should have received an email from us by today. This first note was a test email. Some of you have been waiting quite some time so we wanted to be sure that we had up-to-date email addresses for all of you. If you did not receive a test email you should have received a phone call from Miss Mary letting you know that we were not able to reach you. If you are a Duke family and you did not receive an email or a phone call we need you to call the school at 644-1818 and ask to speak to Mary so that we can be sure that we get your invitation to enroll to you. We will send out our official invitations by email on Monday, March 16, 2009 for all Duke families.
You will have two weeks to respond letting us know who you are enrolling and what kind of care you need. Please be sure to get your responses turned into us by no later than Friday, March 27, 2009. Please call the school office if you have any questions at all about any of this.
For those of you who are on the waiting list but not a Duke family, we will begin your enrollment on Monday, March 30, 2009. Please look for future blog instructions as we get closer to March 30, 2009.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
We have begun a conversation with the Orange County transportation folks about a new program. We will be offering LIMITED after school opportunities for elementary school-aged children. The program will be run at the Waterstone campus and its focus will be Reggio-Emilia-inspired, cooperative, arts-focused and SO MUCH FUN! We intend to make this the MOST fun and engaging after school program ANYWHERE. Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about this offering. We will update this information as we gather more information.
GLIMPSE:
This weeks Glimpse was a toss-up for us. We have two things that we really want to tell you about. In the end we decided to break our own rules and give you two looks into the new school!
Glimpse 1: As we dreamed about the new building we had so many ideas about things that children would find whimsical and fanciful. Many of our ideas were focused on ways to manipulate our light to provide the children with multiple opportunities to experience and interact with natural light in the classroom environment and out. We want windows that invite interaction with the outdoors. In our first idea, we asked our design team to place the windows in the classrooms as child-heights.
If you think about most buildings it is clear that they are designed with adults only in mind. We wanted not only the adults to realize that they are in a child-centered building, but the children to also be clear that the building is for them.
Glimpse 2: Once we started thinking about the windows our minds went wild and we began to try to imagine the classrooms from the children's perspectives. We wanted an environment that had both large and small spaces and places where children could go to where there was minimal distraction, or interruption. We also envisioned a place where children could see outside of their environment. We raised the idea of having a window that looked from one classroom into another. Our architect, David, took that idea and pushed it a little further- literally. He actually pushed the rooms out so that there is small nook in each room that is only four feet tall. The nooks abut the nooks in the next room and the adjoining walls are made of glass so that children in one room can see children in the next through the window. Each nook also has a small window that looks out onto the courtyard. Our hope is that we will use these nooks to invite interaction between the children as well as with the outdoors while also giving them a comforting, safe space to just "be".
Friday, March 6, 2009
Week 2 A Busy Week Behind the Scenes
It has been a very busy week behind the scenes. We are meeting later on this afternoon with our complete team to discuss the upcoming construction schedule. We are meeting our grading contractor for the first time. It still surprises us to see so many faces sitting around the table at these meetings. We truly feel like the owners of a little school but our team implies that we have become much bigger. We have received many re-enrollment forms from our current families. It is amazing to us to look around and see all of the siblings coming into the school. We have seen the birth of fifteen future Little Schoolers this year ,and it is going to be so much fun to watch them grow with us.
Just as a reminder... The current families have until March 13th to return their re-enrollment forms. We will then send out the invitation to enroll to our Duke waiting list on March 16th. If you are a Duke family waiting, and you do not receive an email from us on that day please call the school in the afternoon and speak to Mary. Alternately,you can also send an email to: christaniven@thelittleschool.net and we will be sure to get you your invitation. We will begin our general enrollment on April 6th.
This was a very busy week for outside enrollment also. We gave several tours and took many phone calls from families hoping to enroll for the fall. It is so nice for us to be able to tell families that we can enroll them. It was always our goal to serve the unmet childcare need in our corner of Orange County. The truth is that we had no idea how great that need truly is. It is so hard to have to tell families who have been waiting to enter the school that we STILL don't have a spot. Please know that we are loving every minute of this time of saying "Yes, please join us!"
As we look to next week we will be waiting for our final approvals from the town. Once those have been received we will begin the site work. Our plan is to have a ground breaking party just after the grading is completed but before the foundation work begins. Please continue to read for updates on that.We want to start something new this week. We are going to call it a "Glimpse" and we will add one every week.
This week's Glimpse is: At the new school we will host community events one Friday per month from May-October. We are calling these get togethers "Family Fridays." We will hold these events on the courtyard of the Waterstone Campus. Current families from both campuses as well as prospective families and friends will be invited to join us. Our first Family Friday will be scheduled as soon as it is safe for us to be at the Waterstone campus this summer. We are planning to have live music and dancing at this first event. Chef Nate will prepare basket dinners in advance for families to pick up when they arrive.We see these events as opportunities for our families to get to know each other, and to continue our small school atmosphere even though our community is growing.
We get so excited even thinking about these events! Please send us any suggestions that you have for other Family Friday's. Some of our other ideas include: movies on the lawn, stories and shadow play, and our ever popular and favorite event of the year: the Fall Bonfire!
Thanks so much for all of your support and encouragement. We truly are the greatest school community ever. We can't wait until we are all together in the fall.
Christa & Jennifer
Just as a reminder... The current families have until March 13th to return their re-enrollment forms. We will then send out the invitation to enroll to our Duke waiting list on March 16th. If you are a Duke family waiting, and you do not receive an email from us on that day please call the school in the afternoon and speak to Mary. Alternately,you can also send an email to: christaniven@thelittleschool.net and we will be sure to get you your invitation. We will begin our general enrollment on April 6th.
This was a very busy week for outside enrollment also. We gave several tours and took many phone calls from families hoping to enroll for the fall. It is so nice for us to be able to tell families that we can enroll them. It was always our goal to serve the unmet childcare need in our corner of Orange County. The truth is that we had no idea how great that need truly is. It is so hard to have to tell families who have been waiting to enter the school that we STILL don't have a spot. Please know that we are loving every minute of this time of saying "Yes, please join us!"
As we look to next week we will be waiting for our final approvals from the town. Once those have been received we will begin the site work. Our plan is to have a ground breaking party just after the grading is completed but before the foundation work begins. Please continue to read for updates on that.We want to start something new this week. We are going to call it a "Glimpse" and we will add one every week.
This week's Glimpse is: At the new school we will host community events one Friday per month from May-October. We are calling these get togethers "Family Fridays." We will hold these events on the courtyard of the Waterstone Campus. Current families from both campuses as well as prospective families and friends will be invited to join us. Our first Family Friday will be scheduled as soon as it is safe for us to be at the Waterstone campus this summer. We are planning to have live music and dancing at this first event. Chef Nate will prepare basket dinners in advance for families to pick up when they arrive.We see these events as opportunities for our families to get to know each other, and to continue our small school atmosphere even though our community is growing.
We get so excited even thinking about these events! Please send us any suggestions that you have for other Family Friday's. Some of our other ideas include: movies on the lawn, stories and shadow play, and our ever popular and favorite event of the year: the Fall Bonfire!
Thanks so much for all of your support and encouragement. We truly are the greatest school community ever. We can't wait until we are all together in the fall.
Christa & Jennifer
