WALLS!!!!

We have walls! We are so excited that we cannot even express it in words. Please PLEASE drive by and see the progress of the week.

There are LIMITED spaces available in the half-day program for September. Please contact us ASAP to enroll. We will write a mid-week blog on Wednesday with photos of the new rooms. You are also welcome to stop by to see them yourself. They are ADORABLE and we are very excited to see how Rachel and Sean put them together next week.

Glimpse: We want to use this glimpse to share with you our gratitude for the tremendous generosity of our community. We have been receiving many, many donations of toys and interesting pieces of furniture for many months now. One family in particular (they have asked to remain unnamed) has gone above and beyond and we are just so thankful. To those of you asking about where to leave donations, we are very happy and thankful for any of the following items:

1. Outgrown toys.
2. Children's or parenting books.
3. Unique or interesting pieces of furniture big or small- those pieces are what make our program's appearance charming.
4. Kitchen equipment and pots, pans, baking dishes, utensils, etc.
5. Interesting window coverings.

The truth is that we will accept just about any donation and find something wonderful to do with it. As you know, we like to take unusual items and find strange places for them. We are just so thankful that so many of you are thinking of us and helping us to get ready for our opening.

At this point we are still being told that our time line has not changed and that they are hoping for a November certificate of occupancy with a worst case scenario of December 13th. The great news is that we can open the buildings one at a time and we will do exactly that starting with the big classroom building provided that nothing changes the order of building completion. We are truly confident in this time line.

Plants!

This was a great week on site. There were several issues still awaiting resolution including general landscaping, retention pond plantings, and lighting on the site. After much discussion with folks at the town and some of the neighbors those issues have all been solved and we have begun to purchase the plants for the site. We are buying them from a great nursery called Taylor's Nursery in Raleigh. The folks there are going out into the field this week to tag our plants where they grow. They will be deliver mid-November and then we will be doing the installation as a community. If you have any expertise in landscaping or planting and would like to help out with the planning we would love to hear from you soon.

Glimpse: We are beginning to consider the paint effects that we will use throughout the school. Because our children see the world from angles that we as adults don't usually, it is really important that our decorating encompasses the whole space and not just the standard four
walls. For instance, what will the children see when they are being changed? How will we use the ceiling spaces to inspire the children, and or to educate them? Our younger children may spend an hour a day being changed. How can we use the building in that case to enrich that time? Because our building has to have dropped in ceiling tiles in order to meet code we have thousands of squares waiting for us to be creative enough to turn them into murals. What will it all look like?

We are beginning to dream about that now. In the dining room, for instance, we think that the ceiling should look like the sky- maybe as seen through a cracked ceiling??? Or with acoustical tile clouds hanging down at different lengths to diffuse the dropped in lights?

And how about the floors? A standard vinyl tile floor can easily be painted to become the most beautiful and fanciful carpet in a matter of hours. Or a garden? Or a bridge? There is no limit to the wonder that we can create with the building if we see it as a learning tool- and we do!

If you are an artist and you would like to be a part of the planning or the execution of the painting, or if you, like us, are not artists per se, but great artistic support, and you would like to be involved on the painting days we would love to speak to you soon.

Week 10 How Many Lizards is a Fish?

Carter, one of our preschoolers, asked us this morning "How many lizards is a fish?" This question may sound strange, but when considered in the context of child-led investigation, it makes perfect sense. These investigations occur when one of the children has an idea, an inspiration that they begin to think about, talk about, and work out in their minds and through their experiences. Soon, others become interested and before long there is a group of seekers working together, and engaging the staff to get involved in assisting the children until an answer is found.

Carter has spent the past couple of weeks pondering the size, weight, breadth and depth of things. He began trying to create measurement tools to capture his thoughts. Soon others were interested and beforewe knew it, the class was measuring EVERYTHING. Interject one common house lizard, or skink, into this equation. Said skink happened to wander into the school the other day and appeared in the preschool room. Carter quickly went about the task of capturing this skink. While the skink was eventually let free, along the way, he further inspired Carter.

What emerged was a yard stick of sorts that uses lizards as the unit of measure. When he asked us today, "How many lizards is a fish?" he was in fact using his lizard measuring stick to measure the fish in the fish tank. The answer he concluded? It depends upon the fish. Our largest fish in our tank today is about 3/4 of a lizard long. Carter was intrigued by this outcome and when we left the room he was going about the business of adding partial lizard measurements to the stick.

This interaction with Carter brought us to thinking about the ways that we measure a child’s progress as a school. The standard measures used by traditional centers seem inadequate to capture the depth of the child. If we were to only use, for example, the standard developmental milestones we would miss the richness that defines our kids and allows them to shine as individuals. We view child development not just as a series of landmarks to be achieved, but as richly varied experiences through which children construct their understanding of the world. In this, just as learning is an active process in which the child interacts with his or her environment, assessment is also an interactive process between the teacher and the child, in which they enter into a conversation, or exchange of ideas. The teacher gains an understanding of the child’s present level of performance and then facilitates or extends the child’s knowledge of a concept or task. The information gained through the assessment process directly affects the curriculum or experiences offered to the children. Assessment and learning are not separate experiences. Rather, they are linked in the continuous process of learning and interacting experienced by the child.

Our portfolio system is our tool for observation and assessment. Just as we utilize it as a learning tool for our children, we also use it to evaluate ourselves. Our portfolio system is also a work in progress for us as a school as just as it is for each of our children. We are constantly searching for ways that we can modify or fine-tune it to better reflect who the child is and who we are as educators. This week, we were invited to participate in a training on Creative Curriculum given by our Orange County technical assistant. The focus of the training was the importance of observing children and connecting these observations with curricular goals. This was a validating experience for us because much of what was presented to us as “best practice” by the state experts in child development directly reflects what we are doing every day in our classrooms.

This week a group of us also attended a talk on the importance of project-based learning given at the Duke School. The Duke School has been providing research-based, child-centered educational opportunities for children for over twenty-five years and we consider them our heroes and mentors. The talk was so affirming because it again talked about the importance of hearing and seeing the children- or “kid watching”- in order to encourage their growth. We must observe them in order to be able to offer them the support that they need to search further. It is critical that we encourage children in their seeking so that they may solve their own problems and find their own answers- we are just support staff in their wonderful, magical process. In this, by allowing Carter the freedom to pursue his investigation and extend his concept of measurement, we were given the privilege of witnessing the power of learning happen right before our eyes.

Week 7: We Received Our Permit!!!!!!

We received our permit and we are now ready to start. This is so very exciting. It is also another moment of immense gratitude. This week we want to tell you about some of the support that we have received along the way.

We are sure that it is true that most of the time when someone tells a story about any kind of construction project it will begin with a statement that sounds something like this: "It took us 10 years to get our permit. The folks at the county were impossible to deal with! There were a thousand mistakes made at the county level along the way and we received no assistance. If only the county could get itself together...."

We are so pleased to say that our experience was NOTHING like that. In fact, some of our greatest supporters along the way have been the town planners and managers, the county commissioners, the mayor, and the ever-so-wonderful planning director, Margaret Hauth. These folks have been there to answer questions, offer suggestions, commiserate when appropriate, and cheer us on the whole way. We have nothing but the most profound gratitude to offer to them for all of their efforts on our behalf. What a blessing to live and work in a county that is so committed to supporting its local business owners!

Glimpse: When we opened this center we made the decision to create the playground that we now have. We stood looking at it the days before we opened feeling very proud and anticipatory as we imagined all of the fun that the children would have. It was a huge surprise to us when the children arrived and the playground failed to really wow them. We quickly learned that the prepared materials were not nearly as important as the open-ended materials. Things like rocks and sand and mulch captured their imaginations and became "Mountains" and "Streams" and “Castles." The materials so carefully chosen and laid out for them became supporting materials for their incredible fantasy play and rarely were used in the manner intended by the manufacturer. It was a sweet failure for us but also an incredible lesson. Over time we have taken more and more of the prepared away and added as much of the open-ended as we can find. The children are happier and their play is so much more creative.

As we now think about the new playgrounds at the Waterstone Campus we are reconsidering our entire approach. First, we are not going to build "Playgrounds." Rather, we are going to install "Gardens." This subtle change causes a completely new vision to emerge. We are going to fill these areas with as many natural materials as we can and then observe the children's use of the materials. In the same way that we have asked the children to lead our curriculum we are going to ask them to create our gardens. We can't wait to see what they come up with.

Example: We thought it would be helpful for you to have a concrete example. See the photos below.

At our current school we acquired an additional garden about two years ago now. We filled it with boulders, and branches, and sticks of bamboo, and egg-shaped rocks. The children, being so very clever, quickly realized that their new garden area is part of a water run-off for the whole garden. Whenever it rains the water creates a natural "River" in the garden. This fascinated the children. They began to use the materials to outline the new waterway. They used the rocks to create the boundaries and the straw to damn it up. This one little area occupied MONTHS of their time as they played with their ideas and became little engineers as they created better and better methods to contain and capture their water. In the end, we asked some of the parents to donate some time to add concrete to the rock in order to create a permanent structure. When that was done they experimented with various ways to bring water to the area and in the end they asked some more parents to build a hand pump for them. Now, on any day, they are able to bring water to their garden, move it as they wish, and contain it when it better suits them. We think that this is the perfect example to share with you as it is exactly what we hope will happen with our new gardens. With the children in charge it has to be wonderful!