Just Another Week in Preschool!

Oct 24, 2017 | All School, Preschool News

Head of Preschool Kelly Kelly, Preschool Head of Learning & Innovation Erin Carey, and Prekindergarten teacher Kate Canady were invited by the Doyen SchoolΒ in Beijing, China to lead professional learning for their early childhood teachers (all expenses paid!).Β As a certified project approach trainer, Erin has fostered international relationships with other schools interested in furthering their understanding of project-based, inquiry-driven curriculum models with younger students. Kelly, Erin, and Kate are excited to highlight the high level work of our own teachers, and bring back a global perspective on early childhood education from the other side of the world.
Meanwhile, back at Mount Vernon:
Miss Nicole & Miss Tammy (Early Preschool): We are continuing documentation as a form of reflection in our room, We will implement it during our small groups as a part of our daily routine. Also we are painting and decorating pumpkins this week.
Miss Anne & Miss Shawn (Early Preschool): This week we will be exploring, sorting, and painting pumpkins and gourds. Our class will also be diving into our fire alarm project by experimenting with making alarm sounds and adding firefighter outfits to our dramatic play center.
Miss Ashlee & Miss Tammy (Early PreK): Our piano project is taking off. We will be making individual keyboards this week as well as investigating how the piano works.
Miss Shann & Miss Molly (Early PreK): We are continuing to work on our Bridge project. This week we are going to introduce suspension bridges. We are going to team up with 5th and 6th grade makers classes to design a bridge we can build for the frontier together. We will talk about different materials used to build bridges.
Miss Kate & Miss Elizabeth (PreK): Our Pre-K class is continuing to investigate how we might construct our own Queen Building. This week we going to use each child’s specific interest to divide into teams to accomplish this task. After our field site visit to the Queen Building and reading a variety of construction books we’ve decided to develop the following teams: Architecture Team, Electrical Team, Crown Team, Elevator Team, General Construction Team, and Crane Team.
Miss Stacey & Miss Liz (Young Fives): After completing our scarecrow for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens’ Scarecrows in the Garden and taking a field trip to see it, the Young Fives moved on to an interest in simple machines, especially pulleys. They experimented with ramps and wheels, observed a machine on the Glenn Campus that extracts soil for engineers to test before laying the foundation for the new building. Mr. Steve showed us how the flagpole uses a pulley to move the flag up and down, which was exciting! We worked with tinker toys and recycled material to see how we might be able to make our own pulleys.