preschool report

Luke's summer term has started, and it's a really neat vibe in the classroom. Relaxed and fun! Luke's head teacher, Antoinette, is on vacation during the summer, and the associate teacher, Jenny, gets to be in charge. She reorganized the classroom, has a great group of interns working with her, and is trying out some new curricula approaches. Here's her report from the first week ...

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We’ve had an amazing first week of summer! The children have been busy rediscovering our classroom and exploring new materials. All of the children seem to be enjoying the changes and additions to the room. At first some things took time to get used to. We still have some children walk towards the front door to get to their cubby or go up to the loft looking for a book. When they realize what they have been looking for has moved they chuckle and walk the other way. The new job list has been a huge success. Our revised list has sixteen jobs, so each child has a job for the entire week. The children have been good at reminding teachers of their jobs and checking the list before going home to make sure their job has been done. It has been great hearing about how the children have been helping with chores and now have jobs at home.

Our walks have been extremely exciting with all of the construction going on campus. Watching the road leading towards campus being paved has been exceptionally thrilling. It was interesting to watch two construction vehicles flatten out the dirt and the next day seeing them spray water on the ground in preparation for cement. On one of our walks we stopped at the soccer field and ran, walked, jumped, skipped, and twirled down the track.

On Friday, Sophie and Isabel’s mom, Tonia brought apricots and made fresh apricot jam with us. After talking about knife safety each child was given a cutting board, butter knife and an apricot. At first it was challenging to cut the apricots, but after cutting a few each child was an apricot cutting master. When the last apricot was chopped and put into the pot each child scooped a spoonful of sugar into the pot and the apricots were cooked down into jam. Our afternoon snack of apricot jam and crackers was delicious!

(Now you know where we got the idea to make jam!)