Building Community

  

Thursday morning our 9th grade visitors arrived bright and early and were eager to join our Morning Meeting and meet our Cardinal family!  The five friends that joined our class were Armstrong, Michael,  Mia , Ella and Cierra.  Our friends introduced themselves and we learned that several of the Upper School students had been in our Early Childhood program when they were 3 and 4 and a few of the other friends had siblings that attended our program. Some of our children recognized our new friends from attending our summer camp program where these Upper School students were counselors in some fashion.   In fact, Mia remember when she was in Paula's class when she first started school at 3 years old!

The children were extremely receptive and interested in connecting with the older students from the moment they arrived. The 9th graders became involved in all  aspects of our our Choice time activities and the joy from the children was in the air! Block building, house, drawing , reading books and Magna Tiles were just a few of the areas where our Cardinal friends connected with our new friends. 

After Choice Time , we introduced a very special math activity that would take us outdoors. We introduced the concept of a scavenger hunt.  The children were presented with beautiful picture cards of items that needed to be found in completing the scavenger hunt! We divided into 5 groups and each group had a set of pictures and a bag for collecting the items found outdoors! We all walked  together to a beautiful shaded area between the Meeting House and Middle School and began our hunt!  The game involved number recognition, measurement and one-to-one correspondence.  The children needed to work collaboratively and cooperatively to complete this game.  "Look what I found!  I have an acorn", "This stick is too big! It doesn't fit", and "Here... I 'll show you where we found pine cones " were just a few of the many  quotes we heard as the children were searching and working together.  

One of the challenges was to fine two sticks that were the same size and the children immediately started to measure and compare their findings!

Building a sense of community is an important goal and cornerstone of our school and Early Childhood program.  We have begun to develop of sense of community within our Cardinal classroom  as well as with our larger community of being part of our AFS Lower School.  The children have had several experiences over the first few weeks of school that have helped to foster our goals. Inside our classroom we have begun our Community Helper Chart where each child has an assigned classroom responsibility  for the week in maintaining our classroom community.  Stop by to see our chart and be sure to talk with your child about his or her job for the week.  The children have loved  taking the responsibility of playing an active role in our classroom community.   Connecting with our Lower School community was so beautifully supported last week  in joining our Lower School for assembly.   Our 9th grade partner are another example of making connection with our AFS community at large.