Des 4-5 Afternoon Lab Newsletter News

Activities from Last Week:

Volume 1, Issue 5 October 12-14, 2010

Hello my name is Sarah Kills-A-Hundred. I am from Colman, SD. I am a senior and am majoring in Early Childhood Education, specializing in birth to age eight. Last week we did some further exploring of nature when we visited McCrory Gardens. We also brought many activities into the classroom that reflected nature. The children especially liked using tissue paper to create stain glass leaves. We also made a lot of great discoveries when it comes to the childrens interests. Each small group has taken what they know about their children and their interests and used that to progress in their investigations. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at (605) - 864-0670 or email me at smflatten@jacks.sdstate.edu. Activities for This Week: This week we will continue exploring nature in our classroom. We are going to be looking at plants and their seeds and also continue to leave our campsite up in the dramatic play area. We will also be sharing some of the various cultures of our class by having some of our students share with us some greeting words in their first language. This week we are also going to send home squares of fabric as we would like to start putting together a family culture quilt for our class. We encourage you to use any materials on the fabric to create a picture that best represents your familys culture. We will explain more as we give out the squares, but if you have questions just let us know. Important Notes:
On Oct. 15th The Friday Morning Meeting topic will be presented by the 4 & 5 AM lab teachers and the 3 & 4 PM teachers. If you would like to join us for a discussion about the documentation from those two classrooms, please let your mentor teacher know that you would like to come to the meeting and then join us! We have breakfast together and then discuss documentation from events in the two highlighted classrooms. On Oct. 20th & 21st Lifetouch School Photography will be taking photo re-takes. If you would like your childs picture retaken after viewing the first photo, or your child missed picture day, please make plans to have a photo retake. On Oct. 28th & 29th The Fishback Center will be hosting Delegation Days. It is an event that highlights our center for visitors from across the state. On Thursday, Oct. 28th, Delegation Days visitors will be in our school watching our day with the children. Then in the afternoon & on Friday morning, Oct. 29th we will be presenting some of the teacher research & activities that focused on last years Declaration of Intent. The presentations are open to family members if you would like to attend, please let your mentor teacher know of your interest and looks for upcoming details about the event.

Schedule:
1:00 1:001:05 1:051:10 1:101:30 1:302:25 2:252:30 2:302:40 2:40-3:00 3:00 Arrival Outside Time Transition: Coats off, toileting, wash hands, drink Group Time: Welcome Investigations and Free Time Clean-up, hand washing, preparing for snack Group Sharing Time Snack and Literacy Activities Departure

Snack:
Monday: No School

Tuesday:

Vanilla Wafers Milk Trail Mix Grape Juice Fruit Pizza Milk

Wednesday:

Thursday:

Des Corner:

(Schedule may change depending on the day and the activities).

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me

at any time. 605-688-5708(office) 605-692-6753 (home) Deanna.Gilkerson@sdstate.edu

Educational Notes:
Philosophy Discussion ~ Family Orientation Night (Part 1 of 4):
Last week we had our family orientation night. Andy Stremmel (Dept. Head of TLL) provided an overview of the centers philosophy. We transcribed it and broke it up into four parts which will be part of the newsletters over the next four weeks. Introduction: The Reggio Emilia Approach is something that I studied for about 15 years now, so Kay is right, I have had a long career in studying the approach. Youre right, Ive been at this long time and I am getting older and grayer. It is something that I am passionate about and pleased. I actually I came to South Dakota State University because of the fact that the Early Childhood Education program here was using this philosophy. And because its a philosophy it means that its not a curriculum. Its not a model. It is not something that we try to copy or to recreate as much as we make our own. Because how to do you take principles and ideas from a well-to-do city in northern Italy and translate that to what we do here in Brookings, SD? Well, you cant really. But, what is appealing about the approach is that when we study it, we find that it embraces all the best research and theory in child development. And so, all the theorists we studied and the ideology of John Dewey and progressive education and all the great things that our students study somewhere along the line are a part of this approach. In fact, some of the Italians have said that Americans have had to come to Italy to rediscover their own theories, to rediscover their own ideologies about how to work with child. I think its appropriate to say that we are not a Reggio School, but that we are inspired by the ideas. And that means that we really have to work on is creating our own approach to early childhood education here by making it based on the values and beliefs and the context of the cultural-this community here we call Brookings and this larger community we call South Dakota. The Italians would say, If you want to be like us, dont copy us; learn from us to you learn from yourselves and to make the approach your own. So, I think that we would prefer to call it the South Dakota State approach to early childhood education. Image of the Child: But what it involves are a number of very important elements. One [idea] being that we see children as their own sources of learning and development. We believe that children, from birth, are capable and competent in terms of being able to learn and contribute to their own their development, and contribute to the relationships that they form. And you know, those of you as parents, that your infants influence the way you parent because from the time they are born, their cries, their needs to be fed, the certain ways to interact with you are ways to get you to relate to them, to get you to interact with them. So, they are born with that ability, that inherent ability to form relationships with people who are close to them and thats true throughout their whole life span. So we see children as sources of their own learning. And when you see children as competent, capable, intelligent, and able to do things, then we focus on what they can do versus what they cant do. And we particularly look at their questions, the things that puzzle them, the things that intrigue them, [and] the things that they are passionate about. And we know that we might have thing, one intention to have them learn something, and they might be totally focused on something else. Because thats the way young children are. Their curiosity is so intense and so strong that everything around them is exciting, everything is amazing and if we could only keep that passion in our own lives.