Kindergarten Pod is a one day a week enrichment program for children ages five and six. In this pod, kids learn through a hands-on actives, play and exploration.
Details
Once a Week - 2.5 hour Session
August to October - March to May
Price: TBD
Location: Most likely Abbott Loop Community Park
Meeting Days: TBD
Taught by Amy Rupp, a past public school teacher with nine years of lower elementary experience and three years experience homeschooling her daughter.
Building Community
Seedling Schools vision is to help families build networks of community and support for themselves and their children. Besides facilitating the enrichment classes, Amy will help organize ways for caregivers to grow relationships and participate in the Seedling School community.
Caretakers with younger siblings are encouraged to meet while their five to six year old is in the enrichment pod, building a community for themselves with the other parents. Caretakers who do not have younger or older siblings may also like to join together to hike, ski, bike, or spend solo time alone in the woods.
Online Community
Caregivers are invited to join the Seedling School WhatsApp Community Page for coordinating community gatherings and open meet-ups thought out the week by other Seedling School members. This online space continues to expand as new threads form to support Nature Songs mission to build an intentional community.
Kindergarten Rhythm
The Kindergarten Enrichment Pod meets twice a week and follows a consistent rhyme that supports a young child's needs to explore, learn, play, and move. This consists of an inhaling or breath-in phase and an active exhale or breathe-out phase. Switching between activities that follow the energy of the group and their needs.
In the inhaling or breathing-in phase, the child directs his attention to an activity that relates to themselves. For little children, each breathing-in period (provocation invitation, circle work, and units of study) is a chance to slow down, reflect, and explore their learning.
In the exhaling or breathing-out period, the child relates mainly to the surrounding world (singing circle, learning games, character study, and free play) and it is a time to laugh, interact with others, and get the wiggles-out. For each breathing-in period, the child needs a breathing-out period and so a pattern is established.
Class Schedule
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A Reggio-Emilia approach to introducing a concept/question.
Provocation is an open-ended time to explore through open parts and creative questions. Children arrive with their families, and can ease into the morning by exploring themes that allow for creativity, collaboration and thoughtful play.
Examples:
- Can you make your name with loose parts?
- Create this week's letter with loose parts.
- Can you make a pattern?
- Can you make a story using these props?
Provocations questions follow topics of study and follow the child’s academic progression throughout the year. -
Using songs, games, and hands-on materials to explore reading, math, and social studies.
Songs and Games
During circle time, children will build fine motor skills with fingerplays and gestures and gross motor skills with skipping, balancing, jumping, clapping, and more. Together practicing music skills such as singing, rhythm, and keeping a beat with the body and the voice. It is also a great opportunity to build literacy through rhymes, speech, vocabulary, and memory and practice mathematical concepts such as counting, adding, subtraction, and word stories.
Hands-on Material
Each child will have a mat and manipulative to practice academic skills by moving from abstract to concrete. By building a solid foundation of concrete experience, children are better equipped to grasp abstract concepts, which in turn strengthen their problem-solving skills and foster a love for learning. Example:- Exploring base ten by gathering sticks that increase each time as we meet. Gathering them in groups of ten.
- Using ten-frames with found rocks and learning number stories and math facts.
- Practice the structure of letters through hands-on materials that represent longs, curves and shorts.
- Learning a letter a week, through the listening of stories that evolve the imagination, and imagery. -
Hands-on learning using natural materials or movement to learn a concept.
Group Games
Games provide an opportunity for children to learn social skills and practice skills through play. Above all, games are fun and get the children moving after sitting during learning circle. -
Using questioning and journaling to explore science, social studies and writing. Topics of study will expand on the children’s interests and the natural rhymes of nature. Children will learn the skill of observation and awareness. Focusing on the micro and macro parts of nature.
Unit of study examples: weather, shadows, seasons, local habitat, physical states of matter, maps, migration, life cycles.
We will start the year with an invitation to color and draw a record of our learning and as the year progress, add sentences. The focus will be on using a journal as a tool of discovery and record.
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Build community and learn social- emotional concepts through a variety of resources. A unique feather of the Seedling School community and Nature Song Collective is its shared commitment to personal growth. This shared commitment creates a dynamic synergy that fosters motivation, encouragement, and inspiration and creates space for families to explore their values and foster them through community.
Amy will meet with parents before the start of school to explore common values, agreeing together on what we want to focus on as a community. This part of Seedling School builds the culture of the pod and acts as an intentional guide for how we show up for each other and our children.
During our time with children, we will explore these values through picture books, dialog circle, and other activities.
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Children have a designated 30 minutes to play but can continue to stay after enrichment class with their family as long as they would like.
This is an important part of the Kindergarten pod as it’s a place to practice the values and social skills explored during character study as well as interact and build a place of belonging and fun as a community.
