An important portion of your child's morning will be spent exploring the "invitations" and provocations" that the teachers have created in the classroom. Some examples of these explorations:
In the Imagination/Pretend area, children have the opportunity to "act out" their meaningful life experiences - such as meal time, bed time, car rides, doctor appointments, restaurants and grocery stores. In addition this is a place where fantasies and dreams can come to life - a place to collaborate, imagine, dream and pretend.
The Building/construction zone is a space designed for children to design, construct, add to, build on, create, explore, and repeat their designs while enhancing them. In this area pretend play is strong, collaboration with classmates about designs is very important and measurement, shapes, counting, patterns and sorting are often part of the construction process.
The sensory exploration area is a space where teachers set up invitations that are rich to the child's sense of touch. This beautiful space offers opportunities for pouring, sifting, scooping, measuring, burying and packing. This is a place to manipulate tools to work with materials such as rice, beans, sand, clay, water, dirt, seeds.... children must communicate, negotiate, problem solve and take turns while they are soothed by the sounds and touch of the materials they are working with.
The creative art area is a place for your child to create and explore with materials such as paint brushes, crayons, pastels, water colors, tape, pencils, rulers, scissors, hole punchers, dot markers, sponges and a variety of different textures, shapes, colors and sizes of paper. The art area is a place for open ended mark making and designs.
Literacy and writing areas are very important areas (provided to each age group in a developmentally appropriate way) where small groups or individuals gather to read stories aloud, "write" notes to their friends, make their own books, explore with the concepts of mark making and letter formation. Literacy is naturally woven into all aspects of the classroom in a print filled environment where writing is used and posted to share important parts of the classroom and the classroom routine.Documentation is posted throughout the room so the children see their ideas, words, drawings and work is very VALUED. Clip boards and note pads are readily available in all areas of the classroom so that children can draw designs before they build in the construction area, take orders if they are in a "restaurant" in the pretend space, or if they just want to write, draw and make marks.