Curricular Highlights
These are some highlights of our grant-funded projects and investment in curriculum development:
Explorations
With generous support from the Frances R. Dewing Foundation and from the Vermont Children's Trust Fund, we have made Explorations an integral and regular part of our days at school.
This slideshow depicts a sampling of what the children may find in the Explorations area.
Children, teachers and parents anticipate and expect explorations to be part of every day. We have dedicated 3 hours of each day to having explorations available and part of every team planning meeting is devoted to developing the Explorations Curriculum.
We have developed an Explorations Space in our classroom. Right now this space is housing a large pine tree stump with limbs and small platforms. Earlier in the year it was a place of mirrors, reflections and light. It also has been transformed into a castle kingdom.
Outdoor explorations include Loose Parts of a wide variety and sizes. Children can discover open ended materials to manipulate and change, to play with and explore. Objects from nature , both large and small, may be included, along with containers and tools. Loose parts focus on the process rather then the product, it promotes conversation, collaboration, and imagination.
There can be anything from pinecones and stones, to blocks and gems, or mirrors, bark, and animals. Loose parts often reflect our current study and offers the children another way to think about what we are learning.
Our upper field is full of large loose parts materials that require strength, planning, and balance to move. We have tires, large wooden spools, boards, and crates to make a few.
Adventures
During our time outdoors we can be found on our playground and upper field, but we also go beyond our boarders to various destinations. We visit the farm field behind our playground, the Muddy Branch creek that runs along the farm field, as well as a nice slice of woods behind our parking lot. These other destinations offer authentic opportunities to explore in the natural world.
The natural world provides children limitless ways to move and observe. Being in the natural world grows the connection between children and the land. The seasons play a large part understanding a space, for instance the woods looks very different in the fall versus the winter and can change how you explore and move through it. Adventuring to these places is a part of our evolving curriculum.
Telling Trays
Telling Trays are an innovation that bridges explorations and documentation. The telling trays are a tray of sand with small objects (ranging from corks and golf tees to polishes stones and colored wax) children use to recreate activities, to tell stories or invent scenes. A teacher or friend is nearby to hear the telling (and to write it down).... a rock is a horse, a mountain or a person. A path of shiny stones winds across the tray... and so the story goes....
Documentation
The teaching team has spent time developing a working definition of what documentation means to Quarry Hill School and how it impacts the students, the teachers, and the program. The individual teachers have worked to understand their unique documentation process and how each contributes to the whole. Every child creates a Scrapbook over the course of the year with a wonderful finished product as a keepsake of their experiences at Quarry Hill School. The book includes photos, dictated stories and reflections as well as artwork and projects- documenting the unique and individualized experience of every child. As a PreK partner, we also maintain portfolios of each child’s learning and growth through the lens of Teaching Strategies Gold, a framework of objectives ranging across childhood development.