Our School Is An Open Environment
My staff and my team, we’ve been here all weekend, creating a whole new kind of Christmas holiday, winter, hibernation theme school. What I love about my school is that it’s an open environment. That’s what I mean when I say we’re a Montessori approach. We do a lot of traditional preschool activities, but I have a preschool that can be changed into anything I want, anytime I want. Even all of my furniture is either easily lifted or on wheels. That way our building doesn’t tell us what to do. We get to use the building how we like. As long as we keep things in order. As long as we are in compliance.
We think about the form, function, and flow of our building. What can we accomplish with what our building can give us and what kind of environments can our children explore in? Because I have a theater background, I did a lot of set deck. I love to create environments and little nooks and crannies for the children to go running, racing. We’re doing a lot of hibernation. There are boxes with little animals hibernating and boxes that we can get in, “caves” that we made for the children.
We think about their benchmark
We think about what are we accomplishing this month for them? What do we really want them to go home and think about? What kind of imagination can we stir up inside of these children, by setting scenes and then letting them go out and do what they need to do to explore these subjects, environments as well as materials? Here we are. We’ve worked really hard and I’m really excited. We do this every season and we have a brand new preschool for them. As the children walked in, their eyes light up, their parents even say “I want to stay and play”. You know what? That’s the best compliment we can get. We did work super hard and we love working that hard.
We pull everything from the baseboards, cleaned everything underneath, all the nooks and crannies. It gives us a chance to get on top of things and then we really use our imaginations. What can we do for these kids? How can we create a really fun place? It’s not just every day at preschool, but it’s something new and exciting every season. Within the seasons though, every week we change out their centers. I think most preschools do that, but that really gets the kids excited. They get to experience and put their hands on new materials, new concepts, and really explore what they’re capable of as we set new challenges ahead of them every day.
I hope everyone has a happy holiday.
-Heather
