Wonder Primes and Emergent Curriculum
The Preschool team of teachers met before school started and held a discussion about the names of our classrooms. Teachers from the toddler class, 3 and 4-year-old class, and 4 and 5-year-old class, along with Kiah, from student support services and Bev from Aftercare sat down together to brainstorm what we would like the names of our classrooms to be and how we can create new names that unify our preschool team. We decided that as a group we would be referred to as “preschool primes” and that each room would have its own name based on some unifying idea. The toddler classroom has been called the “Dancing Primes” since we first came to this new building in the 2021-2022 school year. This name was chosen by the students we had that year based on their shared interest in having dance parties together in the classroom. It was a name that was specific to that particular group of children and we have kept the name, mostly for ease and not wanting to change it every year. However, this year, we decided as a team to think a little deeper and figure out names that not only felt good for the teachers but somehow represented the development of the children in our care and the values of our community. We took words from the answers to the survey our parents had written to us and tried to find unifying themes we could work with to create new names. Here is the list of words that we used in our brainstorming session:
What we landed on were words that we felt described the developmental stages of the children and could guide us in our teaching and thinking about the students. We decided that the toddler classroom would be called the “Wonder Primes,” the 3 and 4’s would be the “Power Primes,” and the oldest preschoolers would be the “Adventure Primes.” We love the idea of “Wonder,” as a way to name the youngest preschoolers as it really encapsulates where they are in their developmental journey at this age. For them, everything is new, there’s so much to learn, see, and do that has never been done. They are filled with curiosity and joy for the things that adults sometimes find simple; the water collecting on a leaf, the wind blowing around leaves, the way a friend laughs, the list could go on and on. As teachers, we are intrigued by the wonder of working with toddlers and how they teach us to keep this sense of appreciation for the newness of life and learning.
As we think deeply about our new name the Wonder Primes, the teachers have begun to use the name as a basis for some guiding questions for our school year. What do we wonder about the children’s play? We wonder why the children want to play with the same toys daily. We wonder what they learn from driving a train over and over down a ramp. We wonder how we teachers can provide more opportunities for this type of play and learning. With these questions in mind, we’ve begun an emergent investigation into ramps. We are noticing that students are not only driving cars and trains down our beloved wooden car ramp, but balls, babies, and bottles of colored water. They are joyful when the right-sized ball glides down the ramp and curious when the big bottle doesn’t fit. This curiosity led to some students sliding the bottles down the slide on our climber (a really big ramp), learning about gravity, weight, speed, and safety all at once. If we put the bottle down when we’re standing up, it makes a loud noise and bounces instead of rolls. If we bend down and roll the bottle, it glides easily. More laughter, collaboration, and sharing happened when more than one student rolled the bottles. We are observing with wonder, how the students move and what makes them persist. We introduced the students to our “chair slide” this week, a small wooden chair that when you flip it over becomes a slide. They first started sliding down it, but then many students began using it as a ramp for their vehicles, bottles, and balls. We wonder how we can add more depth to their ramp play? Next week, we will introduce more ramps outside in the playground area, making ramps of various sizes and heights. We wonder... what they will do with these ramps?
