There are bound to be bumps

Although teachers do their utmost to prevent children from getting hurt, we know that there will be the occasional need to use the bandaids in our backpacks or the ice packs in the freezer. Usually this is the result of an accident, but what do teachers do when children hit or hurt each other? Teachers at Park West take physical aggression and conflict resolution seriously and set firm boundaries to ensure everyone’s safety. It is not uncommon for children to resort to physical acts when frustrated, especially at school where they are already working hard. If a teacher sees a child hurting someone else, they will help the child stop and will state a clear limit, ie “It’s not ok to hit.” In addition, teachers will help comfort the child who is hurt, and encourage or help them to say stop, and that they didn’t like being hit, or that it hurt. 

At the same time, teachers will investigate to try to understand, and help kids understand, what happened. Sometimes, a bump is accidental, or inadvertent, but other times a child might be lashing out in anger, trying to connect, or seeking physical input. Most kids are still learning to reign in physical impulses. They might be upset about what another child did or have a big reaction to a misunderstanding. Teachers help talk through conflicts, offer tools for children to manage big emotions and help them find acceptable ways to express them. If a child struggles to stop hitting or hurting, however, a teacher will help them move to another part of the classroom, and will later help them reflect on why they had to move and what they need to do in the future if they don’t want to move next time. If teachers notice that a particular child is routinely pushing or hitting, they make a plan to track those behaviors and try to head off further incidents. 

Keep in mind that young kids are just developing language skills, find it hard to take another’s perspective and can’t always understand or manage their own emotions. They are still attuning their thoughts and feelings with their physical movements. Often a child reacts physically when they feel threatened, or when they don’t have the language to communicate about their needs or concerns. Many conflicts are territorial. It may be that

somebody comes too close, or tries to take their toy or a child suspects someone is about to take it. Teachers spend a lot of time helping kids learn some basic interactive skills, like asking for a turn, telling somebody when they’re not finished, remembering to give the asking child the toy when they are finished, telling other kids how they feel about things. Teachers take every opportunity they can to model and encourage communicating verbally and not physically. 

Teachers also aim to help kids recognize and express their emotions in acceptable ways. When kids have angry outbursts, teachers try to provide help and a safe space for a child to settle down, along with protecting other kids from a child who is lashing out in anger. Teachers have ongoing conversations and read books in the classroom about what kids can do when they are mad, or frustrated, or disappointed, and place firm limits around hurtful actions like hitting. Kids learn from both their own experiences and through watching teachers help other children work through challenging situations. 

As an assisting parent you will likely see a wide range of behaviors. Some might delight or inspire you while others might surprise or concern you. While you’re in the classroom, please call a teacher over if you see something that needs their attention. As you watch 

teachers work through disputes and challenges, we hope you’ll be reassured that our approach helps all children further their abilities to both advocate for their own needs and begin to understand and respect the rights and needs of others. If you have further questions or concerns, you can reach out to your classroom teachers or the Education Directors. Together we can help kids develop the ability to express their needs and wants verbally and learn strategies to negotiate conflicts, making the classroom a safe and comfortable place to explore everyone’s ideas.

Seasonal Transitions

Hang in there - summer’s nearly over! Maybe you’re loving these last long days, or wishing for them to go by faster. Either way, you may be running out of ideas to keep your child busy until school is in session. We want to remind you to savor these last summer days with your preschooler and to offer you a few simple activities to enjoy together. This is the only summer they will be this age, and we hope you can take the time to appreciate your unique child at this moment in time, and support them as they face the end of summer and the beginning of a new school year.  

As adults, we understand how fleeting each summer can be, but for children it can seem endless. Time is an abstract concept and thinking about time is complicated. Understanding time is related to a child’s language competency, math abilities, and memory. A child of 2 or 3 may begin to understand the words ”today” “yesterday” and “tomorrow” but may still use them to refer to time in a general way. “Remember yesterday when I was a baby?” Kids begin to tie particular routines to times of the day, for instance that breakfast is in the morning and pjs come on at night time. As they start to use mathematical reasoning, they can make relationships between the minutes that make up a day, or the days that make up a week, or the weeks that make up a summer. Here are some ways you can help your child tie the passage of time to the change in seasons to make this abstract concept more concrete. 

We know that young children can benefit from a warning about endings and beginnings, and that a clear, gradual transition goes smoother than an abrupt shift in activities. During a play date, a five minute warning can help a child anticipate an end, finish what they’re doing, and look forward to the next activity. If you can really make the end happen in five minutes, it can help your child start to develop a sense of just how long five minutes is, and help them grow their understanding of time. 

You can help your child notice and navigate the end of summer, too. While it’s a longer transition, it is still a shift in routines and expectations. Make a simple calendar to mark off the days until school starts, and include any last trips, beach days, picnic dinners, and playdates. Make a book or a list about the activities they enjoyed over the summer. Look together at pictures you’ve taken since June. Children this age always ask, “Why?” and the seasonal shift offers some physical markers to help children understand. “Summer is ending and school is going to begin.” Help them notice the changes in the natural world, like cooler nights, and flowers going to seed, squirrels gathering nuts and birds beginning their southward journeys. Or, the school buses on the streets, and the back to school sales in the stores. 

You alone know if your child is one who will need two weeks or two days to anticipate the first day of school. Having too much time to ruminate on unknowns will make some kids anxious, while others need the time to process and ask questions. Either way, offer information in small doses, and take cues from your child’s responses. If they seem reluctant about the changes, reassure them that you’ll help them through. 

Here are a few simple ideas to fill those last summer days. 

Nature Bracelets

Does your child like to pick things up on your walks or outings? Do they insist on keeping a handful of rocks or leaves or sticks after being outside? A loop of tape around your child’s wrist, sticky side out, is the perfect canvas for an arrangement of seeds, stems, tiny sticks, fallen leaves, and other bits. Nature bracelets can be a form of creative expression, a science experiment, or both. Follow your child’s interest, and see if you can find out what’s most interesting to them. Some children will carefully arrange petals in patterns and others are more interested in seeing what will stick.  How much the tape will hold depends on the sort of tape, so you might experiment with masking tape vs duct tape. 

Chalk Paint

Another way to combine art and science is to make your own paint from sidewalk chalk. Use a rubber mallet, a small hammer, or even a rock to smash chalk on the sidewalk. Add some water and mix, then use a brush to paint. Some kids will love the invitation to smash the chalk, and will focus their energies on pounding, noticing how much force and pressure it takes to make the chalk into powder. Other children will spend a long time experimenting with how much water to add, and focus on how the liquid and solid elements combine. They might enjoy using a spray bottle or dripper to wet the chalk, too. Others’ focus will be on the paint, and they may spend a long time mixing colors or painting pictures. 

Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn

https://www.google.com/search?q=goodbye+summer%2C+hello+autumn&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:438cc1f8,vid:1aqC_cg7nOk,st:0

Kenard Pak’s book on seasonal transitions offers numerous examples of the changes going on as summer ends and autumn begins, told in a playful back and forth between a child observer and the voices of natural elements. This read aloud is from The Teacher’s Library.

See you soon!

Anita

A Glimpse into JK: All Aboard the JK Express

Dramatic play is one of the vehicles through which children develop a range of competencies and explore their ideas about the world around them. It fosters creativity, problem solving skills, language development, communication skills, collaboration and cognitive growth. Throughout the school year, teachers encourage dramatic play in the classroom by providing props to expand existing play themes and inspire new ones. Our dramatic play area (or playhouse, as the kids call it) started out with a kitchen and baby dolls, but then became a pizza restaurant, an ice cream shop and a doctor’s office.

While these early changes to the dramatic play area were coordinated by teachers, we know that by springtime, kids in Junior Kindergarten are ready to take the reins. They have more ideas for play and are able to listen to the ideas of their peers. They are able to have a group discussion, consider multiple ideas and vote on a final outcome. With teacher support, JK students generate ideas for the playhouse and vote on them. Once the theme has been decided, teachers help children to express what they already know about the topic and provide resources to expand their knowledge. In some cases, those resources are books, artifacts or pictures, but in others, we are able to use our own neighborhood as a resource! In the past, we have visited local restaurants, veterinarian offices, post offices, libraries and parks to support our playhouse transformations. In this case, we visited the local CTA station. 

Children’s observations during the visit were recorded with their own drawings and dictation taken by teachers. These observations provided a blueprint for what to include in our train station, which roles were needed and what players in those roles would do. 

Take a look at JK-East’s classroom newsletter documenting this process of playhouse transformation!

All aboard the jk express

Over the course of the school year, our classroom playhouse has been transformed into a pizza restaurant, an ice cream parlor, and a doctors’ office. As you may have read in our last newsletter, the latest iteration of our playhouse is a train station, voted on by both our morning class and JK, and supported by their ideas in a more fully developed way than was possible earlier in the school year. What better way to support this exploration than a trip to see an actual train station, and so on a beautiful sunny afternoon last week we set out on a walking trip to the Armitage CTA station.

As we walked, children were encouraged to observe the different aspects of the train station, with the idea that we could bring back some ideas for transforming our space in a way that would enhance imaginative play. Students were given clipboards on which to sketch images of things they felt inspired by, or to write down some of the words they saw on signs posted around the station.

Upon returning to school, we gathered for a discussion of the things that had most resonated with the students as being noteworthy observations: 

As the week went on, teachers incorporated students’ observations and ideas into a more fully actualized play space, and we have been pleased to see children using the space for a more sophisticated and organized level of imaginary play. The classroom train station now includes a control panel with phones and walkie talkies, lists of train stops dictated from students to teachers, and tickets and money created at table time. It has been a nice way to incorporate the particular experience of living in our beautiful city into learning opportunities for our JK kids.

Books we’ve been featurning to support our train discussion:

Trains: Eye Openers by Angela Royston
My First Train Trip by Emily Neye
Subway by Christoph Niemann
The Big Book of Trains
Train by Elisha Cooper
City Signs by Zoran Milich
Train Song by Harriet Ziefert

Contributed by Park West Co-op Teachers Byl Adam and Katrina Nousaine Mann, JK-East Lead Teachers

Park West Curriculum and Pedagogy: Protecting Early Childhood and Preparing Children for What's Next

There are so many school options for families of young children and many schools and programs promising so much to families. It can be hard to navigate big school decisions when your child is still so young. Parents at Park West are a particularly engaged and dedicated group of parents and I commend all of you for the time and thought you put into making school decisions for your child and family. 

One question that I hear again and again, both in my own conversations with parents and from teachers and board members is that parents often wonder after a year or two here at PW, is my child ready for more? Do they need more? More time? More rigor? More activities? These are extremely important questions and ones that we at Park West have been considering, discussing, and researching for over 50 years. 

On behalf of myself and teachers at Park West, I would like to invite you to join us for a brief presentation and conversation about the progression of our program from Tots to Junior Kindergarten. In this conversation we hope to share with you why and how we approach learning and future school readiness at Park West and why our gentle, child-led, play-based program is the perfect way to prepare children for the future of learning and thriving in any school environment. 

Learn more about:

• How can a part-week, half-day program prepare my child for Kindergarten?

• If they will eventually move to full day school, shouldn't they get used to it now?

• How does our gentle, individualized approach to child-led learning prepare kids for a learning experience that may be so different for them in years to come?

• If I have an option for full-day JK, why should I consider staying at Park West for another year?

Watch the presentation below!

Warmly,
Melissa Boshans, Director