Carrie Ella Maloney: January 2015

A year ago Sean and I were touring Giddens School and deciding where we wanted to apply for preschool. There were may reasons we chose Giddens for her, but one of the most endearing was seeing all the work and discussion around race, justice and equality that was happening as the entire school prepared to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King with their annual MLK Jr. March for Peace & Justice. Hearing preschool aged children talk about their skin color and how some people in this world are treated unfairly because of it, was truly amazing to us. If all schools could start so early then this generation really truly could make the world a better place.

Sean and I joined Carrie Ella's class for the march. The students had made t-shirts and capes noting what "I Stand For" as well as signs to carry and we all assembled in the gym at 10:00. It was great to see all the things these students stand for; Animals, Affordable Healthcare, Gun control, clean water, love, freedom & peace. The preschoolers and pre-K's all wore shirts silk screened with hearts and decorated with markers.

After some announcements and a song by the 4/5's we headed out to the street where the police were waiting to escort us on our march to the Langston Hughes theater.

At the theater there was a ceremony filled with songs, student speeches and recitations of Dr. King and Langston Hughes.

While most all of this may have been lost on Carrie Ella, the little bit that got through over the last couple weeks and today will no doubt make an impression on who she is and who she grows to be.

Last night I asked her if she was excited for the MLK Jr. march to which she replied "will Martin King be there?" A cute and innocent question that led to an interesting conversation. This school really puts these difficult conversations out there at an early age, and I think it's wonderful.

We are so happy and fortunate that she can be a part of such an amazing school that values so heavily social justice and responsibility as part of the daily curriculum and look forward to having her continue at Giddens over the next couple years.

We received this from her school recently.

Child’s Name: Carrie Ella Maloney
Birth Date: 11-29-2014
Teachers: Steve Taylor and Taryn Lewis
Report Date: December 2014

Social and Emotional Development: Carrie Ella enjoys interacting and having conversations with both her teachers and classmates. She listens as her friends talk, and she adds her thoughts to the conversation. Carrie Ella is gregarious and she plays with many different friends on the playground and in the classroom. Her interactions with others are warm and friendly. Carrie Ella uses her humor to connect with others and she responds to the humor of others with smiles and laughter. She has an emotional vocabulary that includes the words happy, sad, mad, and excited. She is able to verbalize her emotions, sometimes with some support from teachers. When she is feeling sad, she often asks to use the Talk Blocks. She identifies her emotion, and then asks to take a walk. After a short walk in the main building, Carrie Ella is happy again and ready to rejoin her classmates. Carrie Ella has smooth transitions from one activity to the next and she participates fully at Choice Time and during teacher-led activities.
Large and Fine Motor Development:Carrie Ella likes to paint pictures at the art table. She holds the paint brush in a relaxed and comfortable way. She often chooses to draw pictures, holding the marker with a fist grip. She takes her time with her work, sometimes drawing several pictures in one session. Carrie Ella builds her fine motor skills as she works with blocks and solves puzzles. She enjoys sensory activities such as painting with her hands and working at the Discovery Table with water or flax seeds. On the playground, Carrie Ella likes to work in the sand box with her classmates. She enjoys mixing the sand and water and digging with shovels. She likes to join her friends on the tire swing, and she sometimes plays chase with her peers.
Cognitive Development: Carrie Ella enjoys listening to stories and reading books with her teachers. She listens attentively at Story Time and she is able to participate in discussions about the literature. Carrie Ella sometimes asks her teachers to read to her during Choice Time, and she often looks at books independently or with a friend. Carrie Ella recognizes many of the alphabet letters, and she responds to learning about the letters from charts and posters and by singing the ABC song. Carrie Ella can recognize her own name in print, but she is not yet writing her own name. She watches with interest as her teachers write her name for her on her art work. Carrie Ella recognizes words that rhyme with her classmate’s names. She is becoming aware of the sounds that some of the letters represent. Carrie Ella can quickly recognize a set of up to three items. She enjoys solving puzzles and she can complete the small wooden puzzles independently. She participates in activities that involve the concept of subtracting one and she is beginning to learn to recognize AB patterns.
Creative Expression: Carrie Ella enjoys working on art projects at school. She sometimes starts her day painting pictures, and her pictures are usually abstract images created with dots, lines, and circles. Sometimes Carrie Ella fills the page with paint. Carrie Ella’s drawings can be abstract or representational. She sometimes draws people on her page. She also enjoys working with playdough, using a variety of tools to create sculptures. Carrie Ella writes stories in dictation with her teachers. She enjoys building in the Construction Area, often in collaboration with her classmates. Carrie Ella engages in dramatic pretend play with her peers. Some of the themes of her play include families, babies, animals, and airplanes. Carrie Ella’s pretend play with her friends is dynamic and fun. She is comfortable working with a partner or with a group of friends to create and act out her pretend play.

Preschool Specialists Report – Fall 2014

Library Grant Hayslip
Our preschool students begin each library class by coming into the library, taking off their coats and browsing through our board book bins for books to take to their classrooms. We have worked on establishing a routine that is both familiar to the children and allows us to add some activities and grow over the year. We began our year focusing on repetition; reading books multiple weeks in a row to develop a familiarity with certain titles. Throughout the year, we have used library time to explore and expand on what the children are learning in the classroom. We have read stories and sung songs about farms and harvest time, families of all types and, most recently, water, ice and snow. Two of our favorites this year have been Muncha, Muncha, Muncha and Five Little Ducks. Ask your little ones about them!

P.E. Coach Morgan Leahy
In preschool P.E. class, we have been learning about creative ways to use our bodies. We have spent much time dancing and playing to music and telling stories with our movements. We have danced with scarves and balloons, acted like lumberjacks cutting down trees, and even saved a runaway train from falling off the tracks with our new toy this year, the giant Omnikin Ball. Through these actions, games, and movements, we are creating a base for more purposeful movement in the second half of the year with specific athletic goals in mind.
Spanish Karina Flores
Our Spanish class begins with the song "Buenos Dias." The students know the song well, and they quickly come to the circle singing and getting ready to share how they are feeling in the target language: Estoy bien, mas o menos, or estoy mal. They also describe the weather by answering the question, Que tiempo hace hoy? We have been working on colors, numbers, and parts of the body. We play a variety of games, sing songs, and read books related to the topics they are learning in class. One of their favorite games is "senor cuerpo" in which they all take turns labeling body parts and putting them together to build a silly monster. In the following months, our vocabulary will focus on fruits and transportation.

Art Angela Larsen
We are so fortunate to have an art room at Giddens where students can experience what it is like to truly be an artist and use artists’ materials. Our work in preschool art has been mostly centered on material exploration and getting comfortable using different tools such as pastels, paint, markers, collage pieces, and scissors. While creativity is greatly encouraged, this is another chance for students to work on

building skills like identifying colors, hand-eye coordination with cutting, and taking their drawing to a more representational place. For the last few weeks, preschoolers have been creating plants and animals to contribute to the classroom jungle. This idea to create a jungle emerged from student interest in plants and animals as well as their discovery of where these animals live. This installation in the loft will grow to be a place where students can find inspiration and draw. We will be finishing the month of December with some seasonal art activities that include using non-traditional materials to stamp color and to build line in our drawings.
Science Reba Utevsky
The worms in the garden are plentiful and preschoolers love to dig, fill buckets with dirt, and collect worms. This fall was a perfect time for preschoolers to explore and work in the garden. They began with garden "how-to's" including how to walk with tools, ask lots of questions, use classroom voices because the garden is a work place not the playground, and how to only pick when invited. A variety of investigations encouraged knowledge and stewardship of plants and the garden: scavenger hunts to discover different parts of a plant, collecting edible herbs and flowers for tea, sensory walks to compare scents, and creating rainbow pictures by finding the rainbow of colors available in the garden. The preschoolers also planted seeds, harvested, turned soil, maintained the worm bin, and tasted our fall crops. Our seed collection walk in the neighborhood tested the children’s knowledge of where to find seeds and their different