Over the last couple of months, in Preschool 1 at RisingOaks | John Sweeney, we have explored our community through a neighbourhood walk twice a week. During the walks, we follow the children’s lead resulting in a different journey each time. For example, one week we turned left out of the parking lot, took another left, followed by another left. This pattern repeated until we returned to RisingOaks.
One week, the children just wanted to play at the neighborhood playground. When we have the ability to explore the community parks, it allows the children more opportunity for risky play and confidence building. Christian was climbing to the top of one of the tallest structures in the playground which encouraged Ariah R., Ava and Jacob to step out of their comfort zone and try as well. There were two "telephones" located on different sides of the playground. The children gathered at leach one and began to speak into them. They enhanced their language development through conversations as they engaged in telephone play with Natassia. During this play, there was orders for ice cream and an exchange of pleasantries. The slides provided friends an opportunity to be aware of each other but also practice turn taking. We as educators also take these times to teach and learn about our surroundings with the children. Lately, we have been exploring the change of the season. The children and Educators have been observing the trees and the changing leaves. Together they began to hypothesize, was the change of colour due to the colder weather and reduced sunlight? While on our walk as the children were labelling the types of trees they were seeing, one child observed that all of the acorns had disappeared from the oak tree. Simone reassured him that the squirrels had taken them and stored them away for winter. Another child pointed out a pine tree and we began to discuss that the "hairs" on the tree were called "needles". While we explore beyond our playground, we continue to learn about the different elements of our environment and community.
