Preschoolers Make Connections in Social Studies
Some of us may recall from our school days that a visit to the principal’s office was not something to look forward to!
But our junior kindergarten students are quite delighted to be heading to Principal Travis Brantingham’s office above the Upper School lobby in the next week or so. That will be one of the final stops in a series of visits they’ve been making around campus as they explore the concept of “community” and get to understand what it means to be part of a community beyond their immediate family.
An overarching theme for the class of four- to five-year-olds is “What’s different? What’s the same?”—questions that can be applied to virtually every aspect of their curriculum, from language to math to music to social studies and art. The social studies unit on community helps students “get a deeper understanding of connections—among themselves and among the common spaces, ideas, and rules that make up a community,” says lead teacher Marti Jo Bicknese (US’77). This understanding comes through conversation, stories, books, collaborative play, art, and pictures. But first and foremost, she notes, it comes through direct exploration and experience.
Recently, the students visited a couple of classmates’ parents who work in the Business Office and learned about their jobs. During that time, they got to see how a scanner captures an image on screen and were delighted at how a click on a computer keyboard caused a giant printer to spit out a large color image of some of the children! Another day, on their way to the library, they spotted some of the landscaping crew hard at work and stopped to talk with them, learning what they do to keep Principia’s grounds neat and usable. They’ve visited the bookstore and Dining Services, and been to the post office a couple of times to see what happens to the letters and thank-you notes they write. Soon they’ll be heading to the College campus to be shown around by two classmates who live in Elsah and to visit their parents at work there.
On each trip, the students carry with them a clipboard with a few questions to ask the people they’re visiting, and they make their own “notes”—sketches , maps, the numbers they notice in the environment. This process, Bicknese says, supports emergent writing development.
Learning takes place not only at the various destinations the children visit but en route to them as well. As the class treks to different locations, often following the same pathways to and from buildings, “the students are improving directionality,” Bicknese says, “and recognizing places and key community symbols”—such as the sheaf of wheat and the Principia panther. “They are also enjoying learning to understand and read maps,” she adds, although grasping the concept of a “bird’s-eye view” can be a little tricky when your line of sight is only about 36 inches above ground level!
And, finally, these experiences circle back gently to those questions “What’s different? What’s the same?” as students identify the similarities and unique points about the places and people that make up Principia.