**Our first week of preschool!**

Week one has been such a blast! We’ve been focusing primarily on getting to know each other and our environment, and establishing ownership and comfort here at The Olive Branch. Everyone has been settling in quite nicely and we can’t wait to meet a few more friends next week!

Below, you can find exciting anecdotes and fun pictures documenting what we’ve been doing at school!

Orchid Still Life: Exploring Observational Painting

In an Emergent Curriculum model such as ours at The Olive Branch, educators use classroom invitations and provocations as tools. Teachers find inspiring materials and display them in a way that invites the children to create, play, imagine, and work. We then engage with the children and observe the ways they interact with the provocations, using our findings to curate future provocations that more narrowly address the children’s interests and developing skills. (More on provocations here.)

As an introductory provocation for our first week of school, the children were presented with an inspiring display: a beautiful, vibrant orchid, strong paper for painting, a myriad of brushes, and a series of specially mixed paints that coordinated with the vibrant beauty of the orchid. The goal here is to observe how (and if!) the children choose to interact with the provocation as a way to understand more about them, their interests, their thought processes, their language, their skills, etc. as well as to give the children an invitation to explore the space and materials in our classroom creation station!

The children, of course, enthusiastically explored and revisited this provocation all week, diving deep into the magic of childhood learning. It became quickly evident that these children were primarily fascinated by the physical properties of the paint, and are taking in most of their knowledge through sensory exploration. Sensorial learning is typical for children in this age group, and our kiddos are ready to get messy and have fun! Ronin was curious about applying the paint to the paper and chose to explore our classroom materials to answer some of his curiosities. He found a pair of pattern scissors and chose to dip the handle in paint and press it onto the paper, excitedly shouting, “Look at this!” Understanding his excitement and curiosity around the physics of printing, I quickly dug out a set of rubber stamps for him to explore. He used brushes to apply paint to the stamps and pushed them down. When he saw his methods working, his pride in his work shone through. He answered his own questions and felt so successful, shouting, “Look at that! It stamped!”

Nailah and Prithvi both showed their interests in the tactile properties of the paint as well. Nailah used blue and brown paints to stipple a beautiful pattern onto her paper, exclaiming, “It painting!” As her curiosity took over, she used the brushes to cover her hand in the same pattern, seeming to enjoy both the beauty and the feeling of the speckly paint on her hand. This was, of course, exciting, and she chose to explore even further by using a long paint brush to apply long brown strokes to the back of her neck! Prithvi was proudly labeling the what he saw, shouting, “Blue, blue blue!” “Green!” As he continued to explore the slimy blue and green paints squishing across the paper with his brush, he moved up to the orchid, confidently explaining, “Flower!” and used his brush to carefully paint the orchid’s stem.

Our orchid provocation was so successful, and we cant’t wait to take our sensory art explorations further as we continue to grow and learn. Our paintings now hang proudly in a curated display in our classroom, highlighting the hard work and beautiful learning our children are doing at school.

Exploring Straw

As our children began to become more and more comfortable with their surroundings at preschool this week, their sense of belonging and ownership of space allowed them to find more fun and creative ways to use our materials. Preschool is a place for the children to be able to exercise all of their curiosities safely — sometimes in ways that may be a bit too wild or a bit too messy for home! I could tell that the children were beginning to truly understand this when they worked together to scatter our entire wagon full of straw across most of our yard! They began with a bit of apprehension, dropping a bit of straw here and there…but when they realized that I wasn’t there to tell them to stop, but rather to help them find whatever tools they need and to support their curious exploration however I can, they comfortably began to scatter as much straw as they could get their hands on. I was so glad to see the children developing their ownership of this space and finding comfort in their abilities to learn and develop while they’re here. The young curiosity they have in sensory-centered learning was fostered beautifully with this exploration of straw. They got to understand how it felt, how it flew and fell through the air, what happens when they put it on their heads, the sounds it makes, how it smells, and much more while their brains were decoding this information and creating references for all of life’s experiences.

After all of the straw was emptied from the wagon, a quiet stillness came over the yard and everyone looked around as if to ask, “Well…what now?” After a few moments of silent contemplation, Nailah shouted, “JUMP!” Adelynn smiled and repeated, “Jump! Jump!” and everyone jumped, stomped, skipped, shouted, and hopped until they understood the straw and were doubled over with giggles. This was a fascinating interaction, as the children were using their shared interest in sensory exploration to begin their long journey from Parallel Play into Collaborative Play. They worked together, directing one another with enthusiastic commands and weaved around one another without any collisions, honing that budding spatial awareness! Moments like this are what make play-based learning so special.