Staff/Parent Brown Bag
Everyday Science for Young Children
Presenters: Mrs. Bird and Mrs. Tomer
Friday, March 8, 2002 12:00 to 1:00 PM

When provided with age-appropriate opportunities for observing, questioning, exploring, and problem solving, young children become scientists. Come with your lunch to learn more about how you can foster science with young children. Please return the form previously sent or call the school's office to reserve your space at this event!

Family Festival
March 21, 2002
4:30 to 6:00 PM

Bring your entire family to the Children's School Family Festival! Explore some of the children's favorite school activities! There will be board games in the Green Room and movement games in the Red Room. You will also be able to make ice cream, plant seeds, and be creative with art materials. A Scavenger Hunt, too!

Please note: On March 21, there will be no extended afternoon program in order for us to prepare for the event. Kindergarten students will be dismissed at 2:30 PM and the preschool children will be dismissed at 3:15 PM.

Watch for a special flyer as we get closer to this event!

NAEYC Accreditation Update

We have completed the first step, the self-study, in the accreditation process!! We gathered information through classroom observations, family surveys, and teaching staff surveys. We then summarized the results and compiled the program description. Our program description was mailed to the NAECY Academy last week and we are now waiting for our validation visit. Sometime in the next couple of months, someone from the Academy will come to our school to verify the results of our self-study as described in our program description. The purpose of the validation visit is to verify that the program description is an accurate description of the program's daily operations. They will do this through classroom observations, checking documents, and talking with us. After this visit, the validator will mail the program description to the Academy for their review to determine accreditation. The self-study process was a great experience for us. It reinforced that our staff is a major strength of our program, that we have caring and involved parents, and it has helped us with our organization of files and forms in the office. Thank you for completing the parent questionnaire! We will keep you informed as we proceed to the next step!

Nature Camp

The Children's School Nature Camp is for children currently enrolled in the three, four and kindergarten programs. The Camp begins on Monday, June 3 and ends on Friday, June 28. Please see the attached flyer for more information and to register for camp. Space is limited, so please register early.

NALS Annual Conference

On March 8, Dr. Carver and Mrs. Perovich are going to the University of Puerto Rico to attend a week long conference with NALS (National Association of Laboratory Schools). The theme this year is "Laboratory Schools: Reflecting on Differences"

Mrs. Perovich and Dr. Carver will present the following workshop.

Enriching Kindergarten Themes with Diverse Dramatic Play Centers
Presenters will discuss the benefits of creating diverse dramatic play options for 1) strengthening thematic content, 2) fostering skills in all developmental arenas, and 3) helping diverse children to broaden their interests. Many early childhood programs incorporate dramatic play, primarily via a housekeeping center. In our kindergarten program, we have experimented with diverse dramatic play centers that explicitly connect with our monthly themes. Incorporating dramatic play in this way has enabled us to engage learners with diverse interests and skills and to meet each student's developmental goals in multiple areas. Children who typically avoid dramatic play are involved via the thematic content, while others who generally avoid content-rich activities might get interested via the creative context. For example, when teachers saw that children needed to develop skills for working cooperatively, particularly in mixed gender groups, and planning for long-term projects, they initiated a mission control center during a MOON unit. They scaffolded the children's development of the center, which included the control center and two space shuttles. All types of children got interested and involved, plus they invited the preschool children to utilize the center. Practical issues of teacher and student roles, center design and usage phases, and storage of materials will also be considered.

Dr. Carver will lead a forum as part of the NALS strategic planning process, a seminar on publishing in the NALS Journal (for which she is co-editor) and present the following workshop.

Formal and Informal Strategies for Tracking Knowledge Gain
Laboratory School educators often make strong claims about the effectiveness of their instructional methods based on subjective observations and other types of anecdotal evidence. Children's School educators and researchers have begun to experiment with ways to document knowledge acquisition that results from our thematic units so that we can provide objective evidence of their impact. This session will focus on issues and strategies for documenting instructional impact on knowledge acquisition. The presenter will share specific examples of informal strategies for documenting young children's and educators' knowledge change during a thematic unit on PAPER and formal strategies used during a thematic unit on OCEANS. The impact of individual differences, developmental levels, and instructional presentation modes will be considered.

Community Outreach

Sharon Carver has recently joined the Program Committee for the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. The Pittsburgh Children's Museum is a great resource for families and schools by offering developmentally appropriate exhibits and programs. Last Friday, Stuffee visited the four-year-old program and talked about our internal organs.