Chickadees Program

Natural Beginnings

DOWNLOAD APPLICATION HERE

Chickadees:

Using nature as our classroom, this is a program to support young children in developing and maintaining a positive relationship with the natural world. Our curriculum follows the natural rhythms of the earth, giving us ample material for the making, telling and sharing of stories while building language skills and a sense of community.

Sample Day:

1. Thanksgiving Circle—Coming together in a circle to acknowledge the world around us builds language skills and encourages critical thinking skills.  By asking open-ended questions, children are encouraged to focus on their unique thoughts, feelings and experiences.  The circle also helps builds social skills and by introducing and practicing the peacemaker’s principle, we are establishing community-the precursor to unity.
2. Wandering and Curriculum implementation—This aspect of our day focuses on science and early numeracy and literacy skills.  In learning to observe nature, the children are also learning to “read” the landscape and recognize patterns.  By supporting a young child’s natural tendency to observe and question the world around them, nature wanders hone a child’s innate curiosity and encourage children to wonder about their environment.   Many of the physical activities (like rock hopping, weather permitting) help to develop gross motor skills.  Wandering develops sensory awareness and critical thinking.  In seeing the different birds of our area and observing different color patterns (as in our curriculum for National Bird Day), the children learn classification and categorization skills needed for numeracy.
3. Snack Time—Sharing food honors the children’s social and emotional development.  While talking about our experience of the morning the children have the opportunity to further develop language skills and get to know the emotions associated with a particular experience.  This also gives us the opportunity to honor the origin of our food.
4. Story and Mapping—This is a time for reading books and creating our own story of the day by putting it on paper as a giant map of where we explored.  Developmentally, this encourages early literacy and fine motor skills as the children have the opportunity to practice working with writing implements.  This activity also develops social and emotional growth and encourages children to develop a relationship with their surroundings.
5. Creativity and Play—This is a time to work on any craft project we might have planned for the session.  Gathering of supplies (nature objects) provides an opportunity to work with early numeracy skills (i.e.” let’s pick up 5 sticks and 3 leaves.”) and project ideas encourage critical thinking such as categorization (i.e.” how are these things the same?  How are they different?”)  Creativity fosters emotional development and provides space for emotional expression.