学前教育 Update: Learning ABC’s and 123’s Remotely!
回到3月2日, Eastern Christian faculty members met for the first time to begin thinking about the possibility of a Coronavirus outbreak in our area and what that would mean for how we 指导 our students. If I’m completely honest, I wondered if our administrators were being overly cautious. I thought to myself, “There is no way it will come to this. 他们真的能指望我们教学龄前儿童吗 远程?” In school, we have made a conscious decision NOT to use technology with our youngest students. How would we move our hands-on learning approach entirely online?
但在第一次见面时, our administrators shared some ways that Chinese teachers were encouraging student learning at home, and so I left thinking that we could experiment with remote learning in preschool should the need arise. Our preschool team worked together to brainstorm ideas for what our students could do at home to promote the same type of learning that happens at school. We immediately began creating “remote learning” lesson plans for parents of PreK students, and delegated the work load as to which of us would focus on activities related to Bible, 语言艺术, 数学, 很好/运动, 和蒸汽. Our “Week 1 学前教育 Lesson Plans” began to take shape, while we naively hoped we would never need to implement them.
Now a whole month has passed since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing my 学前教育 students at school and my perspective about 学前教育ers and remote learning has completely shifted. With distance learning being our only option in the present circumstances, my question is no longer “How in the world can we be expected to teach preschool students 远程?”而不是, my question is now “How can I best support my students and their families as we learn 远程?”
With the help of an amazing 学前教育 director and hard-working colleagues, our 学前教育 team is doing all that we can to make this challenging COVID situation less stressful and more meaningful for our students and their families. For starters, we don’t want to lose our classroom community! Even our youngest students enjoy meeting online for daily virtual Circle Times with their teacher and friends. Each class meets at a set time for 20-30 minutes each school day to greet one another, 听一个圣经故事, 唱熟悉的歌, 复习或学习新的东西! We’ve heard such positive feedback from parents about how their children look forward to circle times and that it is so comforting to have some sense of “normalcy” during uncertain times.
In addition to these daily synchronous learning times, our 学前教育 staff provides weekly lesson plans for parents of 学前教育 students to use at home. We recognize that all families are facing different challenges through this pandemic, 但对于那些有能力的人, we make suggestions of learning activities that can be done each day with their children. We consider what items families may have around their homes and try to come up with meaningful and engaging activities that practice important 学前教育 skills; skills like learning to spell or write their names, 使用1:1对应数到10, 发展精细和粗大的运动力量. We share these lesson plans with families at the start of the week so that they can pick and choose to do the activities that work for their home situations. We 鼓励 parents to share photos of their children completing the suggested activities and it has been so fun to see our students still learning and growing at home!
As we continually seek to make remote learning even more effective for our 学前教育 students, this week we are adding synchronous “specials classes.” This means that our little ones will get to exercise from home while watching gym teacher, Mrs. Veenstra, sing along and do motions with music teacher, Mrs. 和梅西老师一起听图书馆老师的故事. Kabot. 也, each 学前教育 student will be invited to join their teacher and a small group of friends for a special “Show and Tell” time each week so that we can stay connected to our students in a (digital) space that allows for more conversation and less structure.
Above all, we know that our great God loves our 学前教育 students even more than we do! Our hearts break that we cannot physically be with them at school, but we trust that God is in control and has a plan in all of this hardship. We hope that this unique time with their families is a blessing that our students will never forget, 我们是来支持你们的, 指导, 鼓励, and pray for ALL of our students and their families along the way.
