As sunlight streams through the windows, a group of three- and four-year-olds gravitate toward different parts of the classroom. One of the children enters a building area, wondering what new materials might be waiting, and discovers a new bin with bungee cords and plastic shower hooks has been placed on the floor. Turning excitedly to the others, the child says, “Let’s make snakes!” and they begin to connect the cords to the hooks.
What might look to an adult like a collection of random materials is, in fact, a thoughtful invitation to learning. Carefully curated by an Early School educator, these objects help children explore the physical properties of materials and discover new ways to connect with the world around them. In this particular case, the unexpected but sturdy and tensile objects enabled the students to stretch their bodies and their minds. It is an actual example from co-teacher Hallie Montgomery in our Chapel Hill Early School’s Rainbow Class room.
“We notice children connecting things all the time,” Hallie, who just celebrated her twentieth year with us, observed. “It could be lines they’re drawing on paper, or connecting one truck to another with pipe cleaners. Finding different materials that are interesting, and being willing to observe their play and not impose your own ideas for the materials’ use, allows the children to show us what they need to continue that discovery.”
For Hallie, this relates to an observational theory that identifies nine universal schemas of children’s play: connecting, enclosing, orientation, positioning, rotation, transforming, trajectory, transporting, and dismantling. Seeing this framework in action was a highlight of a recent visit to the Mulberry House Playschool in Brooklyn, New York, The site visit was just one of the many ways that the highly skilled educators across our three Early School campuses—Durham, Chapel Hill, and Main Campus—continue to seek out new ideas and inspirations from educators around the world.
Materials organized into areas of play-based learning at our Durham Early School, a common feature across our three Early School campuses.
Another recent pivotal experience was Durham Early School Head Teacher Carmen Raynor’s study tour of New Zealand’s early childhood program—an opportunity to observe and learn about their national early childhood curriculum, Te Whāriki. The Māori word Te Whāriki translates to “woven mat,” and the curriculum’s bicultural framework is organized around key values of Māori and English worldviews. The curriculum includes four core principles: Empowerment (Whakamana), Holistic Development (Kotahitanga), Family and Community (Whānau Tangata), and Relationships (Ngā Hononga). It also includes five strands of learning and development: well-being, belonging, contribution, communication, and exploration.
Durham Early School has long drawn inspiration from the Reggio Emilia approach, and Carmen was eager to compare the early childhood programs in New Zealand with what she’s seen in action in Reggio Emilia itself and in our Quaker classrooms. A key feature of Reggio is documentation of children’s work, which is displayed in classrooms. Carmen, entering her thirtieth year with us, noted that streamlined documentation in New Zealand, with more visuals and fewer words, made the intellectual work of the children more accessible to families. She also noticed that, like our Early Schools, those in New Zealand heavily emphasized outdoor learning, and she was inspired by the seamless transitions between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Last spring, Carmen shared her observations from her time in New Zealand with the teachers across all three Early Schools. One component of the Te Whāriki curriculum is that children are continuously in a cycle of making intentions, experimenting, and reflecting on their discoveries. Campus Early School teacher Willette Zigbuo said, “This is already an integral part of Campus Early School’s program, because so much of our work is inspired by the HighScope curriculum.” HighScope emphasizes scaffolded, participatory learning through direct experiences to build problem-solving skills.
Because our Early School educators are so experienced and trained, they are able to nimbly shepherd the students as they learn and grow each day. This requires constant planning outside the classroom so that the children are challenged to make their own discoveries and develop a lifelong love of learning.
“The culture of lifelong learning permeates every part of the Early School program,” Carmen said. “We embrace our Quaker belief that Truth is continually revealed through our research of other early childhood models and schools. United in our Quaker values, the Early School staff is excited to share our learning with one another to enhance the overall quality of our program, and to create a place of joy, belonging, and intellectual curiosity for our students.”
—Katherine Weaver Scott