Blasting Off to Space with Imagination
10/19/2019
What an exciting week we’ve had! Space Week was a so much fun for the entire school, and our Beluga class has enjoyed it so much that we’re going to continue with it as long as the children are engaged! The children were involved in all kinds of enriching activities which had space as their theme, including reading books about space, creating art projects of planets and rockets, adding our faces to the astronauts we colored, and exploring our new space-themed sensor bin. A big hit was playing with the galaxy dough which looked like the night sky, and the children worked on fine motor skills as they had fun searching for the marble planets which were mixed in it. Our week culminated with our Space Museum event, which was so much fun, and very well attended! One of the greatest highlights of the week was visiting with our special visitors from NASA who did a fabulous job of engaging with the children and answering all their questions. They brought real moon rocks and an actual space suit to explore and ignite our imaginations! Imagination is such an important and wonderful part of early childhood, and it’s one of the things which makes working with young children so engaging – anything is possible to a child! With this in mind, we began this week by reading and discussing “The Terrible Suitcase” by Emma Allen and Freya Blackwood. This is a great story about a young girl who receives a “terrible suitcase” instead of the rocket backpack she had really wanted. She is very unhappy with it, but by the end of the story it has become a wonderful prop used in several different ways to help her and her friends imagine themselves as astronauts on a space exploration. Sir Ken Robinson, British author, speaker and international advisor on education in the arts noted “…one of the roles of education is to awaken and develop (the) powers of creativity. Instead, what we have is a culture of standardization.” At PNA our motto is “We educate students to be exceptional learners and independent thinkers of vision, courage, and integrity.” As educators we are constantly striving to provide the kind of education Sir Robinson is advocating – one rich in experiences which will “awaken and develop the powers of creativity”. In Early Kindergarten we work to begin this process of by preparing an environment which fosters both imagination and creativity. Einstein is quoted as saying “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere”. That is one of the main goals in our classroom: provide the environment, materials and experiences which will help our students develop the kind of powerful imaginations that, as they grow, will take them anywhere and everywhere they desire.
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Melissa SmithMs. Smith has a degree in Early Childhood Education and has taught kindergarten for many years. Alaska has been home to Ms. Smith for 28 years, and she can't imagine living anywhere else! She has four children, a dog and two cats. She loves reading, camping, gardening, and genealogy! Archives
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