The transition from the Guppy to Dolphin classroom marks your child’s progression to a new level of social and emotional interaction and an increased ability to evaluate and impact his or her environment. Capitalizing on their increasing need for independence, and their ability to engage in activities for longer periods of time, the teachers in the Dolphin classroom have developed activities and designed a classroom that begins to resemble an early kindergarten program. With longer group times, more detailed activities, and an emphasis on interactive and cooperative play, this classroom curriculum focuses on the evolution of the child as an independent problem solver. The activity areas within this classroom are as follows:
DRAMATIC PLAY
Preschool children use role-play to examine the world around them. In the house area and the dress-up corner, the children imitate real-life images and story-book characters. They may play side by side creating pretend meals or dressing up to go to work. However, they begin to understand that their own stories and actions can be carried out together with their friends and they begin to share ideas. Storytelling and dramatic play gain a new depth with the inclusion of puppets, props, and costumes to enhance imaginary play. Blocks and other manipulative materials are often incorporated to add yet another dimension to the dramatic play activities.
FINE ARTS
Access to art and music enhances children’s sensory motor exploration. These activities are most often experienced by the children within the context of the daily lesson plan. Teachers guide the children through music activities that include body movements, song, and the use of instruments. Music also plays an important role in establishing transition times throughout the day. The children experience art activities that include painting, pasting, cutting, molding, and construction. Within the art projects, children work with a wide variety of materials to discover color, shape, texture, and size. These activities offer sensory pleasure in addition to excellent opportunities for self-expression and individuality.
LANGUAGE ARTS
Fostering a love of reading and an appreciation for oral and written communication, the language arts center develops children’s recognition of, and exposure to, vocabulary. Children learn to associate spoken words with pictures and begin to identify the letters associated with those words and pictures. Storytelling and reading picture books demonstrate word context and sentence structure that enhance children’s growing language skills and provide examples of appropriate speech. The children are also encouraged to draw pictures and tell stories about those drawings and to refine their fine motor skills through coloring and other drawing exercises.
BLOCKS
The blocks and manipulatives play area reinforces the concept of group play. Children can sit next to one another and build tall structures or spread their creations out on the floor. The blocks and manipulatives are combined in assorted shapes, sizes, and textures to encourage creativity and exploration. In this area, the children begin to share ideas, work together to create structures, and mimic each other’s creations. The blocks are often used by the children to reflect their own view of the world around them. They are also used to develop the concepts of big, little, more than, less than, equal to, and to introduce various shapes and sizes.
MATH & SCIENCE
Puzzles, peg boards, manipulatives, and number games stimulate the children’s problem solving skills in the math area. Children are introduced to geometric shapes, fundamental counting, and early arithmetic. The utilization of these materials facilitates the child’s progression from concrete to abstract thinking by requiring the completion of sequences and patterns to obtain a finished product. By working with simple shapes and puzzles, the children experience a sense of accomplishment and positive self-esteem as they successfully complete each task. Through science activities, such as cooking and playing at the sand table, children learn to measure, pour, stir, manipulate materials, and follow steps, further developing problem solving and investigative skills. In addition to testing cause and effect and realizing the value of observation, the children develop positive attitudes towards living things by caring for animals and plants and learning more about the natural things around them.
Forging deeper friendships, further defining their identities, and establishing core educational concepts, the Dolphins fully engage in a wide variety of learning opportunities as they get ready for the more formal learning environment of the Whale classroom.
