A Day At FNS
Each of our four programs is taught by a different team of three teachers in the morning, and four teachers in the afternoon. The specific activities and experiences they offer their classes vary from day to day, and program to program, (nice for children enrolled in more than one program), but the basics are the same in each.
We don't do field trips except for our annual trek to the corner mailbox to send valentines (sssh, don't tell...it's a surprise for you!). Each days adventures unfold at our school -- a converted house plus play yards that provides a cozy home-like atmosphere.
The morning programs run out of three connected rooms and the afternoons out of a single large one. Everyone shares bathrooms, a large meeting room for rainy days and parent programs, and our wonderful backyard. We've also a full kitchen furnished with a large child-scale table and chairs for cooking projects (cheesy pretzels and pigs-in-a-blanket are favorites!)
The day unfolds in a relaxed, unhurried pace. The children are encouraged to indulge their imaginations, choose their own activities, and to move freely about, but all is not chaos. The routines and rhythms of the day are comforting and predictable. Rules are simple, clear, and reinforced calmly but firmly over and over again. The environment is safe and orderly (which isn't to say always quiet or neat. . .there's a reason we suggest children wear clothes that can get flour dusted, paint splattered, sand filled, and water drenched!). And all is under the gentle supervision of our calm, warm, and very experienced teachers.
Daily Schedule
Each day follows a predictable rhythm of unhurried free play, interspersed with slightly more structured times when the group comes together to eat, clean up, and share group time. Parents are encouraged to come a few minutes early to chat with one another in our inner courtyard prior to picking up their child at the end of the day. This is one way we establish a sense of community with each other, and gives your child reassurance that they will be promptly picked up when ready to leave at the end of the day.
Morning Program |
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| 9:00 | Arrival and children's choice of indoor and outdoor play (in the front yard) |
| 10:15 | Snack (school provided) |
| 10:45 | Children's choice of indoor and outdoor play (in backyard) |
| 11:30 | Clean up |
| 11:40 | Meeting time |
| 12:00 | Pickup or to afternoon class |
Afternoon Program |
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| 12:00 | Arrival and children's choice of outside play (in backyard) |
| 12:30 | Lunch (from home) |
| 1:00 | Children's choice of indoor/outdoor play (in backyard) |
| 2:30 | Clean up |
| 2:40 | Meeting time |
| 3:00 | Pickup |
Arrival
A teacher is at the gate to greet parents and children as they arrive, make sure children look healthy enough to attend, and to assist with any separation issues. Both parents and children sometimes find it hard to leave a loved one for the day; we never dismiss or trivializes these feelings. Our skilled teachers smooth the transition for both children and parents on an individual basis.
Children's Choice
Most of the time, the children move about as they like -- getting wet, sandy, muddy, paint splattered is often what they like best! They can choose among the many inside and outside activities and experiences offered by the teachers; use the abundance of "raw materials" in our playspaces and their own inventiveness to create their own games; or sit back and observe the goings on around them. The choice is always theirs. Some become absorbed in one project - a complex Lego building, an elaborate sandcastle, or block structure. Others are always on the go - holding a shell to their ear, sliding down the fire pole, painting a picture, splashing barefoot through sandy puddles, popping in the kitchen to roll out cinnamon buns (until they get tired of washing their hands each time!)
Within this freedom to follow their creative thoughts, our gifted teachers gently guide them to make choices that are respectful and caretaking of themselves, others, and their environment. Over time, the children learn to make such choices for themselves. When teachers say, "you are both my friends and I can't let you hurt one another," or I can see that you really want a turn with that toy. Let's ask him if you can use it when he is finished", they are giving children a guideline to solving conflicts, demonstrating the need for the child to be aware of others, and helping to find positive solutions to problems.
Snack or Lunch
After washing hands, we all sit down to eat together. In the morning programs we provide a nutritious snack to share, often something prepared by the children. Afternoon children bring lunch and drinks from home. Snack is always at least from two food groups such as noodles and cheese, English muffin pizzas, fruit and yogurt, plus water, and milk or juice. We try and keep things healthy but occasionally serve treats such as "mud" during dinosaur week (chocolate pudding ) or rice crispy critters on "things that come out of eggs" day. We work with parents to accommodate special dietary restrictions and have adopted a food policy to be inclusive of children who have ingested or tactile allergies.
Eating snack or lunch together gives children the experience of sitting together as a group, conversing with their peers and teachers, and keeping others company even when they aren't hungry themselves, or have already finished their own food.
Clean Up
Children learn that part of the creative process also entails putting things away at the end of each day. The teachers assist in this process by usually chosing children to help in a specific area of the classroom or the outside environment. Beyond encouraging respect for their environment, this also gives children practice in classification and sorting as they place like items together.
Group Time
The last 15 minutes of each class is spent together in group time (called "meeting"). During meeting we gather together in a cozy carpeted room and share songs, fingerplays, musicial movement activities, and favorite stories. It is a wonderful way to end the day!
Pickup
At pickup time, teachers help locate wayward shoes and drying clothing( water and sand play is a favorite activity), gather art projects and treasures, and ensure that everyone leaves safely with an authorized person. This is also a perfect time to share ancedotes with parents about their child's day. Children continuing on to an afternoon program are greeted by the afternoon teachers and taken to their classroom.
Activities and Experiences
Each month the teachers distribute a calendar listing upcoming themes and major activities. This also serves as a handy reminder to wear "blue" to school on designated Blue day or to bring a family photo on Friday,
Each day the teachers lay out a smorgasbord of activities inside in the activity rooms and outdoors under the eaves and in the play yards. From the teacher's perspective, these are designed to promote creativity, intellectual growth, large and fine motor development, and sensory experience, as well as provide an opportunity to problem solve and master concepts. For the children, they're just plan fun! Always the emphasis is less on content (doing a project "right" or learning what one is "supposed" to learn from it) and more on process. An important truism is "if it is in the hand, it is in the brain." Of equal importance is if it is in the heart; how a child interacts with others and feels about themselves as they move through the day.
Some activities are individual - like lacing mesh sheep with woolly yarn; others are communal efforts: a paper dragon for the parade, a paper mache piñata, baking blueberry muffins. We believe that children learn best when given the opportunity to do things their way so all projects are hands-on and open-ended. Making butterflies, for example, never means cutting out pre-drawn shapes and gluing them together under the teachers direction to make a "proper" looking bug. Instead the children are offered a table full of sequins, pipe cleaners, tissue paper, and colored pens the children can glue on, poke through, and scribble with as inspired.
When their butterfly is "done" some children leave it to dry and move on. But Daria wants a tail and string to make hers into a kite; Tom wants some elastic to make his a mask and "can you make some eyeholes please?"; Nick needs a stick to create a flag; and Anna, in the red glittery shoes and pink tutu, wants to wear her's as fairy wings. Whatever the child's idea or inspiration, if at all possible, the teachers will help them make it happen. In everything, we do all we can to encourage and expand creative and inventive play.
Activity Rooms
The following interest areas are set up every day in every program: a teacher assisted art project; manipulatives; tactile/sensory exploration; nature/science discovery; floor toys; blocks; a book corner for quiet moments; dressup; dramatic play; and a "self-help" art supply table for drawing, cutting, pasting and such. Often there is a cooking project.
Over 50 years we've accumulated quite a collection of wonderful play things. To keep things novel and stimulating throughout the year, the teachers keep up with new innovative ideas, rotate toys and set out new projects daily:
- One day the manipulative table holds legos and beads for stringing; the next magnets and a peg board.
- The sensory/tactile activity might be playdough, or shaving cream finger painting, or clay, or tubs of cornmeal to sift through for small toys, or bubbles.
- The science table might hold an ongoing experiment: racing amaryllis bulbs (which one will flower first?), eggs soaking in vinegar (can a raw egg bounce?), dirty pennies (do they shine up best in soap, vinegar, or cola?); or maybe fossils, a honeycomb, or magnified sea shells.
- One day the children can dress up as doctors (complete with lab coats, stethoscopes and medical bags) or firefighters (fully outfitted with badges, coats, rubber boots and hoses); the next in sparkling shoes, tutus, tiaras, and fancy dresses or as cheetahs and ladybugs.
- One day the airport and airplanes are out; the next the brio trains and tracks; the next, a furnished dollhouse complete with doll family.
- One day we've a store stocked with fake food, shopping carts, cash registers, and purses and wallets chock full of play money; the next a construction site with hard hats, backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, caution tape, and plenty of shovels and pails; the next a nursery with well tended baby dolls, strollers, and cradles.
- One day the creative project is making pine cone animals; the next a cork and foam collage; the next gem encrusted spiral mobiles.
- The cooking project might be cutting home made pasta; mixing blueberry muffins; wrapping rice in seaweed; or making bears in a cave (a variation of a hot dog in a biscuit)
The details change, but the organization doesn't. Our children feel confident and secure at school knowing things are where they always are. The puzzle of the day might be kittens or an underwater scene, but puzzles are always on the table near the hall door. It might be a bird's nest, fossil, or silkworms on the science table, but the table itself is always to be found in the corner near the window. When the urge hits to draw a boat or make a rocket, the children know exactly where to find the supplies they need - leading to a surge of "I can do it all by myself" confidence.
Sometimes activities center around a particular theme drawn from the seasons, animals, community, literature, science, colors and shape, etc. During space week, for example, we might make planets by painting with marbles and rockets from toilet paper rolls, Popsicle sticks and streamers; look at lunar maps through magnifying glasses; bake and decorate star cookies glittering with colored sugar; play with space figures in a tub of rice; dress up in spacesuits; and at group time read Zoom, Zoom, Zoom Off to the Moon and Roaring Rockets, and take an imaginary trip to space.
During holidays we try and avoid over stimulating the children by steering away from the more commercial aspects. We explore holidays in a sensory, seasonal way, emphasizing the colors, shapes, sights, weather and other natural occurrences of the season. Near Halloween we may grow pumpkins, cook pumpkin bread, and explore fall colors; at Valentines, focus on the colors pink and red, the heart shape, and the mysteries of mail delivery.
Play Yards
The front yard is used in he early morning by the MWF programs. It has a jungle gym and the teachers put out tumbling mats, large blocks, balance beams, and more. The easel and other large art projects (murals, collages) are often set up outside under the eaves.
All programs share our backyard, a fantastic large, leafy, fully private and fenced playspace that supports many different activities and has plenty of nooks and crannies to explore, including:
- A "Secret Garden" where children can sit on the grass, dance on a small stage, look at bugs with magnifying glasses, or quietly get-away.
- An enormous sand box complete with a self-help water spout . . . getting wet always adds to the fun!
- A large climbing structure with a firefighter pole, slide, tunnels, a turn over bar, a bridge, several steering wheels, etc, that both accommodates the younger children and challenges the older ones. For safety, it's set in non-compactable sand. For fun, the teachers regularly seed the sand with glittery sequin treasures!
- A roundabout bike path for our trikes, baby buggies, shopping carts and other wheeled contraptions.
- A large wooden vehicle with 4 steering wheels that at any given time might be a plane, a train, a bus, a covered wagon.
- A colorful playhouse to accommodate our "sandcastle" chefs. . .
- Picnic tables and benches for eating snacks and lunch al fresco--we prefer to eat outside whenever possible
- Our "pet" worm and ants
The yard sets the stage for exuberant, complex creative play. And we've a treasure trove of open-ended outdoor toys and raw materials to further spark a child's imagination and support the action: plastic people, ropes, ropes, kitchen utensils, buckets and shovels, trikes of all descriptions, hula hoops, giant dinosaurs, cars and trucks, dolls, balls, pots and pans. . . and much, much more. The teachers put out a different selection each day, and, of course, the children can request anything they need: water buckets, a funnel, and plastic pipes to make their volcano erupt; a ladle to dish up sand soup in the café; plastic cones for a tricycle obstacle course; a magnifying glass to observe the ant hill up close.
Teacher's Role
- Teachers are here to create an environment that is varied, stimulating, age appropriate, multi-faceted, rich in open-ended learning opportunities, and most of all fun; not to impose a rigid teacher determined curriculum. They "teach" by recognizing and gently exploiting the teachable moments that inevitably arise naturally. At Friends, the teachers follow the children's lead rather than insisting the children follow theirs.
- They closely attend to each child's individual needs and development, paying particular attention to their social and emotional well being.
- Teachers are here to assure safety, to help out with conflict and sharing, but as facilitators not police. They offer guidance and supervision as needed but always give the children the opportunity to -- and the praise for -- working things out themselves first.
- To use (and model for parents) positive approaches to discipline to help children learn to become social beings who behave in ways that are respectful to themselves, others, and their environment.
- They promote a non-violent philosophy and enforce our no-violence policy. Friends is a gentle place. Weapons aren't allowed, even imaginary ones. Violent fantasy play (army, cops and bad guys, a pirate battle) is gently, skillfully, and swiftly, redirected by the teachers in a creative, matter of fact way. The children are never made to feel guilty about such play; we just don't do it here.
- They play with the children, talk to them, listen to them, get down on the floor with them. They stimulate, enhance, and expand the children's plans and ideas, and applaud their efforts -- they don't direct the action.
- They offer warm, nurturing friendship. They work hard to develop trusting relationships with each child, so that everyone feels safe and supported while at school. They are always ready with words of encouragement and warm hugs.
- Most of all, our teachers seek to provide a safe, calm, loving program where children can relax and enjoy the unhurried activities and play that they so need in this busy world.