In the primary years, most of a student's learning and understanding comes from their experiences. It is vital that children get the opportunities to act out parts, and use a variety of tools and manipulatives to form a strong concrete understanding of the world around them. As they mature, they will be able to move more towards abstract thinking and rely on what they have experienced to assimilate new learning into their lives. At Seabury, even at the first grade level, I am beginning to build abstract thought by looking for ways events and objects are similar or different, or how they relate to each other or other events, in addition to the acting and "playing" that it sometimes appears as. Below are some examples on how your Shark is learning through structured play by "being" a scientist or city planner or whatever they wish to be!
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| Working with different age groups brings in different perspectives. Here an airport is being drawn, complete with a parking lot, terminal, tower, jetway, airplanes, and ground traffic controllers. Who knew they were that observant?? |
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| KA is making a sign for our Wacky Wheels day. Notice it is in the correct shape, something that wasn't discussed as a class! |
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| SP is writing out what he is seeing under the microscope in his science journal. |
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| We looked at different ways to sort our current food donations. |
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| We then decided to count and record our results to see which class brings the most. |
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| So far, we are at 104 food items!! |
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| The class LOVED the microscopes, and they got to play the part of a scientist using real tools! |
