Who Are The People In Our Neighborhood?
Taking our circle time song (“The People In the Neighborhood”) and act out with our miniature people to the streets. Our preschoolers headed out for a rainy day walk.We asked the students, “Who are the people in our neighborhood?”
Our Friends Are People In The Neighborhood
As we were walking down the path, we were passing one students bedroom window. We guessed which one of us lived there. The student was delighted to play along and let the children guess. His friends knew it was his home and guessed the answer while the other children expressed their surprise how close he lived to the school. Children saw a tree stump of a cut down cottonwood tree outside his bedroom window and asked what it was and if the student had ever been on it.
That student recalled “A long time ago, we had a picnic on it”
We made a future plan that when the wet grass dried we would go and see how many children could fit on the stump.
We continued our walk down the street and across the bridge. Children noticed trash in the stream so we put “clean up the stream” on our planning list.
The Workers Are People In The Neighborhood
We reached our destination the Glenwood Business Plaza to discover what people went to work in our neighborhood. A student heard an air compressor coming from the tire shop. We noticed some cars on lifts and how mechanics stacked 4 tires behind each vehicle to keep track of each car’s tires. Another said “There’s Taco bell over there” and his peer confirmed it and said he knew that because he lives close by too.
Another child told us his brother likes beef burritos.
We saw the hair salon and remembered when the teacher got his haircut at school. Then we saw the GF Dog Food Company and a Jiu-Jitsu gym. One of the 5 year olds told us he takes Jiu-Jitsu and we watched some people training and what kind of equipment was available. We stopped outside the dog groomers and watched two dogs, “Napoleon” and “Casey” get a haircut. The owner came out and answered some questions we had like “Why do you have beds in there?”, “Why was the dog (getting a haircut) shaking?” and one girl wondered “Why there weren’t any cats in there?” (because at school we cared for both cats and dogs).
Environmental Literacy
We saw a “VET” sign and asked the children what the sign spelt, since we had a VET sign in our classroom last week. The same girl guessed VET and we looked into the window. We weren’t able to go inside the VET because they were in surgery. One child told us how a child in his older brother’s class had to have surgery.
We passed the Korean restaurant and asked what the “OPEN” sign spelled, another word we write in dramatic play room. A 4 year old guessed the word. We stopped by a sign on the bike path with a picture of a dog on a leash and asked children to guess the meaning. Many called out the right answer. Environmental literacy and making sense of visuals is an authentic literacy opportunity. We spent 50 minutes on a gray, wet day exploring our neighborhood and connecting our curriculum with the world out our back door.