Perhaps some of the biggest users of “Sari’s Garden,” our school garden, are our early childhood friends. Our early childhood teachers facilitate connection with the natural world everyday, providing children rich opportunity to listen, look, question, feel, discuss, and love the things they find all around them. Exploring nature through play, particularly outdoors, provides endless opportunity for growing and learning in a boundless environment. This month, we checked in with our toddler teaching team to learn about their favorite parts of this special Breakwater space. 

As the temperatures plummet in these early days of February, students in Jane Lambrix’s and Lori Tanguay’s preschool classroom (the Forest Room) are thinking about hot sand, cacti, and the dry heat of the desert. Their most recent emergent curriculum was inspired by a morning meeting question. Every morning in the Forest Room, children and teachers discuss a ‘would you rather question’ and each child must select from two categories. During a January morning meeting, the question was ‘would you rather live at the North Pole or in the desert? After many children selected the desert, Jane and Lori remember, “throughout the day the children [started] asking more questions about the desert - they were intrigued.”

The 1st and 2nd grade classrooms have been buzzing with animal chatter over the past couple of months during their animal research projects. Every year 1st and 2nd grade teachers choose a theme that becomes their year-long focus for their inquiry and place-based curriculum. This year’s theme has been Casco Bay! So far students have learned about the islands, geography, and coastline of Casco Bay before turning their focus to their current project of animals. 1st and 2nd graders in Marjorie Haley’s and Katie O’Toole’s classes have been learning about the local habitat by researching one of four animals in their research groups. After watching short video clips and learning facts about salmon, humpback whales, piping plovers, and harbor seals, each student chose their top three animals to learn more about and were divided into research groups for their projects. From there, students have truly taken ownership of their research and have loved sharing their findings with their classmates.

Light, community, and traditions are able to bring joy and connection to our community during the short and cold days of winter. Before winter break in December, preschoolers in both the Meadow and Forest rooms learned all about traditions that their classmates celebrate during the winter time. Through discussions of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Diwali and winter traditions of sledding, snow fort building, and driving around the city to look at winter lights, preschoolers learned that many of their winter celebrations and traditions involved light and family. Read more about how preschoolers celebrated winter as a classroom community by clicking on the link below

The change-maker unit is one that generates palpable excitement and curiosity in the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms. This year-long unit explores the questions; How do I tell my story? How do I listen to others’ stories? How do I make change? Especially this past year, teachers observe how students interpret the news and what is going on in the world around them. 3/4 teacher, Yazi Azel, shares, “studying a changemaker from history or present day was not only to give [students] practice in research but to build their empathetic skills and see how listening to others and making connections is how change begins. Students grow to feel self-aware and empowered by telling their stories and learning more about someone they have genuine interest in.”

Like many aspects of school programming, Breakwater Music Essentialist, Stephanie Davis, has had to make several teaching and curriculum adjustments during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although there have certainly been many challenges, the pandemic has also offered opportunities to creatively incorporate technology into music curriculum and take advantage of the outdoors during warmer months. Read more about Stephanie’s music curriculum this year and her plans for a virtual concert!

The start of this new school year during the current pandemic has brought an increased appreciation of Breakwater's value of and access to the outdoors. Although we have always treasured places like the Jessielands, Fore River Sanctuary, Sari's Garden, and Nason's Corner park, we have utilized them like never before in the first month of school. Music, Spanish, and morning meetings and lessons have often times taken place under one of our tents, toddlers have spent their entire mornings in their playground spaces seeing a lot more of the 'big kids' from over the fence, and our K-8th grade students have been spending a full day each week under the trees at the Jessielands in Cumberland.