Skip to main content

Dramatic Play in Pre-K Learning About Farms and Community

Our Pre-K boys' recent celebration of Farm Day was much more than a fun day of pumpkin picking and tractor driving in the back yard.

Structured dramatic play is one of the ways that young boys learn best. It is active, hands-on, and engaging.
Not only does it enable boys to understand a topic, it also cultivates respect, and builds vocabulary, social, and collaborative skills. It is a fundamental part of the learning process.

Farm Day marks the start of a multi-faceted "Seeds to Supper" interdisciplinary study in which the boys learn about the origins of food, and the journey it takes from farm to table. Along the way, the boys interact with real farmers, watch chicks hatch in their classroom, and plant seeds in their class garden.

They will harvest vegetables from their "garden farm" and bring them to the Pre-K Store where they will be purchased for the Pre-K Pizzeria.

In exploring all of these areas, the boys learn more about themselves and the immediate world around them. They also come to appreciate what makes a successful community.

Popular posts from this blog

"The Wisdom Within" - The Superpower of Performance

In the following entry of our Teaching Boys Initiative blog series, Saint David's Director of Music and Master Teacher Jeffrey Moore explores how participating in performances and productions build transformative competencies, transmit values, and inspire boys to excel. Jose Antonio Abreu, one of the leading educators in classical music and the founder of El Sistema said this: “Music has to be recognized as an agent of social development in the highest sense, because it transmits the highest values  — solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion. And it can unite an entire community and express sublime feelings.”¹ At Saint David’s School, performance begins in the very first years. Each class, from Pre-K through Eighth Grade, presents their work to an audience of peers and parents, whether it is a story, a skit, a play, a lecture, or a musical presentation. But the increasing complexity and demands on our boys to push themselves to another level is the key to their development and succes...
Read more

"The Wisdom Within" - Writing and Thinking

In our continuing efforts through the Teaching Boys Initiative at Saint David's School ™ , one of our visiting scholars, Dr. Ric Campbell, engages in ongoing reflective practice with our faculty. Below, Dr. Campbell shares an example of a freewriting initiative that was born from the collaboration between literature teacher Jamie MacNeille and history teacher Drew Burton, who sought to address forms of student engagement in their respective disciplines.  WRITING and THINKING:  A Learning Community Engaged in the Knowledge-Making Practices of the Disciplines “Whoa, this freewriting is really helpful !” The above quote by a sixth-grade literature student captures a revelatory moment; he has discovered the wealth of ideas at the end of his pen as he writes to describe what he is noticing in the novel the class is reading and discovers that what he notices leads to questions, and that those questions, in turn, lead to bigger ideas. “All there is to thinking is seeing something not...
Read more

"The Wisdom Within" - Learning as Deliberate Practice

In the following  Wisdom Within post, Visiting TBI Scholar Dr. Ric Campbell continues his blog series on our faculty’s reflective practice program. This entry explores how three Saint David's teachers collaborated to build "self regulated" students: "expert learners who take increasing control over their learning while participating as respectful, caring members of their classroom learning community." LEARNING AS DELIBERATE PRACTICE “If schools are going to help all students become expert learners, the metacognitive capabilities of learners must be acknowledged, cultivated, and exploited. Students must be actively engaged in their own learning and knowledge building; they must be able to effectively direct their personal quest for knowledge and skills, to judge for themselves whether they understand, and to know what to do when they need more information.”  [1] Perhaps the two most important outcomes of learning across the rich and varied curriculum at Saint Dav...
Read more