In partnership with the Palo Alto Jr. Museum and Zoo and the Palo Alto Art Center, we offer an extended day option for our Olders class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Olders students enjoy lunch at First Congo before walking with their teachers to either the Jr. Museum and Zoo or the Art Center for a science exploration or art class. Students are picked up by their caretakers at 2:00 pm at the Art Center on Tuesdays and the Jr. Museum and Zoo on Thursdays.
Goals of our Extended Day Program: Small Group Interactions
Connecting Ideas:
Learning increases when children attempt to explain concepts and answer questions about topics that they are learning. When students generate explanatory answers to questions as part of learning in a group, better learning occurs for students doing the explaining. In small groups, all children are afforded the opportunity to share their ideas. Hands-on activities that help children generate explanations to questions during group interactions make the concepts more meaningful. When trying to predict the results of experiments, themes of upcoming text, or answers to questions posed by a facilitator, children generate more connections between what they already know and the new information being presented. Attempting to explain what they just learned, its significance and relevance to previously known ideas solidifies a new level of understanding about newly introduced ideas.
Facilitating the Use of Rich Language:
A rich language-learning environment promotes peer interactions, provides the foundation for early literacy development, and gives children the opportunity to practice and develop speaking and listening skills. A conversation facilitation style that is child-centered (following a children’s lead), interactive (asks questions that continue the conversation, waits for a child to take a turn) and models rich language use (labels, expands, comments) helps children to become more talkative, use a more diverse vocabulary and increases their peer interactions.
Fostering Independence and Self-Help Skills:
Opportunities to take risks, problem solve and manage one’s own needs helps to build confidence and competence on the road to independence. Children thrive in an environment where learning opportunities are appropriately scaffolded allowing for the ‘just right’ amount of reach to the next step of development. Our small group extended day enrichment program offers children the opportunity to manage their own meal experience at school under the supervision of a teacher. Parents decide what to send in the lunch a child brings from home, but each child will independently decide how much to eat, at what pace and in the proximity of which friend. Given the time, space, and right materials, children learn the skills required for self-sufficiency and become capable of managing their bodies, their belongings and their peer interactions.