Curriculum Corner: 'Returning to Regular Schedule'
As we eased back into the rhythm of school after winter break, we tried to keep our classroom activities light and fun, and when we center our lessons around the joy of learning that still includes valuable instructional time.
By Rashmi Staengl and Jason Beckner, Blue Mountain School Jade teachers (5-7 year olds)
As we eased back into the rhythm of school after winter break, we tried to keep our classroom activities light and fun, and when we center our lessons around the joy of learning that still includes valuable instructional time.
For Language Arts this week, we worked on matching lowercase letters with their uppercase counterparts. We also played a variety of language-centric games, like the tried and true “stinky cheese” and Apples to Apples Junior.
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Students also worked hard on a series of sight word books — their ability to read books without help from their teachers has progressed so much in
such a short amount of time.
In Morning Circle, we went around the carpet and shared stories from our holiday break, our goals and dreams for the new year, and a Y chart of our expectations of the classroom for this semester.
In Art, Lore (Deighan) led a workshop on weaving with multicolored strips of paper. Not only did it look visually striking, the kids all told us how satisfying it was to make their weaving as tight and clean as possible. We were extremely impressed with how much pride students took in their work.
For Read Aloud this week, we decided to take a break from our usual series, Dragon Masters, and started reading the classic story, "The Borrowers." It’s quite wordy and full of tongue-twisters compared to what we’ve read for Read Aloud in the past, and presented a challenge both to the listeners and the reader.
For Writer’s Workshop, we asked students to think of one word they wanted to represent their wishes for 2026. Given a list with words like “strong,” “play,” “teamwork,” and others, they made posters with a word of their choice that they later decorated.
In Science/Outdoor Explore, we led an activity that focused around animal tracks and identifying them. A series of tracks from different types of animals were placed around our outdoor classroom, and students were separated into teams and given a field manual to help them figure out what animal each track belonged to.
Once back in the classroom, we used stamps of different animal tracks and made educated guesses about what animals they belonged to — at the end of the activity, the real animals were revealed. We made a point to prioritize play and settling into the new year, and we still managed to learn so much.
Blue Mountain School is a progressive, contemplative school in Floyd, where intentional curriculum planning is part of the everyday. “Curriculum Corner” is a bi-weekly column written by Blue Mountain School teachers to share insight and school happenings.