Kindergarten & Grade 0
The right to play
Kindergarten
Play is the genius of the young child. Play at every stage of development improves a child’s IQ, social-emotional growth, learning, and academic performance. Movement play, object play, imaginative play, social play, storytelling, and creative play all have separate and distinctive benefits for a young child’s growing body, burgeoning social sensibility, and developing brain.
Through play in harmonious and natural surroundings, the children gain direct sensory experience of the elements provided by the school’s proximity to nature. At this age children learn by identifying their surroundings. Practical activities like gardening, cooking, cleaning, polishing, sweeping, tidying up their toys and keeping everything in its place creates order in their world and gives rise to a capacity for inner discipline and a respectful relationship with the environment.
In nature play, children learn about themselves in relation to their environment, which includes an awareness of others. Practice in problem-solving, compromise and conflict resolution is an everyday experience gained during creative free play. Development of imaginative play leads to critical thinking skills in later years. As the materials lend themselves to a metamorphic process—one day a particular piece of wood serves as a loaf of bread and the next it becomes a little toy dog—the children receive the gift of seeing how imagination transforms their world. They engage in play with logs, rocks, cloths, and wooden crates for a long and uninterrupted time period. Through such sustained play deep thinking skills are built.
Enchanting classroom environments strengthen the developing senses, from the soothing colors on the walls and filtered glow from the skylights, to the simple objects for play, including stones, wooden logs and natural fibers and textures. The child’s natural capacity for imitation is honored by our teachers, who are dedicated to being role models worthy of imitation, and who allow the natural blossoming of a healthy inner life within each child.
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A day at Pre-school at WSW
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Arrival at different Pre-Schools
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Outside play
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Circle time
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Snack
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Inside play
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Lunch
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Story
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Rest time
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Snack
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Outside play and pick-up by Parents or Afternoon Care
