The social studies curriculum reflects the many ways in which five- and six-year old children connect with the communities in which they live: their families, their class and their school. They share customs and traditions, discuss the day and its routines, and take care of the school building, playground and wetlands.

What you might see:

• Children making a class book about families. Each child would contribute a photo of his/her family and provide the words for the book through dictation. This book would then become a fixture in the classroom, allowing each child to learn about others as well as see a part of one’s home life reflected in the classroom.
• Children generating a list of classroom rules. In the beginning of the year, the Primary class creates a list of guiding principles to help ensure that the classroom is a place where everyone can learn and feel safe. Children take responsibility for their classroom materials, their classmates, and themselves through this process and learn about the importance of interdependence in a community.

Our curriculum aims to foster a love of literature through reading conferences and exposure to picture books, read-a-loud chapter books, and environmental print. Children explore language skills to convey and interpret meaning through and from symbols and text. In Writers Workshops and at other times throughout the day, children use symbols, pictures, letters and both inventive- and book-spelling to express themselves. As the year progresses children use increasingly accurate reading and writing conventions.

What you might see:

• The morning meeting helper reading the schedule of the day aloud to the class. As they follow along, the children absorb conventions of left-to-right and top-to-bottom directionality and notice initial consonants and picture cues. The meeting helper might get stuck upon finding a new schedule card that reads "Reptiles!" and use the more routine "Reflection Meeting" to get at least the beginning sound in the word.
• A child occupying the teachers’ meeting chair as she shares her latest book with her classmates. She may have worked diligently at the writing table over a period of days during Explore to generate a book idea and represent the beginning, middle, and end to her satisfaction using words and/or pictures. After reading her book to a teacher and making sure it corresponds with the class-generated list of what a book needs, she will find a receptive and engaged audience in the Primary class.

Children are involved with math materials throughout the day such as pattern blocks, unifix cubes, colored tiles, Geoblocks, and snap cubes. Teacher-guided math times engage students in structured learning that is both discrete and integrated within daily routines and our project-based curriculum. The Primary class investigates patterns, sorting and classifying, graphing, developing number sense including estimating and comparing of qualities, numeral recognition and counting, developing an introductory understanding of the number system, logic and problem solving, and the exploration of data, geometry, and measurement.

What you might see:

• Teachers posing a dilemma at math workshop. A teacher may ask, "I want to bring 10 vegetables to dinner and some need to be peas and some need to be carrots. What could I bring?" A teacher elicits strategies from the group. Children work independently, with partners and in small groups to actively try various strategies. Ideas are refined as students talk through their ideas. They use manipulatives and, at times, record their process on paper. Children then share their strategies with the group. Children benefit from articulating their thought process and the group learns that there are many different ways to solve a problem.
• Children working in the block area at Explore. Unit blocks have inherent mathematical principles and through these materials, children work with measurement, symmetry and fractions in the process of building a ramp or a house or an imaginary structure. Upon realizing that there are no more blocks of the ones she wanted to use, a child may discover that a combination of two medium-size or four small-size blocks can give her the same result.

Children actively investigate their natural and physical world through observing, recording, describing, questioning, forming explanations and drawing conclusions. The objects of these investigations range widely: from lichen a child found on a hike with his family to glass jars filled with water that could prompt children to think about vibration and sound. In the Primary class, we emphasize the process rather than the result, as observation skills are the foundation of all scientific inquiry.

What you might see:

• Children taking a walk through the wetlands that borders Bellwether’s schoolyard during Outdoor Time. Charged with the task of being "Nature Detectives," these children might notice that there are fewer leaves on the trees than they saw in a previous walk or that there are animal tracks farther down the path. Teachers may focus the exploration by asking students to use a particular sense: "Let’s be quiet for 30 seconds and try to remember what we hear."
• A child using a magnifying glass during Explore to get a closer look at an apple she brought back from a fieldtrip. After the child carefully observes her specimen, she may opt to record what she sees using pictures and to dictate her thoughts in words to a teacher. The teacher might then encourage the child to generate hypotheses about why the apple has a bruise or how many seeds the apple may contain.

Children develop a positive sense of self and a willingness to take the risks necessary to learn through social and emotional growth. The Primary class works on achieving this development throughout the school day. Since young children learn by doing, children are encouraged to meet this developmental growth in an active way.

What you might see:

• Children mixing paint to create a color that matches one’s skin tone. Prompted by reading The Colors of Us by Karen Katz, the class may have a discussion about differences in skin color. Children create a portrait of themselves with the paint they have mixed and examine the different features of faces. This activity culminates with the children answering the question "What’s special about you" and sharing their artwork and their words with their class.
• Teachers dramatizing a conflict to prompt a class discussion. Teachers encourage children to become better problem solvers through modeling and role playing. After watching children struggle to resolve a conflict, teachers may act out the same conflict at a later time, stopping short of an appropriate solution. Teachers ask the children to help them find ways that the issue could be resolved. Children give answers and then are encouraged to act out the same conflict with the new alternative solutions.

On a daily basis children use the arts to express, represent, and integrate their experiences, ideas, and emotions. The arts offer children a means to demonstrate knowledge and expand thinking. To this end, the Primary class explores a wide variety of materials and forms including drawing, paint, clay, sculpture, woodworking, collage, music, fiber arts and dramatic play.

What you might see:

• A group of children building a stage in hollow blocks. The stage may be for a play that the children have developed based on a story they read or an approaching holiday. This venture could involve paper tickets passed out to the class by one of the organizers and lots of shiny cloth for costumes. Or the stage might welcome the Primary class band, who have created instruments and props from recycled materials and are ready to serenade their classmates with a rendition of a favorite song.
• A child and a teacher working together on a mural of Lake Champlain. They meticulously mix shades of blue and white to achieve the gradations one might notice as the water gets deeper. Then the children might add the creatures who dwell in this habitat, above and under the water, and perhaps a ferry or a sunken ship.

We actively seek out opportunities for service learning in the Primary classroom. It promotes connected, purposeful and positive experiences by emphasizing the importance of caring for others and responding to community needs. For young children, community can be defined narrowly, one’s school or one’s family. Additionally, if the service is connected to the class curriculum, children can extend their capacity for care and concern to larger communities of town, state, country and world. In the Primary classroom, children will participate in service learning activities that involve animals, the human community, and the environment.

What you might see:

• Children making lake-friendly cleaners. When studying Lake Champlain and pollution, children learned about ways they could help the environment. Children filled bottles with cleaning solutions that were made from lemon juice, vinegar and water. They "sold" these cleaners to the school community and profits were donated to the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
• Children cleaning-up the play yard in advance of a school green-up day. Twice a year, The Bellwether School comes together to green-up our school environment. Children work with the older and younger schoolmates as a part of our School Buddy program and cooperate to clean trash from the yard so that the adults can tackle the bigger projects.

Physical development is an important part of the overall well-being of children. We aim to foster healthy and non-competitive attitudes toward exercise, our bodies, and food by providing children with safe and fun outlets for movement, both indoors and out. We emphasize both gross and fine motor skills, and as a result, children grow in their body awareness and control and self-help capabilities.

What you might see:

• The Primary class arranging four logs on the playground to represent two goals. Through a game of soccer, children get aerobic exercise, practice cooperation and teamwork, and can offer an empathetic hand to a friend who has tripped over the ball.
• Sleepy snakes and erupting volcanoes. These are two of the children’s favorite postures in their weekly yoga classes. Yoga is a time when children can cultivate stillness within their bodies and attention to their breath.