Powerful Peanut Performances As 3- and 4-year olds grow, the exploratory and experimental curiosity that defines early childhood development turns to family, teachers, and friends. Both bio-ecological and constructivist models of development posit that children’s cognitive ability to think about...

Learning Sparked by Pretend Play With winter upon us, many Leapfrogs have been to the doctor for check-ups, illnesses, or for their annual booster shots. These memorable visits generated many conversations throughout our classroom about doctors and their roles. This spark led our classroom into our...

written by Joann Schock Experimenting with Science The Fireflies have begun exciting new investigations in science. The classroom has The Big Science Book, which has plenty of experiments to explore. The Fireflies really liked the experiment about bridges. As we read about the idea, the kids are...

Dr. Seuss on the Loose! It all began with Green Eggs and Ham! The Grasshoppers have just wrapped up a lively study focusing on the prolific author Dr. Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel. We dove into developing literacy skills as we devoured title after title of the 40+ books written by Dr. Seuss. It...

written by Fatimah Mitchell Study of Space The Starfish are interested in space! After talking together about being able to speed off in a rocket ship, our minds have gone a mile a minute in anticipation to learn even more. Many of our young friends are familiar with Earth. We discussed the special...

Follow Their Lead One of the most important things we do in the Roadrunners classroom is follow our children’s lead. For a child, having an interested and loving adult listen closely to what they are thinking about is so important. As a child sees that an adult values them and their ideas...

The Fireflies, with some help from the Grasshoppers, finished their food drive for Philabundance last week by filling up Lead Teacher Joanne Schock's SUV. According to Joann, the response from the PIC community was great! "Over the course of the drive, I saw the children really begin to understand...

The Sounds of Storytelling When you read your to little ones before bedtime, is it a one way interaction? Young children experience read-alouds in many different ways and contexts, but seldom are any of these ways passive! An artfully written children’s work is interactive, colorful, carries meaning...

For the Love of Books! This month we have been encouraging a love of books. This awesome exploration has taken us on a journey to learn about the plot or problem in a book, the characters, and the different parts of a book. As we got more involved in our investigation we learned that we love rhyming...

Staying Safe At PIC, we support learning by finding topics that are of great interest to the children and giving them opportunities to expand on the things they already know. Sometimes it is a short exploration, sometimes it blooms into a several months of deep investigation. Recently the...