Rhythm of the Day

Rhythm of the Day:

Rhythm is central to all we do at Prairie Flower. Carried along through verse and song, daily rhythms include preparing snack, playing, tidying, singing, eating, washing, listening to stories, and playing outside. In the security of this rhythmic context children feel free to participate in a wide variety of experiences.

Weekly rhythm creates predictability-- the child anticipates “painting day” and “bread-making day” or “porridge day”. These activities change with the seasons, reflecting the rhythm inherent in the natural world.

Prairie Flower is open from 9:00-12:15.

The morning is longer than other preschool programs to enable a satisfactory length of time for indoor and outdoor playtime and to allow for comfortable transitions through the morning’s activities.

     9:00 -10:15…daily or seasonal activity and indoor playtime
    10:15-10:25…cleanup and wash hands
    10:25-10:40…circle time
    10:40-11:10…snack and wash dishes
    11:10-11:25…oral storytelling, puppetry, or role playing
    11:25-12:15…outside play time

Indoor Activity and Creative Playtime
“Stone soup, stone soup. Let’s have stone soup tonight.”

At the beginning of the morning children have a long period during which they join in a daily activity such as painting, making the day’s nutritional snack, or seasonal crafting. There is ample time to follow their own imaginative impulses and to play with the many natural materials and playthings in the room. Playtime ends with everyone tidying up the room and putting all the toys carefully to rest.

Preschool aged children learn about the world through taking in many experiences and then “practicing” them through imitative play.

Circle Time
"Let us make a circle like the circle of the sun"

As the children gather in a circle, they are led in songs, poems, and seasonal finger plays, integrating their desire to imitate what they experience. There is a healthy flow between large and small movements, hearty and quiet voices, quick and slow actions, and movement in all directions. Circle time repeats each day with some elements changing seasonally and others continuing all year. This continuity allows the children to fully enter the world of circle time.
During this time many faculties are exercised, giving emergence to foundational skills essential to language arts development, such as:

speech articulation
vocabulary
numbering
spatial orientation
dexterity
coordination
listening skills
sequencing,
body geography

Small motor skills related to reading and writing depend on the mastery of these movements.

Snack Time
"Blessings on our food and blessings on our friends"

Providing children with wholesome, warm food in a lovely atmosphere is valued as very important for their physical and emotional development. The snack table is set beautifully with placemats and napkin rings in place. After a verse of thanks for our food and friends everyone eats delicious organic food. Various grains that are nourishing to a growing body are emphasized. After snack the children wash their own dishes in warm, soapy water.

A sense of thankfulness, caring and responsibility is fostered through snack time.

Story Time
"Mother of the fairy tale take me to your shining land"

A calm, reverent mood is created before a fairy-tale, folk tale or nature story is told to the children. After having heard a particular story for several days the children might act out the story or the teacher might tell it using puppets. The children relish trying out different roles and enjoy dressing up in simple cloaks and scarves to create the cast of characters. Stories are carefully chosen for their theme and their use of language. Nothing stands between the children and the story—no books or tapes are used during storytelling. The child’s own ability for inner imagery is strengthened.

This capacity for inner imagery is crucial for grasping the written word later in reading.

Outside Activity and Play Time
“Oh where do you come from you little flakes of snow.”

The children are taken outdoors to experience the natural world in all its different seasons. There the wagons, wheel barrows and trowels come forth and the sandbox and garden transform daily as the children bring their own impulses into play.

Children who have fully experienced the seasons out of doors can enter very deeply and comfortably into later studies of plants, animals, the weather and the earth sciences.