Everything You’d Want In A Preschool

Today Families got to join their preschoolers at school. Here’s is Tann showing Hunter around.

Left: Attendance, here is Ian placing laminated photos of all the kids in attendance on little Velcro circles if they came. If you notice, the Dogs, cat, bunnies, turtles, fish etc all are included in their attendance list!

Right: here are the families joining the kids for morning circle times where the kids sing, dance, learn behavior and share ideas.

Left: this is Tanner’s favorite friend at the school (Ian, but sweet little ‘Nike’ holds a close 2nd).

Right: Here is Kate & her mother & sister. She is one of a few other families at this school who have adopted Chinese children. I love this!

Here are millions of little baskets of toys that encourage learning and discovery.

The kids make most of the food they eat at school… bread, tortillas, pizza, muffins, yogurt, peanut butter etc. Here’s Hunter helping Tann.

Everything here is whimsical and fun. I think the most important quality a teacher can have is joy. Mrs. Leary is all of that and more. She loves messes. She loves discovery. Loves hands on learning. She hates worksheets. Hates time outs. Hates tight rigid structure. But you’d never know her hates, in fact, that word might be off the ‘language of kind children’ which they study daily. They draw pictures every morning in circle time depicting the behavior they’d like to implement for the day. But this is only after watching a puppet show about that behavior (ie: saying sorry, giving encouragement, sharing etc).

Here is Mrs Leary with my boys, ya think they like her much? Right: Tanner’s hand prints.

The entire center is decorated with the children’s art. Not just crayon on computer paper either. Sister buys canvas. They use painting tools like rollers and brushes. They shred scrapbook paper and use clay and every other element of art they can find in Shanghai.

The “Regio” method of teaching supports ‘transparent learning’ between the school and the children’s family. She sends out blog post every week. Emails us pictures of Tanner.

Also, when you walk through the building, you will see several stations like the one on the left (above). With pictures and quotes from your children—so at every drop off and pick up, you can see what the teacher talked about, and read the children’s responses.

Left: the children each have their own cubbies. They hang their coat, & backpack and check in their library book (she has a HUGE library, two separate rooms for fiction and non-fiction…. did I mention this was just a Preschool?!).

Right: There is a mirrored wall with little Velcro spots for the children to attach their names to. They then take a dry erase marker and write their name as a way to ‘sign-in’. In the picture, you can’t see all the cute little preschooler signatures, but it’s so cute every morning.

After signing in, they find their hand print, and move it next to the job they’d like to do. There are many jobs at this little preschool. They can help make bread/peanut butter/or other food of the day. They can help make paper, help with compost (yes, each child has their own full size ‘bath tub’ compost that they fill with scraps from home), feed the bunnies, feed the turtles, water the garden (yes, and a garden that wraps around the front of the building beautifully), take attendance, weather meteorologist (they predict the weather daily). But that’s only about 1/2 of the jobs, as I think of them right off the top of my head.

Left: when Mrs Leary sees the children implementing their behavior goals (that they drew pictures of on their individual clip boards in circle time), she rewards them with a little butterfly that they can attach to the butterfly curtain. She says “when we are nice to each other, it’s like a little butterfly is flying around our heart!” What kid doesn’t like that image in their mind? So sweet…

At the school, the kids eat very very little meat, if any at all. they usually have fresh fruit, and other foods they’d prepared themselves.

Right (above): In one of the rooms, Mrs. Leary had a huge indoor climbing gym imported in. It was made by a Montessori Guru & the play structure can be switched up daily. It teaches the children balance and agility. Yes, balance, even balance, is part of Mrs. Leary’s wholistic (sp?) learning at this school.

Finally, it’s just down right fun. I went to school with Tanner for his first two weeks (remember his hearing troubles? I had to come to make sure he knew when to transition from one activity to another).

She never flinched. Not once. I saw her and her meticulously chosen staff (yes, many have interviewed) in every circumstance.

Never did she show any sign of frustration or impatience. Everything that happened around the children proved to be a ‘learning opportunity’. There is no such thing as ‘failure’ in this environment. There is a lesson to be learned in everything that happens here. There is great communication and lots and lots of laughter. Tons of that.

Don’t you love meeting people like Mrs Leary, who are so consistently good at what they do that you mischievously wonder where the compensating factor is? When people are so great at what they do, you wonder what other areas of their lives they’ve given up to be so great (like how Bill Gates rarely showers, I’m sure you’ve heard that one).

She came from a media/broadcast background and gave it all up for something she loved more. The children. I am most grateful that people like this live here in Shanghai.

A million thanks to Mrs. Leary, who, most likely bites her nails- or has some other crazy habit on the side, that allows her to be so great in this area.