Bragging Alert! I’m about to use our granddaughters as an example to comment on the coming school year. Yes, they are the most beautiful, brilliant grandchildren in the world! Nu? From a Jewish grandmother you expected something else, maybe? Since they were babies, our granddaughters, ages 7 and 9, have been coming to visit and enjoying Explora! a science center and children’s museum. www.explora.us Explora! provides delightful, creative learning experiences for children of all ages (including grown-up children). This year, the girls’ approach to Explora! exhibits and activities emphatically illustrated the concept of a “spiral” curriculum. A spiral curriculum is one which progresses by expanding upon past learning and engaging students’ growing ability to study familiar subjects in a more complex way. Our granddaughters had been to Explora! many times, but this year, intellectual maturation coupled with developing academic skills notably shaped their interests. They continued to enjoy the giant bubbles and the huge marble maze contraption, but they also spent time experimenting with weights and balances to represent math facts and manipulating electromagnetic devices (both exhibits which they’d scarcely noticed in previous visits). While they’ve always had fun flying gizmos made from paper cups and paperclips in a stream of air, this year their flying cups were more elaborate – thoughtfully and carefully constructed to whirl, spin, and rise high up over the air stream. As we made our way from exhibit to exhibit over the two floors of Explora! everything old was new again! (And I, the proud savta, took loads of photos to record each discovery.) The girls were applying new knowledge and learning strategies from their recent school experiences to the activities presented in the stimulating environment of Explora! Similarly, our religious school students will come to us in a few weeks, capable of applying past learning in a more cognitively mature way; ready to spiral ahead to a more in-depth understanding of familiar topics. Our challenge is to craft a classroom setting and learning program that are engaging, meaningful, and stimulating; a program which invites a more advanced perspective on Holidays, Jewish History and Heritage, Torah Study, and prayers. We’ll explore such activities in future posts. For the soon-to-begin religious school year, everything old is new again!
- Home From Camp & Back to School - August 6, 2014
- May Their Memory… - July 2, 2014
- Starting Over, Starting Up, Reviewing and Re-thinking….Again! - June 6, 2014