Ms. Grantham and Ms. Nevers' Pre-K class is beginning a study of the different types of transportation with a focus on boats and planes.
The children all have connections to different types of transportation and have talked about boats, planes, firetrucks, and trains all year.
Susan Nevers participated in the Spirit of South Carolina Leadership Program last year with the Upper School girls and plans to share with the students her experience. They will learn vocabulary, parts of the boat, how to read a map, and different types of boats. Additionally, they plan to follow Frances Puckette on her journey on the Spirit in February by mapping her course, as well as reading the journal entries from the watch online. A student in the class's Dad owns a big sailboat, and they will go to see it on a field trip. Also, Frances is going to bring her Hobie Cat on its trailer on campus for them to explore, name the parts, and sketch. As an extension they will also use this study to explore other aspects of our curriculum (sink/float, graphing, measuring).
The students's father who owns the boat also has a sea plane. This would be a good transition to talk about the similarities and differences between the two vehicles. Betsy Graham's class will be investigating planes and have planned to go to the Boeing plant to see the big planes as they are being assembled. Ms. Grantham and Ms. Nevers' Pre-K class will likely accompany them on this field trip to explore how planes work, how they stay in the sky, and how all the parts of the plane come together to make a whole. They will compare and contrast the shape and parts of a boat and how they are made for water with the shape and parts of a plane and how they are made for the sky.
There are so many places this investigation can go, and they are excited to see the direction the students take and what sparks their natural curiosity and desire to learn more.