A Typical Day at the Chalkboard School
At 8:30, children start arriving at school. This is a time of free-play where adults take a step back and simply monitor quietly from the sides. Minimal adult intervention is key in creating independent, self-confident children, so we always want to give them space to just play.
At 9 we start our official school day. Every day always starts with a class-wide “assembly” (it really feels like too big a word for such a small class!) where we gradually switch gears into school-time and introduce the topic(s) for the day. This is an informal and relaxed space where the children are encouraged to bring up issues with whatever they are struggling with, or are excited about, or intrigued by, etc. This is also the main source of questions and ideas for our "Curiosity Fridays" explorations. The main educational goal we have at the Chalkboard School is helping children learn how to learn. This includes being aware of their own needs and strengths as well as having the vocabulary and assertiveness to ask for what they need. The main role of this morning assembly is to help children learn just that.
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The lessons themselves will, of course, vary by day, but they will generally include two different but related things on a given day. For example, if we start the day talking about ancient Egypt in a social studies lesson, then after our morning break we may go on to a writing assignment where they are asked to create their own hieroglyphs and use them to write something, as well as explain their system to one another. Or perhaps our day will start by exploring how our number system is created by playing around with various bases in various math problems and games, and after our break they will be asked to investigate what base number systems have been used by humans throughout history. Or on any given day the two sections might be less related than that, since having such connections is not necessary 100% of the time, although it is very valuable.
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Our morning break generally happens in our classroom, where we have a large variety of activities for the children to occupy themselves with, both in groups or individually. Board games, drawing and art supplies, very many books on all sort of topics, LEGOs and other construction toys, fort-building tools and materials, musical instruments and stereos with large music selections, knitting supplies (Karina loves knitting), and whatever else is suggested to us, as long as it doesn't have a screen. If our schedule for the day and the weather permit it, some breaks might include a stroll around the block, jumping rope on the sidewalk, a quick visit to the library, etc. Our philosophy puts a lot of emphasis on following the children's lead, so the activities, especially the free time activities, depend heavily on that day's energy.
Our lunch break (packed lunch from home this year, but we will be offering lunch in the future) often happens in the park. Of course, on smoky or very wet days we stay indoors (although light drizzling will usually still find us outdoors).
A lot of our afternoon activities can be done outdoors, in which case we simply stay at the park after lunch. Music, dance, gardening, all sorts of physical movement activities, but also some art activities (drawing from nature, etc), some science exploration, and a large etcetera enter in this category. Some other things, such as cooking classes, messier science projects, electronics building, etc, require us to go back to our classroom, so that depends on the day. We always go back to our classroom for pick-up time.
We mentioned Curiosity Fridays above. The idea behind these days is that children are always curious, and often their curiosity takes them in a rather unrelated direction from what we are doing. That, plus the fact that there are other curious minds asking other questions often means that answers to their questions are quick explanations sometimes. Curiosity Fridays is a day when we take all those questions and give them a much more in-depth treatment. Because they are collected beforehand, this means not only that teachers can have better, more in-depth explanations for them, but also that the children have had time to research the matter on their own and can now explain it to their peers. Moreover, they have had time to ponder the questions themselves and often have more probing questions about it. In general, Curiosity Fridays are about learning to go deep into a topic and about enjoying that experience.
In general, our days are set up to help children learn about their own learning needs and what drives them. Our goal is to create life-long learners that never lose their curiosity and their longing to figure out the world around them.