Each year NAEYC, National Association for the Education of Young Children, sponsors a weeklong celebration of early learning, young children, their teachers and families called the Week of the YOUNG CHILD.
We love this idea, so we are going to celebrate the
Week of the YOUNG CHILD but with an MCA twist!
(What's an MCA twist? Well, for instance,
instead of 'Taco Tuesday' we are doing 'Matzah Monday'!)
So, for the week of April 11-15, we have planned 5 days full of creative ways to celebrate our early learners and demonstrate our project based learning curriculum*.
Matzah Monday
Tinkering Tuesday
Whimsical Wednesday
Theatrical Thursday
Family Friday
Did you catch that last one? Yes! It's Family Friday and we have something very exciting planned...
We would love to end our fun week with a special Kabbalat K'tan with Ms. Lisa Silver at 6:00pm in the sanctuary. Afterwards, join us on the playscape for a night at the movies under the stars!
*HOW DOES PROJECT BASED LEARNING WORK?
Here's a great example of how our teachers break down our monthly themes and build a project from it:
MATZAH MONDAY
We are going to make Matzah together!
In this one collaborative project we will tackle multiple objectives such as:
- Science (cooking, predictions, ingredient combinations)
- Math (measuring, counting, graphing)
- Social Studies (why do we eat matzah during Passover)
- Literacy (books about matzah, word play, interactive dialogue)
- Art (decorating matzah covers in creative ways)
For a more detailed description of how these objectives are met, click here to visit the MCA blog. You can also click here for an article on how children can learn so much from cooking!
Please mark April 15th on your calendar because we would love for everyone to attend. We will send out more details on our Family Friday movie night as it gets closer on the calendar.
Want to be involved more than movie night? There will be plenty of opportunities to help out throughout the week, so please check with your teachers to see what they need! Also, check out the more detailed description of our week here, and see if one of these topics are up your alley! Perhaps you love to cook and want to help bake Matzah or maybe you're an artist, a builder, a storyteller, etc. We would love to have some parent-led projects, so if something speaks to you, please let us know!
Also, the NASHVILLE ZOO is kicking off the Week of the YOUNG CHILD with free admission after 2PM on Tuesday, April 12th. Local organizations geared toward children will have booths set up throughout Entry Village with activities and information from 2pm-5pm. Hopefully, we can all take advantage of this great deal and community opportunity to converge en masse on the Zoo!
Theresa and the MCA Staff