HOW WE BUILD COMMUNITY & HEALTHY HABITS
For us, every after-school day harmonizes responsibility, skill-building, and fun. One of the things that makes our program special is how we bring kids of different ages together. For example, during snack, with our growing enrollment, we now divide into two groups (7 and up and under 7), using both upstairs and downstairs spaces to better support each age group’s development. Older kids still have leadership opportunities, but benefit from activities specifically geared toward them. During free choice, however, we allow the age groups to mix, and often see them getting along and learning from each other. You may see a nine-year-old boy building Legos with a six-year-old boy, contributing their rationality and building skills. At the same time, the younger individual can provide a fresh imagination.
During snack, we allow all ages to participate in the cleanup and distribution. Volunteers take turns being the “dish collector,” helping collect dishes and loading the dishwasher. It’s a small but meaningful way we build everyday responsibility – by offering it as a choice. In that way, it’s not a chore but an opportunity to help, which builds a healthy habit and helps them learn to contribute to their community. Since its introduction, I have seen countless kids jump at the opportunity to be of help and work with others to help out as much as possible–cleaning up their own lunches and cleaning up activities, even if they didn’t participate in making a mess. It reflects on their actions outside of school hours. Parents told us they noticed a sudden change in their kids’ behavior, with their kids starting to help with the dishes at home.
DAY IN THE LIFE
After snacking, we enter a game or a craft, sometimes split by age, while at other times the different age groups work on the same activity at different levels. During the wintertime, we take advantage of the heavy snowfall, often hiking up our massive sledding hill and eventually lying down at the top to catch our breath, looking down at our building, Rainbow Playschool below, and the road beyond. Often, we either sled down our hill or work with the kids to shape a sledding track closer to our doors. During winter, the snowy weather doesn’t restrict freedom or expression – the kids take time working together to make creative and elaborate snow sculptures. Some of which I’ve seen are large-scale dragons and worms that span multiple feet. When there is a lot of fresh snow, they love jumping off the gaga pit and into fresh powder. On cold days, proper winter gear – gloves, jackets, snow pants, and boots – is required. If a child doesn’t have something, we provide what clothing we can or offer an indoor alternative.
On our warmer days, we have more variety in activities, with opportunities to play gaga ball, 4-square, soccer, kickball, and plenty of room to run around, often with the younger and older girls practicing gymnastics and holding handstand competitions. Sometimes we take a few kids outside to catch crickets or beetles, and make homes for them before letting them go.
While we have the space to interact with natural elements, we also have opportunities for crafts, ranging from crocheting and painting to Perler beads and papier-mâché. Recently, we’ve been giving older kids the opportunity to help invent and introduce indoor games, like Vampire Hunter– a detective-esque game where roles are chosen randomly– vampires, vampire hunters, doctors, detectives and civilians- and we all have to work to find out who is lurking among us, and if we are the culprit– how we can hide in the shadows.
We end each after-school day with free choice time. Many kids dive into Legos, working together to build huge boats, spaceships, or hybrid car-boat-planes, creating elaborate stories. Others build imaginary worlds with friends– or play “family,” a game I know many of us played a lot as kids. We also offer plenty of card and board games, with mancala among my favorites. During free choice, the kids can also finish ongoing projects, read, or play with something special from home. Fridays are sometimes fully dedicated to free choice– a relaxed, creativity-filled way to wrap up the week.