Welcome to our Early Elementary Blog
Our Early Elementary Program is a special corner of Brightworks.
It is here that we preserve the joy of exploration, build the foundations of collaborative work, and tie learning and play together so intricately that children see them as one in the same.
Find information about the fundamentals of our early years program and updates for our K-2 families.
What is Play-Based Learning?
What is Play-Based Learning?
Play-based learning is an education style that emphasizes physical play, movement, exploration, and problem solving. Children are given time to play and work independently, which allows them to learn naturally and develop social and emotional skills.
Creative problem solving is a critical skill best learned in early childhood when brain growth and innate curiosity are at their peak.
In the primary years, children are beginning to think in complex ways about themselves, their environment, and others. Our collaborators play a crucial role in honing children’s brain development and learning.
By providing early learning experiences to students to lay the foundation for life-long thinking, Brightworks strives to transform the way children learn and the way they contribute to the world. Curious what this looks like in action? Here’s a peek into a week with our Kindergarteners. Their collaborator is the creative, Melissa Nocero and the Band (class) name is Garnet.
A week in the life of a kinder kid:
The Monster Arc has finally launched! We started our week off by reading Color Monster: A Story About Emotions. This group is so skilled at recognizing their emotions, sharing them with others, and understanding others' emotions might be different at the same moment.
Building off the book, we got crafty, making our own color monsters and showing off our end of day emotions with a shared Magna-tile art piece full of all the colors representing our emotions. We will continue to use "monster" to look at our emotions and dive into a lot of SEL work.
We are having so much fun exploring letters through so many mediums. Beyond the usual pencil and paper, last week we used shaving cream and this week it was Magnatiles. This activity provided opportunities to practice our letter recognition as well as geometric concepts such as rotation and reflection and work on sharing our materials. The letter U got some extra care from one of the Garnet Banders to make it look more smoothly curved and the rest of the band was ready with appreciations for the extra effort.
Banana slugs remain the star of the show during science with Rich and this week they began to take form out of clay. Working their little hands, the Garnet Band created their own clay banana slugs, making sure to include the anatomy that they have been studying. They are definitely looking forward to painting them this week.
Once again, we made it out to Battery Bluffs on Thursday afternoon. They ran, they played, and they made observations, also labelling their drawings. We noticed everything from the sandy beach to the dogs running along Crissy Field to the Golden Gate Bridge to the work trucks in the distance by Sports Basement. Seeing what really catches their eye is just another way that I am getting to know them even more.
We have been exploring the number ten as it holds so much importance in the mathematical world. We are currently working on making tens by seeing what two numbers we can combine to get to ten. We are using many tools to explore this concept including our fingers, paper and markers, and our favorites, Unifix cubes. By the way, counting with their fingers is an important part of building their math brains...research shows it.
Friday was an incredibly special day. In the morning, we got to enjoy 'reading buddies' for the first time with our Opal Band buddies. The Garnet Band selected books they wanted to read with their buddy and drew them a picture. The joy in the room was truly contagious and I honestly can't tell you which band seemed to enjoy it more. They are already begging for their next reading buddies time.
In the afternoon, the lower school enjoyed our Community Friday time out at the Tunnel Tops. We ate lunch up on the main lawn and then ventured down to the Outpost playground where all the kids from Garnet to Citrine explored the playground activities together. Walking back to school alongside the Citrine Band was definitely another highlight. These kids love their time with their older friends.
This week is going to be another fun one with our exploration of Monster and will include some monstrous sounds with the arrival of Fleet Week.
How do Kindergarteners at Brightworks Learn?
We play
We build
We learn through play-based explorations, through emergent projects and through stories
Educators model excitement and a love of learning
Brightworks is a Small School that is Big on Connection.
Connection to other ages - we find that segregating children by age can pathologize normal, developmental differences and deprive children of the opportunity to bond with, teach, and learn from each other.
Connection to the community - there is a school-wide mandate to get out of the school building at least once a week.
Connection to experts - students and collaborators bring in experts to dive deep into a topic.
We expose students to new ideas through play based explorations that lead them to provocative questions
We acknowledge the innate drive to learn about ourselves and our world that children possess, and we very intentionally make sure we are not negatively interfering with that by imposing anything that interferes with that.
Our structures and supports are designed to use that inherent momentum and augment it and support it, not to interfere with it.
We design projects that invite students to use the skills of collaboration and build their other problem solving and academic competencies.
We honor and support autonomy and agency.
We reserve time for students to practice the skills they need to take their projects to the next level. We do this in a way that invites student choice and agency.
We honor and support inquiry, interest, creativity, and the needs of the child.
We have community circles, we take time to help students mediate conflict, we discuss relationships and tools for navigating them, we help students do their own internal work on how to identify and regulate those emotions.
We recognize that everything we say and do teaches something about power and relationship, and we endeavor to make sure those lessons are healthy and helpful for the goals we are striving for.
We learn how to be in community with each other, and how to work it out when our needs conflict.
Social Emotional Learning
Social Emotional Learning cannot be a standalone class, and cannot be taught as subject. It has to be lived, in every moment, and it is at the core of everything we do at Brightworks.
In the early years, play leverages the brain’s natural curiosity to explore. It leads to child-led discoveries, group collaboration, and building all the things that make good humans…self-discipline, self-direction, collaborative problem, and the habits of life-long learning.
Anthony Consiglio—Director of Community, Slowness, Caring, and Jokes—speaks here about our approach to SEL at Brightworks.
Exploring our New Neighborhood
Home Sweet Home: The Presidio
We feel incredibly lucky to have our school embedded in one of the most spectacular parks in the city. The Presidio has so much to offer, from museums to restaurants to hiking trails to wildlife. And even a campground!
Here are a few of our favorite spots so far:
Tunnel Tops Park - a new attraction in the Presidio, a national park site in San Francisco. It’s free to all and open every day. Presidio Tunnel Tops is easy for everyone to enjoy. It’s built on top of the Presidio Parkway tunnels, with amazing Golden Gate views. It has places to be in nature, picnic sites, lawns and gathering spaces, and an incredible nature play space for kids. Come out for free family-friendly events and activities and return for music, art, food, and fun throughout the year. See the Calendar for details.
The Spire & Wood line - The Presidio is home to the largest collection of British artist Andy Goldsworthy’s public works on public view in North America, including Wood Line, the snaking wood piece on Lover’s Lane, and the towering Spire.
Mountain Lake, which can be found here near Lake and Veterans Boulevard, is one of San Francisco’s three remaining natural lakes. The other two being Lake Merced and Pine Lake. It boasts a great playground, nice walking trails, and sports fields.
Rob Hill Campground - the only overnight campsite in San Francisco, is located at the Presidio’s highest point above Baker Beach in a eucalyptus grove.
Cafe Rx - Located in the Presidio's Letterman District within the Tides Converge campus, Cafe Rx is a little bit off the beaten path. And it’s delicious! You're more likely to find park workers than visitors at this reliable, reasonably priced, and unfussy walk-up eatery.
Educating the Whole Child Through Play
Play and learning are inextricably intertwined.
“The function of play is to build pro-social brains, social brains that know how to interact with others in positive ways.”
Confidence is really important to children. When a child feels safe and confident, they feel that they can try new things. So this confidence will allow them to start their next learning adventure. This is the way in which children are learning through play and how play helps the brain to grow.
As scientific evidence continues mounting to show play is the best way for children to learn and thrive, we are proud of our model and the whole-child learning that takes place at Brightworks.
From a child’s earliest days, play is how they relate to the world, and to others. When children have plenty of opportunities to learn playfully, they do what they do best: pursue their natural curiosity. And, as they do, they build skills and aptitudes they’ll keep for life.
At Brightworks, learning is driven by children’s interests and cultivated by educators. Informed by neuroscience, we’ve reinvented education to put creative play at the heart of the school curriculum. When they play, children test, learn, explore, and ask questions, all the while building creative skills.
The really cool thing is that when your child experiences pleasure they become driven to repeat the activity.
This makes a lot of sense really if something feels good and rewards us, then we do it over and over again to try to get more good feelings and rewards. With more repetition, the child will achieve mastery of the skills used during play, a sense of accomplishment and boosted self-confidence.
The key attributes of a successful adult in the global world are built when children are young. At Brightworks, children are building their toolkit of skills through play that includes:
collaboration (teamwork, social competence),
content (e.g., reading, math, science, history),
communication (oral and written),
creative innovation,
and confidence (taking risks and learning from failure).
Students solve problems, think strategically, relate to others, and manage life’s ups and downs. Ultimately they learn how to learn, how to collaborate, and how to innovate…even when they have limited resources.
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Brightworks Philosophy
“Children are competent and when you give them real tools and real problems they can surprise even themselves with what they are capable of. Learning is an innately joyful experience that kids do naturally. We have to stop thinking of ‘school’ or learning as something we do to students but rather think of students as the voracious learners they already are.”
-Mackenzie Price
Our close knit, welcoming community is intentionally designed to encourage students to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who appreciate a variety of perspectives. The deep respect and compassion in the relationships between learners and educators is palpable and supports students to learn freely and deeply.
At a recent community meeting, Anthony shared how wonderful and unique each student was. He told the whole student body, “and if you want to know how YOU are unique and loved, come to me anytime.”
Brightworks in Action
If you were a fly on the wall in an early elementary classroom, what would you see?
Our educational team plays a dynamic role in facilitating discovery
Collaborators spend their planning time setting up and finding materials for interesting provocations. On the floor they are working as documentarians to record and discuss the play/work the students are doing.
The educational team has deep competency in facilitation
Collaborators take student’s ideas seriously. They are researchers asking questions rather than jumping to conclusions.
Students working together as they play and discover
Students are kind to each other.
Students have the tools to navigate their own conflicts.
Students feel ownership over their own space and learning.
When challenging situations arise, collaborators & students manage them together
Collaborators are using (and modeling) nonviolent language
Collaborators are aware of power language
Collaborators are calm and warm and patient
Together, these elements give kids the opportunity to thrive, feel safe to explore and grow, and tackle challenging problems with confidence. In doing so, they learn about leadership, collaboration and empathy.