4/19/11 Update on ARP

I had a chance to speak with my Site Supervisor today regarding the lesson plans and the outdoor classroom schedule. She approved the lesson plans and also approved for me to open up the idea to all our teachers to contribute a lesson plan for the outdoor learning classroom.  I am excited about that aspect, because I am a firm believer in "two heads are better than one" and I know that our teachers will come up with some really good lessons to contribute.

We also talked about getting a water hose out into that area to be able to water our plants and to have water lessons out there. I am going to speak with our school secretary tomorrow to ask her to send a work order to our maintenance department to do just that. Hopefully they will be able to do this for us. Our Head Start teacher and her paraprofessional have been going out there and watering the flowers that they planted, but they are having to make several trips in and out of the building to a nearby classroom to get water to the flowers. I am looking forward to seeing if maintenance will be able to get us hooked up with a hose and a turning wheel to roll it up on.

I look forward to hearing your comments, please give me some comments.  Thank you...8)

4/18/11 Update on ARP

My project is the playground/outdoor classroom project. I turned in some outdoor classroom lesson plans and a tentative schedule for teacher's use of the outdoor classroom last week to my principal. She has been quite busy with ARD's, TPRI, and other end of year committments that she has not had a chance to look at the information I have submitted. I will wait patiently for her to get to it and let me know though, because I know how end of year committments can be overwhelming and time constrainting.

I am thinking about opening up the "contribution of lesson plans" to our campus teachers and see if they would like to think up a lesson that they would like to do in the outdoor classroom and contriubte that lesson to our "file" of outdoor classroom lesson plans. What do you all think? Would that be a good idea and do you think I would get a good response? Our teachers are always so creative, that I just thought it would be a sweet idea for them to share their ideas for our whole campus to be able to use at their leisure. Let me know what you all think.

Okay, until next time...have a great week! This weeks School Law lectures are very interesting!

Update on Playground and Outdoor Classroom

Since March 26th, the kids have been so excited to use the playground equipment. Our Head Start class was the first to use our Outdoor Classroom and they placed flowers into our flowerbeds. The flowers and soil were donated by  Lowes and Walmart. A week ago though, one of the playground equipment toys, the bicycle track, started losing it's bolts, the kids have been lined up to play on it each day since it was put in, so I guess it was getting worn out! We called our ESC, because they helped us put it in, and they came over and fixed it for us.

I have been working on a time schedule for teachers to use the Outdoor Classroom and on Lesson Plans to get them started. I turned them in to my Site Supervisor today and she is supposed to be looking over all of the information and letting me know what we may need to change. I will keep you all posted.

Have a blessed week!!  The web link to the article about our Head Start Class is also attached, check it out...the kids had a lot of fun with their parents and teachers helping them put in the flowers.
http://www.lindaleeagles.org/newsletter.php?id=233