Summer Camp Information and Supplies
Hello Camp Parents!!
Summer is right around the corner, and we are so excited. We are going to go over some essentials now so that you can be ready when we start camp on June 14th:
FIRST UP:
There are TWO camp groups - The Rising K Camp (starts JUNE 1) and The Camp (starts JUNE 14). They will be following the same themes, but they will have different schedules. It’s pretty self explanatory, but if your child is a rising kindergartener, then they will be in the Rising K Camp, and if they have already completed kindergarten they will be in Camp.
SWIM DAYS:
Rising K Camp: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 11am at Herndon Swim Club, bus departs at 9:30am. They will do sprinkler water play on the other days of the week!
Camp: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays! Mondays and Wednesdays will be from 10am to 11am at the Herndon Swim Club, bus departs at 9:30am. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be from 1pm to 2pm at Uplands Pool in Reston. They will do sprinkler water play as well, so they should still prepare to get wet on Fridays.
NEXT UP - WHAT THEY NEED:
Supply List: These are all the things we recommend for camp!
T-Shirt Size Sign up: We will provide (2) camp shirts for every kiddo enrolled in more than 3 weeks of camp! Campers should wear their camp shirts everyday. We know that they will get dirty and grubby, but that is OKAY! Dirt is a sign that they have had a fun time! You may purchase additional Camp shirts up front now on our form, but we may also provide extra shirts as needed (and if we have leftovers as the summer goes on!).
Supply List
Hard FLAT TOP Cooler: This will be WAY more than your kids’ lunch holder. It will be your camper’s on-the-go camp chair. And an extra container for water.
Outdoor Backpack: This needs to be large enough to hold what your kid needs all day long. We will be outside, so there will be no cubbies or hangers! Make sure it has a chest clip, a side pouch for a water bottle, and that it can stand up to the elements and hard, outdoor use!
Camp shirt - provided
Gallon Ziploc Bag: For wet swimsuit
Swimsuit: We will be going swimming most days all summer long! Send your kiddo in their swimsuit if possible.
Dry underwear and shorts to change into after pool time.
Towel: Small, lightweight towel. Your child will be carrying all of their own things, so make sure it can fit in their bag!
Goggles (these are not required but they are pretty awesome)
Tough, outdoor shoes with good support: Make sure they are breathable and good for wet weather. EXAMPLES: Keens, Crocs, Nortiv, among others
Water bottle: 12-16 oz maximum, we will have the ability to refill the bottle
Extra clothes: ONE complete set - this should be packed in a ziplock in their backpack, as they will be carrying all of their things with them all day!
Optional Items:
One Long-sleeved sun shirt if you want them to swim in it.
Optional: Hat (baseball, visor, sun hat) or Sunglasses
A book! Kids will have some down time, or may want to take a breather. Nothing is better than a book to read.
Snacks: Even if your kid isn’t bringing a full lunch we recommend having snacks. It is a long day and we are really moving out there!
ONE toy: one car, one stuffy, one action figure, etc. One toy from home to play with can be brought (but we are hoping the natural items they find will suffice!)
A deck of cards: we will have our own, but having one means that they never have to wait to check one out!
Unnecessary Items: Because of the interference with the flux-capacitor of our time machines, we ask that any ‘tech’ items be kept at home!
No tablets/ipads
No smartphones unless absolutely necessary. These will be kept with a counselor in a waterproof container
No gaming systems
No toys with a lot of small parts
Curious about t-shirt sizes?
Please fill out the form below so that we can begin to get your camper’s kit together for them!
And here’s Miss LJ in all of our sizes - from Youth Medium to Adult Medium!
Kindergarten: Registration Information
In less than three months, our Honeybee’s will be graduating preschool and heading into Kindergarten. It’s definitely an exciting time, even with all of the school uncertainty that the pandemic has caused.
We know that children do best when they are in school, in person, 5 days per week. That message is being supported at the federal level, with our president doing things like ensuring that teachers have access to vaccination before the end of March. Dr. Brabrand, the superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools has said that it’s “not realistic” to have K-8th back in person within Biden’s first 100 days due to the physical distancing requirements of 6ft from the CDC. Here’s an article where he is quoted saying that if those requirements are changed to 3 feet, it would be doable.
But even when public schools return to 5 day, in person learning, the risk of public classrooms having to close due to covid exposures is higher than in a setting like Common Ground. This is due to larger class sizes, the inability for certain classrooms to be properly ventilated (a great article from the New York Times on that), and the larger community as a whole. Those closures for quarantine, no doubt, will be handled by each teacher with grace. We have seen first hand, just how amazing our K-12 counterparts in the public school system have handled the challenge of teaching young children remotely! While the educational disruptions won’t have any long term negative effects on your child, it can be tough for working parents who have to stay home, and facilitate their education, while their child is in quarantine due to an exposure at school.
With that in mind, Common Ground made the decision to run our Private Kindergarten program for the 2021-2022 school year. (our first information session was recorded and is accessible here.)
At Common Ground’s Kindergarten will have a play based approach to covering the same curriculum topics, at about the same pace as Fairfax County. This will prepare your student to enroll in first grade for the 2022-2023 school year with a low risk of educational (and parental/work) disruption, due to our proven success in mitigating COVID within our center. In fact, our masked classrooms (3 years and up) have yet to have to close. This is due to our Community’s cooperation. You all deserve all the credit for keeping everyone here safe.
Kindergarten at Common Ground WILL RUN and already has 5 confirmed enrollments, please email Liz to reserve your spot.
While we would love to have your kiddo here full time next year, we also support our public schools in Fairfax County. We will make sure to run any program that is necessary to pick up where the school system leaves off - be it transportation with before and after care, to a full day virtual program (*however, we will not be able to support virtual learning if your child is home due to quarantine for a COVID exposure).
The Northern Virginia Association for the Education of Young Children (NVAEYC) AND Fairfax County Public Schools are hosting a free virtual event for parents/guardians and educators of rising Kindergarteners to learn about the transition to Kindergarten.
Thursday, March 25th- 6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m.
Event will provide information about how to help a child have a successful transition, how to register a child for kindergarten, and what a kindergarten day looks like.
Link to register: https://www.nvaeyc.org/family-events
Here’s what you need to know about Kindergarten registration with FCPS:
Kindergarten Registration for the fall is open for children who will turn 5 on or before September 30.
Parents can find out their local school by viewing the FCPS boundary locator.
For kindergarteners, the separate kindergarten registration page has the most detailed information.
Online registrations are submitted to the local school’s Student Information Assistant, who will assist with the registration process.
Here is a list of the Herndon individual school’s Student Information Assistants:
Clearview: Nalei Meneses
Herndon: Shermin Sirajudin (NOTE: Herndon is asking families to Click here to access the Herndon ES website and fill out the new student registration form.)
Hutchison: Donna Espinales
Here is a list of the Reston individual school’s Herndon Student Information Assistants:
Dogwood: Pam Taylor
Forest Edge: Mervat Masoud
Hunters Woods: Pattie Ono
Lake Anne: Melinda Rivas
Please leave a comment if your school is not listed, as this information was provided to us by the Neighborhood School Readiness Team!
"I met a Pediatrician in the woods..."
Hello all! Ms. LJ here. We have been talking so much about kindergarten readiness here, both as discussions in our blog and in our kindergarten planning meetings. For many of us it is a passion project, a calling to find a way to reintegrate the joy of childhood with the delight of curiosity, of hunting for answers in this beautiful world of ours.
Learning IS a joy that fuels the fires of our existence. Our children are subjected to the fears of failure early, of “falling behind” or being measured against their peers with a single yard stick and being found wanting. These anxieties become inextricably linked to education as they get older, convincing them that it is something they have to endure, rather than tools given and honed to become our best selves.
Why? It is our very ambitious belief that it is because we have cut off curriculum from play. Particularly in the American education system for young children we have turned away from the most natural, efficient source of teaching.
BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT: I MET A PEDIATRICIAN IN THE WOODS…
On Friday morning last week I found myself home with my two children. I had just received my second covid inoculation and was feeling a bit run down myself, but I did not want to squander this rare opportunity to spend alone time with my kids! The Covid-19 pandemic as a whole has been a tragic, frightening event, but I will always cherish the summer I got to spend every day outside with my babies. I took them to the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, one of our favorite “safe space” hangouts from last year, to walk the grounds and kick the slush around under a blue sky.
It was here on one of these particularly wet paths that I ran into two women, one of which commented that it was nice I brought them out on such a nice day. I laughed and said flippantly “I figured they didn’t need to sit in a classroom today.”
In response, this woman gestured around her and said with utter sincerity, “This IS a learning space.”
I grinned, even though I knew she couldn’t see it behind my mask. “I think so too.”
The lady laughed and turned back to her friend, ”And I’m a pediatrician, so you can quote me on that if anyone asks.”
It’s not just our career teachers that are seeing this. It’s not just the parents who know their “energetic kids” focus better when in motion. Doctors who specialize in children are urging for parents and educators alike to integrate consistent, long-form play into all aspects of children’s lives. Physically, they are stronger. Mentally, they are more able to pay attention and less likely to have sensory issues.
Social competencies and emotional resilience suffer greatly without consistent peer-interaction in a playful and imaginative setting as well! Children often work out a lot of their big questions and anxieties of the day by integrating it into safe-space imaginative play reenactments. Without being able to work these issues out themselves, children are unsure of their own abilities to problem solve, and those anxieties and dependencies grow.
Here is a fantastic article from The American Academy of Pediatrics all about The Power of Play if you would like to read more:
The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children
It’s not that wrote learning, memorization, and standardized long-form curriculums don’t work, it’s that they miss the point of education entirely. They leave behind many and narrow the focus of the rest, curbing creativity, independent thought, and resilience to the necessary process of failure.
Think about any lesson you still remember 10, 20, 30 years later. Which ones stuck with you?
For me it’s almost always the games. My sixth grade teacher had us turn our entire classroom into a bunch of cardboard houses to mimic Hoovervilles. She dunked our feet in cold water and drew cards with battlefield injuries to give us a taste of war on the front. In third grade, multiplication songs and games stuck with me way longer than any flashcard work. Watching pumpkins rot, playing with baby chicks hatching from eggs and experiencing them grow was a poignant way to learn about the life cycles of living things. One of my favorites was pretending to be sound waves bouncing around a back alley. Even “Which President was it?” trivia tag helped facts that HAD to be memorized something fun and worth doing.
To reinvigorate education as a whole we have to reunite the JOY that should come with it, the fascination, the wonder. Let the kids run off in their excitement and experience a lesson with their whole bodies. Let them learn more than you thought, more widely than you thought. You’ll be surprised what you learn when you’re muddy and out of breath too.
Go Play! Keep Learning! Most of all, Have Fun!
Miss LJ
Kindergarten Readiness: A Discussion Series
Common Ground has been around 49 years.
In that time, we have made some incredible discoveries about how children learn and thrive.
Having a curriculum dedicated to kindergarten-readiness for our 3 yr and 4 yr class rooms has proven to be essential to a child’s comfort, confidence, and comprehension in their kindergarten classroom.
Disclaimer: This does not mean we want your three year old sitting at a desk all the time!
We actually want the opposite of that! We have talked about how essential big body activities and play-based learning are to a child’s holistic development. We have discussed the need for peers to really create a learning space rife with new ideas and curiosity.
As a parent AND a teacher, I covered my initial concerns for children not in kindergarten readiness programs HERE. I especially touched on children who were not in any kind of program during the Covid-19 social distancing effort.
Having a daily schedule in a classroom completely dedicated to their exploration with peers who provide endless inspiration is key to a learning spirit. We want to share our experiences, our research, and our findings with you by taking a deeper dive into how a two year kindergarten readiness program benefits:
Natural number sense — an awareness that mathematics is present in all things
Scientific process — independent search for answers to their questions
Emotional regulation and social confidence
Physical fitness and general endurance
Attention, comprehension, and participation
Learning as a PROCESS over a destination
Prewriting and Imaginative Independence — We discussed at length how Emergent Writing is nurtured from ages 3-5 HERE, but will touch on it as we discuss other aspects of a child’s growth and development
We will be discussing Rising Kindergarteners and our Private Kindergarten on February 9th, but we encourage anyone with a child who will be 3 by September 30th, 2021 to enroll them in a readiness program. Follow our journey, ask questions, and do your research! We will also provide further reading on the subjects at the end of each post and discussion.
We are constantly learning and growing as well! As teachers, we love learning almost as much as we love your kids, and want to nurture them with you. Let’s do this together!
Warmest Regards,
Ms. LJ
Teacher Tips: Emergent Writers Need Peer Input
After my previous post about kindergarten readiness and those three and four year olds who experienced the Covid-19 quarantine, I started doing more research. I wanted to see if there were any concerns from experts on how key aspects of a preschool curriculum could be implemented at home effectively.
Serendipitously, Office for Children was offering a class for teachers on how to provide ideal environment and instruction for emergent writers! I signed up immediately. As a teacher and a parent, it seemed like an essential course for me to provide my students (and kids!) as much support as I could.
Here are some key aspects of the class that can be implemented both at home and in the classroom!
The educators discussed the writing environment extensively.
Have many items labeled as possible to help children begin to associate symbolic words with tangible objects. It is even better if you can provide a picture. A child begins to recognize the connection between pictures and real items first, which helps them practice that symbolic association. A trash can label would look something like this.
Have several different types of writing implements, paying attention to how easy they are to grasp and the pressure that needs to be used. For instance, a marker is a much easier implement to use than a crayon because it is larger and requires less force to create with.
Book making is fun, creative, and gives a child purpose. Have book making supplies readily on hand, and keep them so that your child knows what they have created is valuable! Here are instructions for making a fun book with a stick for a spine and other found materials!
READ TO THEM. Have books all around. Change them up so that the books don’t just blend into the environment. Show the kiddos all different kinds of authors so they can begin to recognize different styles! This helps them understand that people can communicate and use words differently, and they can begin to develop their own taste. Try to always read the words as they are written so that children understand you’re not just making up what you’re saying, that the words themselves have a consistent meaning.
Put pictures of animals, plants, stars, favorite characters, around on the walls. Kids will look at these and be inspired to write on subjects they may not have thought of before! If they copy stories they’ve seen or read before, good!
DRAWING IS EXCELLENT FOR EMERGENT WRITING! Drawing means they are working to produce their own pictures and symbols to convey meaning. Writing the words they are saying and spelling them out carefully will help them see how the letters and words relate to their thoughts! KEEP IN MIND that you should also encourage the children to add more detail to their pictures before relying too heavily on the words you add. This will help them work to convey meaning instead of letting you do it.
ENTHUSIASM. IS. KEY. Their enthusiasm will carry them through the practice, will encourage them to continue their process even when it’s frustrating. YOUR enthusiasm will encourage them and help them fly forward without fear of failure! Ask them leading questions like “Oh Wow! What happens next? How does it end?” This not only helps them with story sequencing, but it lets them know that wherever they are in the process, you are happy to be there sharing their story.
TREAT THEIR WORK WITH DIGNITY. I’m not saying you have to keep every drawing or scrap of paper with art on it. I am saying to be consistent with # 7, keep ongoing projects in the same place so that they can return, encourage them to move forward in their studies rather than critiquing WHERE they are in the process.
9. Peer Interaction during the process of emergent writing is key.
There are a lot of processes you can do at home that are helpful and important. But research has shown that other children thrive in an environment when they can watch how their peers practice drawing and writing. They copy each other. They observe different style interpretations. They listen as their teachers give different instructions to their friends. When I was teaching in the four year old classroom, I was blown away by how one child drawing volcanoes transformed into the entire class drawing volcanoes. They told different stories, they extrapolated off of each other’s ideas, they asked big questions that spun off into entire lessons. They were fascinated, excited to draw in their journals and tell me THEIR version of the volcano story. Someone would add a princess, someone would add a PAW PATROL pup, and then another kid would do the same thing the next day, inspired by their friends. Even in COVID times when the numbers are low, even if they have to sit apart at their own desks with their own implements, children that can be around their peers while they practice show greater strides in all aspects of writing, story telling, and literary comprehension.
Educators are encouraged to call their children “authors” and let them “read” stories to their friends. Letting them sit in an “author’s chair” is even better. Even if they’re just reciting a memorized passage, or making up words for their pictures, they have autonomy over the story they are telling. This inspires other children to want to build their story to share.
One of my favorite things to do with my students is to come up with a premise and allow the students to write the story with me. They can introduce characters to the story, provide what happens “next,” I’ve even had my older students come up with lines for rhyming words that match the story! They riff off of each other and begin to understand the structure and sequencing of a story while having fun together. Afterwards they draw the pictures for each page. We put together the book and each child can stand up and read THEIR page in the book we all created together.
Experiences like the those described above show how essential and enriching peers are to the writing learning process. Wonder, creativity, practice, immersion, these are the building blocks to writing success, but all of those things are SUPER CHARGED with friends at your side.
Questions? Comments? Experiences to Share? Please comment below! We love to share our world with you.
Ms. LJ
CG Challenges: Mathematical Reading Recommendations!
Fairfax County’s WINTER READING CHALLENGE is such a fantastic idea!! We will be posting recommendations all winter! Today, the recommendations are all Math-based. A deep foundation of number-sense is key to a lifelong love and understanding of mathematics. This is easy to achieve because math is everywhere! It’s in nature. It’s in music. It’s there to help you share a muffin and build the best fort. By embracing all the opportunities to experience math, especially in beloved stories, we are giving our kiddos a leg up while spending quality time with them!
Here is a “top-ten” list of our favorite math books! Buy them for your bookshelf, or help us by picking one up for our classroom! Tangible, physical books that the kids can touch are especially good for growth.
1,2,3 to the Zoo by Eric Carle: A classic, colorful story that encourages kiddos to count to ten with their favorite animals. Also provides an opportunity for number pairs. (example: There are five animals! Two lions, three tigers! There are five animals! Four birds, one rhino!)
Feast for Ten by Cathryn Falwell: A count-to-ten book that ties numbers to food and family. Gives the opportunity for a class to have snacks and count them, or to “share” the food they pull together.
Ten Red Apples by Pat Hutchins: Introduction to subtraction from 10-0. Can be paired with an art project
Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert: This covers shapes as well as numbers, and it uses shapes to create bigger pictures.
Ten Black Dots by Donald Crews: Number names and sequences! Number comparisons! General number sense and subitization.
One Red Sun by Ezra Jack Keats: Simple 1-10 book, incredibly lovely, inspires art through mathematics
Five Creatures by Emily Jenkins: A whacky story that is so good for number pairs and comparisons!
Quack and Count by Keith Baker: This is perfect for subitization and number pairs, which is the beginning of addition.
Pattern Fish by Trudy Harris: Excellent for pattern recognition and repetition, as well as how to create patterns on your own.
Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins: This is more for spatial awareness along with distance and proximity. It’s also just a relaxing, fantastic story
Save The Date: Summer Camp Teaser
The Summer Camp you remember that your kids will never forget…
Kids need to be outside. They need to run under the trees, chase each other, skin their knees.
They need to play with rules they make up themselves.
That’s why Common Ground is hosting a classic summer camp that is perfect for any kid from kindergarten to rising fourth grader.
1 in 12 kids are as fit as the average child 35 years ago. Their attention spans are suffering under a sedentary education style. Sensory training, emotional regulation, physical stability, these are as key to learning as letters and numbers, and much harder to master after age 5.
We believe in exploration, reasonable danger, and dirt. Our weekly themes are designed to teach kids about the world and their own abilities. There will be projects, games, and field trips! We are also looking to do swimming lessons.
We will be outside as much as possible, allowing kids to foster independence through child-led lessons that encourage enthusiasm for holistic learning.
KEEP AN EYE OUT! We will begin registration in the next few weeks! Think Capture the Flag. Think trail running and skipping stones in the creek. Think sweat and dirt and sunshine. Your kids deserve a camp experience like you had.
LET’S GO OUTSIDE!
Ms. LJ
Concerned Parent -- Kindergarten Readiness
My daughter is a “young five.” This means that she just made the cut off for Kindergarten the year she turned five. While she is quite precocious and has a great love of learning, I was hesitant to put her into kindergarten simply because being socially and emotionally confident is just as important as being intellectually ready. Fortunately, I have had her in the incredible preschool program at Common Ground Childcare. Their play-based learning style and patient, nurturing teachers helped her really blossom into the confident student she is.
Unfortunately, she turned five during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I am a teacher, too. I have taught four and five year olds, and I know just how much these littles can change in a season. I had quite a few “young fives” in my classroom that I would have advised holding back if asked in March, only to see them blossom by summer.
Our little fours and fives of 2020 didn’t have that essential March to June nurturing period to hone their pre-kindergarten skills. They did not have the summer to tumble and play with their peers so that they would be resilient and self-assured come September. They are “young” in their classes, and it shows.
Fortunately, with the arrival of the Covid-19 vaccine we are going to be seeing a new, more familiar “normal.” The one, two, and young three year olds will likely not even feel that “pause” on their lives.
BUT…
I am so worried about the three and four year olds of 2020. What essential life lessons are they missing out on? My students absorb so much during these years, more than they ever will again, I just wonder how long it will take to catch up on those key childhood skills, especially because it is likely that kindergarteners will still be in a hybrid class system September 2021. This usually fun, joyous experience is now so disjointed and uncertain.
Resourceful parents have turned to online worksheets and apps to help catch up on pre-literacy and early number-sense exercises. There are a lot of inventive games and learning programs that do have an overall positive SUPPLEMENTAL effect on a children’s education. They are not meant to do the heavy lifting on a child’s education.
Even without COVID-19 ravaging our normal schedules, 1 in 12 kids are as fit as the average child 35 years ago. Attention spans are suffering under a sedentary education style. Sensory training, emotional regulation, physical stability, these are as key to learning as letters and numbers, and much harder to master after age 5. There is no substitute for peer to peer social training and whole body lessons with trained childcare professionals.
If any of you out there have kids that will be kindergarteners in 2021 that aren’t in a dedicated program with their peers, I would strongly advise you to consider a rising kindergarten program.
There are excellent classes around, like the Honeybees Program at Common Ground Childcare, that strictly follow Health Department regulations to protect their teachers and children from the pandemic, while still letting the kids be kids. Common Ground teachers are also preparing for that “new normal” by helping their students learn appropriate mask-discipline and basic tech usage for when they have to distance-learn.
I think it is essential that all kids have a safe preschool experience that helps them be confident and kindergarten-ready. If a child really is not ready for kindergarten, there is nothing wrong with holding them back! But even if you decide to keep them out of grade school for another year, I would still keep them in a play-based curriculum in their peers. They will go into kindergarten as a much stronger, confident kid.
-Miss LJ