History and Sciences

History and Social Sciences are woven into daily classroom experiences in the and through project based learning. Children are introduced to ideas from the four major fields of social studies: civics (respecting one another, cooperating, and obeying rules); geography (understanding locations of places, people, and things); history (what happened in the past), and economics (why people create, buy, sell, or trade goods and services). They explore guiding questions such as:

• “Why are there rules?” by co-creating and following classroom rules. Preschoolers will begin to take responsibility for being a member of a classroom community by becoming a helper during morning meeting, putting away their own materials, and helping to take care of the classroom environment.
• “What is my own story?” through learning about themselves, their families and friends.
• “How can people show or tell others where they live or go to school?” through exploration of their school and projects using a combination of drawing, building with blocks or other materials, or dictating to construct maps and other representations of familiar places.
• “How can we learn about what happened in times past?” by recalling and describing events that happened in the classroom or in a story, using words and phrases relating to chronology and time.
• “What kinds of work do women, men, and children do?” through dramatization centers, visits by experts and stories.

In SEE, children investigate Big Ideas in the classroom through the project approach, which provides children with real world, tangible, and hands-on learning.