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Think about the adults you think are smart or the ones you most admire. Are they the ones who can multiply three digit numbers in their heads or spell unusual words? Or are they are people who can think and reason and solve problems? Are they curious and flexible? Can they integrate information from a range of perspectives? Do they know how to relate well to others, make and sustain friendships?Paideia’s Half Day Morning Class 8:15 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.Afternoon Class 11:45 a.m. – 2:55 p.m.Ages 3 - 4 - 5…Each Class… has one adult for every six children… is multi-age, balanced in terms of gender and age … has four teachers

When thinking about how to educate young children, it makes sense to keep in mind the characteristics we value. Intentionally or unintentionally, all schools are designed as answers to a few questions:In defining our program, we attend to unfolding research on child development. We review what we do in the context of current research and also by observing children. This doesn’t mean that we change in response to every new research claim, but we are aware and consider the best thinking in the field and its possible implications for teaching and learning. What qualities do we want to promote?What learning experiences engender successful learning later in school and beyond?What skills do we want to emphasize that will help children as adults?

… be socially competent … be able to engage others of all ages … be able to ask for help … learn to resolve conflicts … practice becoming flexible thinkers - connect ideas, generate new ones, and test them … take risks … benefit from mistakes … grow in empathy by learning to see another’s point of view or understanding differing experiences.We want children to ...

The half-day classroom occupies the entire ground floor of a large Druid Hills mansion. It is, like the mansion it used to be, spacious, sunny, and welcoming. While the rooms flow into one another, each is dedicated to activities appropriate to that space. Children spend part of every day in each of the rooms, generally with eight or so other children and one or two teachers. There are four teachers in each class. The large sun porch is ideal for art projects: painting, Play-Doh, collages, plus inventions with cardboard, collections of paper, sequins, buttons, and paste. The adjoining middle room has books, puzzles, math materials, games, and tables that accommodate teachers and small groups of children that are ideal for one-on-one instruction. What was once a formal living room is now called the block room. Besides blocks and materials for dramatic play, there is also a special interest corner with science displays and collections that change every week and that invite exploration. These three main rooms plus some ancillary spaces connect directly to a playground used exclusively by half-day students.

READING for DEEP UNDERSTANDINGThere is a great deal of emphasis in much of early childhood education on rote learning, an emphasis we believe is unwarranted. The expectation of rote learning and drill is that it provides a boost up on the academic ladder. It doesn’t work out that way. It is clear from both research and the years we have spent watching children’s development that early acquisition of rote skills offers no benefits in long-term competence in reading and math. The foundation for reading comprehension and for becoming a lifelong reader is not rote learning, but rather experience with the richness of language and literature. Teachers in Paideia's half-day classes help children learn to love reading by immersing them in the best of children’s literature—imagining the stories, delighting in the humor, and delving into the ideas and emotions of characters.

There is much variation in how children learn to read. For some children, the seemingly straightforward task of letter recognition is effortless. They learn to name the letters as easily as they learned the name of “dog” or “apple.” For others, this task takes repeated effort and a range of specific strategies. The same is true for understanding verbal directions. Some find it hard to follow the sequence of the words, but do well when the language is slowed down or simply repeated. Other children find it harder to visualize what the words direct them to do and need help translating these directions into actions. We work with children individually so we can make the detailed observations that might be lost in group instruction. We devote time to exploring the sounds of speech – from rhyming to taking words apart and putting them back together. Games that involve beginning, middle, and ending sounds provide practice and exposure that will help children be more phonemically aware. With practice, children get better at hearing, isolating, and manipulating the sounds of speech, and then associating them with letters.

Many children become fluent young readers in the half day. In addition to being read to every day in either large groups or one-on-one, each child has an individualized reading plan appropriate to the skill he or she needs to master next. Some proceed through these skills relatively quickly. Others take longer to crack the reading code; they benefit from explicit teaching that enables them to recognize unfamiliar words and then put words together in sentences. We have a range of programmed readers, workbooks, and reading games to help children in different ways. For most children, part of every day is spent in reading instruction of one kind or another.LIFE-LONG READERS are active communicators in their own heads.

Practice with three-dimensional construction promotes the visual-spatial understanding needed for math and science. Children eagerly construct castles, airports, and entire cities out of magnetic blocks, LEGOs, and wooden blocks of all sizes. When children are not natural builders, teachers help out. Teachers play “mental math” games with students, using objects to help with counting. We have toys for problem solving, measuring, graphing, counting, creating patterns, sorting and organizing information.We want children to be active: CREATING BUILDING EXPLORING

"Imagine the following scene. A small child sits in rapt attention on the lap of a beloved adult, listening to words that move like water, words that tell of fairies, dragons, and giants in faraway places never before imagined." - Maryanne Wolf *

There is overwhelming evidence that the foundations of long-term academic and intellectual development come from interactions with others – warm, reciprocal connections with people who are close to us. For young children, this means being played with and read to often. When you enter the half-day classroom at Paideia, you will see teachers talking with children individually and in small groups. Children’s language develops when they have chances to talk and to be part of extended conversations. A priority for our half-day program is building in time for the teachers to listen to children, probe their thinking, and help them extend their thoughts.ENGAGEMENT* Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain [Harper Perennial, 2008], 81

AN INVITATION TO BE CURIOUS

…often devalued or encroached upon when adults get anxious about academic achievement and standardized testing. Rather than a diversion from important learning, childhood play is the foundation upon which long-term learning is based. As children play out their ideas, they take on the role of others and experience the world from another’s point of view. This type of thinking underlies reading comprehension and abstract reasoning. When children participate in imaginative play, they are engaged physically, mentally, and emotionally. They use language, make and sustain social connections, and they try out their own ideas and elaborate on them. Children need very little, aside from their imaginations, to create complex scenarios. Here is one example of how they learn and explore while at the same time practicing compromise and fair play: A corner in the block room is stocked with books and props about the Arctic. Within minutes children begin to construct a small town on the tundra. They then stock it with food to see them through the winter. They leave their village to go ice fishing. This involves creating igloos from big blocks covered with white sheets and re-imagining the chairs as sleds, piled with provisions. Polar bears are strategically placed on the ice and seals sun themselves on icebergs. Fearful squeals erupt when the polar bears get hungry and stalk the seals. In this typical scenario children create and explore ideas with one another, elaborating on and reworking themes. IMAGINATIVE PLAY is a precious commodity

EXPLORING IDEAS through PLAY* Roberta Michnick-Golinkoff, Kathy Hirsh- Pasek and Diane Eyer, Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How Our Children Really Learn— and Why They Need to Play More and Memorize Less [Rodale Books , 2004], 240The IMPORTANCE of PLAY “Play is a central component in children’s mental growth. Play helps children make meaning in their world, it helps them learn about themselves, and [just as important], it helps them to learn how to get along with others.” *Elsewhere in the block room others might be making a skyscraper and hoping that the blocks will not topple over. They laugh when they step back from the tall building they’ve created and see how it leans precariously and then agree that they can re-build when it does collapse. Nearby a tasty breakfast is being prepared in the kitchen corner with one child brewing coffee and another buttering the toast, or an ice cream store opens for business with cones sold for $6.00. Children build roads for cars and trucks, move hedgehogs into a home intended for dolls, and with architectural flair, use scarves and capes to turn a playhouse into a castle. The landscape of parts of the block room is transformed every day as spaces and characters are re-invented in a magical transformation limited only by the boundaries of imagination. Aside from safety rules, rules for learning to play together are paramount. The classroom is a place to learn how to share, hear another person’s ideas, accept differences, sometimes lead, and sometimes follow. A basic ground rule of playing together is that when someone asks to join in, the answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

Teachers not only encourage dramatic play, they join children in it. They often set the stage then, given the interests and ideas of the group, support the players as needed. The adult might design the space, perhaps helping to negotiate where the gate goes in the fence or gather the materials needed for a rocket launch. Often children simply need an adult to tell them when five minutes are up so a coveted item can be shared fairly. Teachers will help a timid child figure out how to participate in a play being acted out, or help a child who tends to take charge become better at waiting and listening. They might say, “I wonder if you would like to try this,” or offer a variation by asking, “What if we move the blocks over here to make the garden?”Teachers are as involved with the children on the playground as they are inside the classroom. A teacher might get involved in a discussion about who wants to chase, who wants to be chased, and whether it is acceptable to chase but not be chased. These are important issues for three-, four-, and five-year-olds.The level and variety of children’s play rise when adults join in

It is so important to us that children love to come to school. School should be a place they feel safe, happy, and valued. We want them to feel secure enough to take the risks necessary to try new things. We want them to love learning, to enjoy using their minds and bodies to acquire skills, solve problems, and meet their world head on. We want to help them celebrate what they can do right now and also lead them in expanding their abilities. We want our classrooms to be places, laboratories if you will, where children learn to take initiative and responsibility, practice making constructive choices, and develop their own affinities and passionate preferences.We invite you to tour Paideia and observe in the half-day classroom. A quick warning, however: you might be invited to become a dinosaur or to order an overpriced ice cream cone at the store, or maybe to come to the rescue of a Beanie Baby cat stranded on the roof of the playhouse. That’s all part of a normal day in Paideia’s half day, and the essential work of success in school and life.

The Paideia School serves families with children ages three through eighteen. The school actively seeks racial, cultural, and economic diversity in its student body. Paideia is nonsectarian. The meaning of the ancient Greek word paideia (pie-day-uh) has changed throughout the centuries so that it has no literal translation. Rather, it reflects the conscious pursuit of a series of educational goals by a community. It conveys the concept of a child’s total education: intellectual, artistic and social.Paideia is different from most other schools and cannot be accurately categorized by a single philosophy or approach. We encourage you to find out more about Paideia by attending a prospective parent meeting, by talking to students and parents involved at the school, by touring, by reading our website, and by asking questions. © 2013. The Paideia School. All rights reserved. Photo Credits: Danny Lee Photography, Paideia faculty, and Paideia yearbook staffPaideia does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ethnic group, gender, or sexual orientation.PAIDEIA SC HOOL.ORG