About

Building Blocks is a homeschool cooperative for children of preschool age and is a sub-group of The Joy Troupe.  We expect to have at least two openings in the fall.  We are currently at full enrollment for the 2010-2011 school year.  To be notified of any openings subscribe to this blog or follow us on Facebook.  See the sidebar at right for details. 

We're drawing on a number of traditions including Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, and whatever we think will work well for our children.  First and foremost we want them to have FUN!  Our maximum teacher:student ratio is 1:5 including little siblings who sometimes attend when mom is "working."

We've done cooking, planted seeds, the ten block tower, peg board, color sorting, free form story telling, music activities, sponge and finger painting, play dough, and basically whatever seems to interest them. We also have taught them all some basic manners ("yes please" and "no thank you" are standard, so is sitting at the table for snack time and lunch) and really reinforced cleanup time at every transition point.

We also have a short "circle time" each class day.  In the interest of not imposing an unnatural, "sit still and be quiet" regime, we encourage but do not force circle time participation.  A child who is really resistant to joining us is permitted to do quiet, independent play instead, and if ALL of the kids are resistant to circle time we'll either move it to a different point in the day or do a gross motor activity instead. We figure that if they are learning to be polite, sit down and eat together, and clean up after themselves, then as long as the rest of the time is filled with constructive activity, they are learning just fine, even if they don't "conform" to our "plan" for the day.

We are also working on introducing Spanish, French, and American sign, but so far we've kept it VERY low key with just occasional vocabulary tossed in by whichever mom has that knowledge to share. We also get them outdoors as much as possible.

We consider "hosting" optional, since we have a couple moms who are willing to host even when they are not teaching, and a couple of our moms have never hosted, which is quite fine with us.