MrsMBTeacherPortersPoint: Four Winds

This year we are fortunate to have Four Winds taught by parents in our classroom! Four Winds is a hands-on natural science program that excites children to explore the world around them beginning with our very own schoolyard at PPS. The program uses rich outdoor activities and materials to guide children to explore, ask questions and make discoveries about the natural world. When young children understand their environment they begin to see how they are connected to the our precious earth. From there they begin to learn that they have a critical role in caring for and protecting it.

Each year a different topic is chosen for our school and outlined by the Four Winds Foundation. http://www.fwni.org/ Our school district has two coordinators who organize the program in all the schools. They set up trainings, gather materials and ensure all classrooms have parent volunteer teachers to carry out the lessons. The parent teachers attend a monthly training sessions, review teaching materials and videos and bring the lessons to our classroom each month.

In September we were fortunate to have Rory and Aya's mom begin the program with a lesson about life cycles and metamorphosis. That lesson dovetailed perfectly with our study of the life cycle of a caterpillar and the cycle of the four seasons. In October Aya's mom taught us all about traveling seeds and inspired us to observe and compare different seed and how they begin to grow new plants. Each lesson begins with a (very popular) puppet show, then allows for hands exploration and outside time. In the weeks that follow, I try to follow up on the concepts they learned as well. We give thanks to our Four Winds teaching parents for their time and commitment to enriching our science program.

The opening puppet show targets vocabulary and how plant and animal life are affected. We have to listen carefully to the words as they explain some really big concepts in a kid-friendly way.