The Evolution of Virtual Learning in Pre-K

On March 13th the governor announced that schools would be closed indefinitely. Hearing the words 'school is closed indefinitely' struck a chord with us due to the simple fact that we enjoy going to school, planning for and working with our children. It is a fun, exciting environment to be in and of course, their smiles and laughs would be missed. When beginning to think about how we could keep families and the children engaged we initially thought about our Facebook page (MU Early Education STEAM Center) and came up with themed days to encourage mindful practices, vocabulary development and creative innovation.

As the first week went by, we found ourselves expressing how much we missed our friends and learning with them. The idea of hosting a video conference quickly evolved into a morning gathering or crew style meeting. In our classroom we follow the GRIN (Greeting, Reading, Initiative, Norms) protocol, so utilizing this in the digital setting was a smooth transition. In this meeting the children were able to hear from their teacher, talk with their friends and also share about some learning they were doing from home. Our biggest driving factor to hosting this call was to give our children the continuity that our classroom provides.

We quickly transitioned to weekly meetings and tasks geared toward experiences for the whole family to enjoy.

One of the ways we have summarized how we were feeling with this transition to the digital classroom was to create a social story from our pre-k perspective. The story includes pictures of both classrooms and how the children transitioned out of the classroom environment to their home for learning.

Click below to view the entire story.

STEAM Center Story

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