Preschool Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Presidio Knolls School

Introducing the Orsini Library

After only a year, the Orsini Library has doubled its previous collection and now holds almost 3000 Chinese and English titles! This was made possible by the powerhouse team of volunteers at Presidio Knolls, led by parents Vivian Looi and James Huff. Their efforts have made it possible for all children level P2 to Grade 4 to regularly borrow books and integrate library time into their weekly curricula.

Mandarin Immersion

Teacher Profile (Mei Ying Tzeng)

There is no instruction manual on how to teach children. Children don’t need to follow anyone to explore the world. Instead, we focus on children’s learning processes and experiences, not on pushing children to remember all the academic material. Teachers and children observe, find questions, search for the result and solve issues together; building knowledge and gaining new experiences while learning from each other.

Mandarin Immersion

Learning with Sock Puppets

This kind of natural evolution is a planned accident. “We don’t have a curriculum for the whole school year planned out,” says Daisy. “We have basic skills and goals that we want to develop, and we follow the children’s interests.”

Community

PKS Campus Master Plan Update

Concurrent with the ongoing Rectory renovation project, the PKS Master Plan team has recently kicked off the architectural schematic design work for the new Front and Back buildings that will surround the main campus courtyard. We look forward to sharing these designs in the coming months.

Elementary

Physical Education at PKS

Every time I have a game, I have one thing I tell my team every single time. I tell them, "Do I care if you win or lose?” And they know the answer — I honestly don't. Then I ask them “Do I care if you try?” And the answer to that is definitely yes.

Mandarin Immersion

Trusting Children to Have an Opinion

As we begin the new year, and as we take a moment to look back and reflect on last year, I want to highlight one unifying thread from our children's experiences in the preschool over the first few months of the school year.

Elementary

Music at PKS

Orff Schulwerk is an active child-centered approach to music education where you take what the kids are already doing when they're born, playing, singing, dancing, speech, games, drama, and beyond. You use that to teach the concepts and the skills in music, which makes so much more sense than anything. Also, music class is not just about teaching students to be great musicians, we are teaching them to appreciate beauty, work cooperatively, and use creativity, while developing their motor skills and often performing tasks requiring independence and higher order thinking skills.

Mandarin Immersion

Teacher Profile (Shihpei Chen)

This year, we are presenting a series of posts profiling PKS teachers. The first installment features Mandarin-immersion preschool teacher Shihpei Chen.

No image

Elementary