A wonderful example of emergent curriculum took place in Nursery 2 during the 2000-2001 school year. The teacher observed that during block time her children enjoyed building boats and playing that they were at sea. The teacher took notes of the children's conversations and brought these transcriptions to her peers to look at and reflect upon. At the same time she went to the library and borrowed many books on boats. Some of these books most would consider above the level of 3-year-olds, but they were filled with wonderful pictures. She also filled her science center with boat models and the water center was filled with plastic sea creatures and toy boats.
The children's play started to include pirates and the teacher helped her students to make pirate props for the dramatic play center. They painted T-shirts with red stripes and used eye patches, pirate hats, and telescopes.
Two activities took place where nursery students worked with our kinder students. During one activity three boys from K-6 who liked to draw maps came to N-2 to help the students with a giant map collage.
K-7 students paired up with a nursery student to draw a picture of a boat. (Later K-7 students were asked to reflect and write about what it was like working with the younger children.)
As the nursery students' interest in maps grew they began to play about treasure maps. The teacher asked the children what types of things would be in a treasure and took dictations. Later the teachers made a treasure box and filled it with gold chocolate coins. They hid this on our playground and gave the students a treasure map to help them find the chocolate.
The dramatic play center began to look more and more like a boat as the teachers decorated the walls with murals that depicted life at sea.
After the spring vacation the children returned to find a wooden boat in their classroom, that had been made by our maintenance staff. They would be involved in making the sail and their boat play would continue.
The boat project lasted for nearly 6 months. Children learned about measurement, maps, directions, sea animals, and sequencing. They learned about working in groups and cooperating and sharing as they took turns using the materials. They learned about English vocabulary, weather, floating and sinking. And they learned that their ideas are important and that school is fun.
