These descriptions are all pre-COVID. For up-to-date information, please inquire about these activities during your tour.
We are a busy school community and there is always something to look forward to coming up on the calendar!
Family Events
We love having parents come into our school to enjoy activities and get to know the other parents and children. The Fall Festival and the Spring Fling bring parents into the classroom to enjoy crafts or take a hike in our extensive woods behind the school, play on the playground, and eat pizza, of course. Thanksgiving isn’t complete without a feast, complete with turkey and all the trimming, especially pumpkin pie. We kick off the winter holidays with a musical program by the children singing songs, reciting poems, playing instruments, and dancing to fun holiday music. One of our favorite events is Parent Day, when parents are invited to school for the morning to receive “lessons” from their children on all their favorite activities. We share a pot luck meal of delicious foods from around the world. Parents are welcome to bring their family’s special holiday traditions into the classroom where together we’ll create a learning experience for all.
Field Trips
Field trips are a wonderful way to enrich your child’s learning experience. We schedule three school bus field trips for our kindergarteners each year. To complement our Earthkeepers program, our first trip is to the Montgomery County Recycling Center. The children get an in-depth look at the recycling process, the people and machines that do the work, and the large recycling trucks that collect and bring the recyclables to the recycling center. Our second field trip is to see the play Charlotte’s Web at George Mason University Center for the Performing Arts. We read the book in the weeks prior to the trip and then enjoy seeing the live performance of the story. Our third trip is to the National Gallery of Art to see paintings by the artists we have studied all year. The children are in awe of the beautiful the Japanese Footbridge by Monet and the huge cutouts entitled Large Decoration with Masks by Matisse. It is definitely one of the highlights of the year. Parents are welcome to join all the field trips.
In-House Presentations
In addition to off-site field trips for Kindergarteners, we schedule in-house activities throughout the year such as puppet shows, Reptiles Alive, The Bat Lady, and a visit from Walker Nature Center. We plan our in-house activities around our curriculum calendar to compliment what we are already learning in the classroom. A unit of study on fish and oceans might be supplemented with a visit from Under the Sea, an educational outreach group that brings tanks with sea stars, seahorses, and even a puffer fish into our classroom for a closer look. And a performance by an African drummer and storyteller is in order when we study the continent of Africa.
Birthdays
We love celebrating birthdays at Children’s House. The birthday child is invited to bring a snack to share with the class on the chosen day and a poster made at home with a picture for each year of life and a few personal touches. Parents may attend the birthday ceremony we call “Walk around the Sun.” where we share the poster, have the child will walk around a wooden sun for as many times as they are old, and we will sing “Happy Birthday.” We keep the celebration simple but special and the children look forward to their special day all year.
For additional questions or to schedule your tour, please call us at 703-481-6678 or use the email form below.
