Jumping into GAP School!

It was our first week of GAP School and we jumped in with both feet!

Our guiding question this week was: How do we care for ourselves and others at GAP School? We used that question to help frame our week. We started by focusing on who we are as people, what makes us special, and how our differences make us cool. We then headed into focusing on how we're going to take care of ourselves and others this year at school.

The start of the school year is also about creating our routines, growing comfortable in our space, and getting to know new people. Here are some highlights from the first week:

Exploration time is an incredibly important time of the day for practicing social emotional skills. We work on problem solving, communication, collaboration, and other interpersonal skills. This week we focused on making friends, kind words, and treating our outdoor classrooms with kindness and respect.

We took some time to meet our animals! Our Learners spent time with Eragon the snake, Toothless the bearded dragon, Hercules the red-footed tortoise, MoMo the leopard gecko, and Einstein the rabbit.

Each day we rotate in small groups of similarly aged Learners. During rotations we focus on English Language Arts, Math, and Science. For our first week we started to practice nature journaling, graphing our interests, using words to describe ourselves, and sharing information about who we are. We use these introductory activities to start to get to know our Learners and how they prefer to learn so we can best support them throughout the year.

It has been a spectacular first week of school! Each day we are seeing our Learners grow more confident in their surroundings, comfortable with themselves and others, and ready to take on new adventures.