Every year the Preschool 1 program at RisingOaks | John Sweeney schedule walk days. This year was no different. What made it unique this year was that the children who were here before September started asking when walk day would come back. The sense of belonging an expression of themselves that was displayed in the confidence that they had to communicate their wants expectations and needs in the way. First, Quinn asked her mom if it was walk day. Then, Levi came up to me saying, "Simone, is it walk day today?" He was right, it was Friday, so technically it was walk day, but I had to explain to him that we wouldn't have walk day because we had new children. We hadn't done walk day for the last two weeks. I promised him that next week we would start our walk days again.
On our first walk day, we talked about the buddy system and how important it is to hold your buddy's hand. We also talked about the “ladder” (parking lot crossing) and how important it is to stay on the ladder, and about the sidewalk and how important it is to stay on it and not walk on the grass. The buddy system was explained and how your buddy is the most important person to you. They are more important than your toys, so always hold your buddy's hand. I have to say, they did fantastic on the first day. We also used the ladder because there are two crosswalks that look like ladders on either side of our parking lots. We told the children to imagine they were climbing a ladder and to stay on the rings of the ladder and not on the side because if we did that in real life, we would fall off and hurt ourselves. Then we talked about the importance of being on the sidewalk because we don't want to walk on somebody's lawn.
As a treat, we ended up at the park where the children were able to play after working so hard on the rules of the walk. We did this again the next week, and we walked for a longer time, but we wouldn't cross the road because we were not there yet.
In the first week of October, we went on a walk, but we went in the opposite direction. On the walk, we saw a house that was full of Halloween decorations. There was great excitement, and the children wanted to go see the decorations up close. To do that, we had a big decision to make: were we able to cross the street and pay attention, be safe, hold our buddy's hand and, like the yellow ladder, stay in the middle of the white line while we cross the road. These were all good questions, and everyone was so excited to see the decorations up close. There was a loud "yes," so we went. Everyone had to look at Simone while we crossed the street because when we looked at Simone we walked in a straight line and didn't go over the line. We got a big pat on our backs for crossing the street altogether as a team while holding our buddies' hands.
Then we went to the house that had all the decorations. It was so exciting and fantastic. On the way back, not only did we cross the street once, but we crossed it three times and we did so well. Our educators were so excited for us, and we got to pat ourselves on the back so many times.
So, welcome to our walk days. We cannot wait to see what walk days in 2024 and 2025 will bring and the many adventures that we will embark on. We will keep you posted.
