By Dana Fabri, classroom teacher KG1 Blue & KG Yoga teacher
Learning in Kindergarten is the same, it is interconnected or ‘transdisciplinary’. Math is not taught as an abstract concept but in a way that we can connect it with our everyday lives as well as with other parts of our school day. We count the children at school so that we know who is here and who is absent then revisit this throughout the day to ensure that we haven’t lost anyone. We see numbers on the timer and know this means we only have that much time left to play or eat. We take a survey about the food we eat at snack time then use this data to make a graph.
Three learning areas
But wait, this is only math and so this by itself is not transdisciplinary. However, if we use shapes to create a picture, we are now using two learning areas: math and art. But we can also use art in other ways such as drawing a picture to tell a story or creating a craft during our free play…now we have three learning areas all connected: math, art, and storytelling.
Our hair was blowing around
Storytelling is also used as another way to connect to our real lives by seeing the similarities in the narrative such as when a KG1 student noticed that the wind was blowing the leaves in ‘The Leaf Thief’ just like when we went out onto the playground on a windy day and our hair was blowing around. This text also connects to our current Unit of Inquiry which is about weather and seasons. As we have been going through the Autumn season the children have again found similarities and also differences between Autumn in Europe and across the world.
We cannot learn one thing
Education is an integral part of our lives both as children but also as adults and everything is interconnected or transdisciplinary. We cannot learn one thing without seeing a connection to something else.