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Book 4 in The Boulder Journey School Photo Book Series

A contextual curriculum is responsive to the lives, feelings, questions, and opinions of the entire community, including children, teachers, families, school support team, neighbors, friends, politicians, and more. Our work begins with questions and develops through cycles of inquiry into multiple threads and pathways.

This is the story of one investigation that developed over the course of one school year, 2018-2019.

Book 3 in The Boulder Journey School Photo Book Series

Recognizing that direct instruction is only one strategy for teaching, how many other ways can we teach? Do teachers have an awareness of the many strategies for teaching and do they know when to use each strategy?

This is a collection of teachers’ strategies, noted through the school year, 2017-2018.

Book 2 in The Boulder Journey School Photo Book Series

Toddlers are in motion, physically and cognitively.

Great care is taken to cultivate the learning experiences of all toddlers.

Teachers facilitate experiences, taking cues from observations of the children. The actions children take, often without words, speak volumes about their interests and discoveries. Teachers observe and document the children in action, then analyze their observations to deepen and extend learning.

Book 1 in The Boulder Journey School Photo Book Series

Great care is taken to cultivate the learning experience for all children. The infants, with their rapid developmental changes, are offered experiences, tailored to them as individuals and as a community.

Teachers begin the year with a field of possibilities. One route to exploring these possibilities is through questions. Teachers ask what, how, when, where, and why about each decision made in the classroom, then document to uncover the answers.

A title in the Learning Moments series

Young children spontaneously pursue mathematical interests and questions during everyday play. It is important to understand that children are intrinsically motivated to explore mathematical concepts well before entering formal education. By understanding the mathematical problems that capture young children’s interest we are better able to create learning experiences that build upon and extend children’s developing mathematical knowledge.

A title in the Learning Moments series

We know of the young child's curiosity, and we believe in the young child's creativity, but where do we see disciplined inquiry - the essence of scientific thinking? If we look closely at young children’s play, we can identify what children do that is analogous to science.

Harrison and Harper, both three-years-old, are working in the studio with markers. As this episode begins, Harrison is slowly saying the letter names aloud as he writes his name, and Harper watches intently. We see that Harrison has already identified some of the regularities of written language. He knows that each letter name has a corresponding letter form (symbol). His writing also includes a knowledge of basic text conventions.