Page 47 - 2022 May Report

Resilience
Weingarten Children’s Center report (2)
songs, including one little girl who sang “Deck the Halls” which surprised everyone in the room, but we were reminded that it was up to the child to choose the song.
After the children left, we were divided into two groups, Bobby, Susan and David in one group and me, Ken and my sign language interpreter in the other. We were told that we would see the same things, but in a different order so as to keep the number of adults visiting a classroom small. Our group was led by Jennifer Aguilar and she did an excellent job of explaining things as we moved through the school.
We first visited a kindergarten classroom where there were four students who were practicing writing. They were seated at desks with pads and pencils and as the teacher wrote on a white board they copied it at their desks.
We moved to a pre-K class where the teacher was talking about recycling and composting and how we arecarefultoputtherightthingsintotherightcoloredbins. Shewoulddescribesomethingandthenask the students which bin was the right one, green, blue, white or compost. She talked about what kinds
of things are put into compost and what into the other bins. raising and turn taking was very orderly and good.
On the way to the next class we stopped to look at the sensory room which had been funded by a grant and was full of many different kinds of audio, visual and tactual sensory equipment. Jennifer told us that it is a very helpful and frequently used room.
The next class was kindergartners, and the teacher was giving them hints describing tools and they had to raise their hand when they knew what tool it was. Once she said “It has a handle, it attaches to a hose and it sprays, what is it?” A couple of hands went up and she selected one young girl who said “It’s a nozzle” and she was correct, so she got up and went out the door to a porch were the tools were and picked up a nozzle and brought it back in the room. There were more hints for a rake and a wheelbarrow and someone guessed correctly each time. At one point a little boy said it’s a rake and the teacher said can you make that into a question and he said “Is it a rake?” Alotofbackandforthtalkingandlistening.
Children were very engaged and the hand
Next we walked across the parking lot to visit a
preschool class where they were making flowers
with different colored petals, The teacher would ask
them what color they wanted the petal to be and if
they had the right crayon. Once a boy said he wanted to make his petal purple and she asked him “Do you have a purple crayon?” and when he said “No”, she said “Well [name] next to you have a purple crayon, maybe you can borrow it.” So the student turned to the boy next to him and said “[name] may I have the purple crayon?” and the little boy gave it to him smiling.
We went upstairs to the audiology test area and suite and briefly met Lisa Tonokawa the Educational Audiologist.
We then walked back to the music room where Jennifer left us and the two groups came together and we sat down for a briefing about the status of BabyTalk and Talk2Me, the two programs that the Foundation is supportingwithourgrant. ThismeetingwasledbyMegFarquahar,asocialworkerwhoisthedirectorof BabyTalk outreach and family services along with Sara Feree from development. Just a few minutes into their presentation Jennifer came back into the music room and said that they needed that room for the
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