On Friday the 27th of September, The All Superstars of North Fort Myers’ Voluntary PreKindergarten (VPK) class took a field trip to the Fort Myers Regional Library located in beautiful, Downtown Fort Myers.
At precisely 9:30am, the 22 four-year-old VPK students were lined up in front of the North Fort Myers All Superstars Preschool building. Adorned in their bright yellow All Superstars shirts and ear to ear smiles, the eager children waited patiently to load into the school vans. After attendance and a thorough seatbelt check, they were ready to roll!
The excitement in the children could be felt as they sang and giggled all the way to Downtown Fort Myers. The children especially enjoyed driving over the bridge and learning about the iconic Caloosahatchee River.
Upon arrival at the Fort Myers Regional Library, the children unloaded from the vans and walked in a perfect single file line to the library entrance. All Superstars Preschool encourages parent involvement, and the children were met by 4 additional parents from the school!
Outside the library, the children waited patiently while they were instructed by their teachers, Miss Sandy and Miss Sandra, that it was time to use their quietest inside voices before entering the library.
Not a peep could be heard as the VPK class walked through the library entrance, and into the superbly laid out “Kid Zone” of the library. The only remarks came from bystanders acknowledging how well behaved the group of excited young children were.
The Fort Myers Regional Library has a wonderful separate reading room used for groups of children located just outside the rows upon rows of exciting and imaginative books contained in the main area of the “Kid Zone”.
The helpful and attentive staff of the library were well prepared for this group of keen learners. The Director of All Superstars Preschool North Fort Myers, Barbara Forrest, had informed them that the letter of the week for the Voluntary PreKindergarten class was “G” so they had a number of large picture books all pertaining to that letter on display.
Miss Tess read these books to the children as they sat “criss, cross apple sauce” and quietly listened, answering any of the engaging question Miss Tess asked when prompted. After Learning about gardening, growing and the greedy goat, Miss Tess had one more surprise in store for The All Superstars VPK class. She sang them a song about bubble gum and then set them up with a fun, educational and interactive activity.
Set up on the tables surrounding the area where the children were sitting were sheets of colorful circular stickers and drawings of empty gumball machines. The children were to place the stickers onto the empty portion of the gumball machine, filling it up with gum! This activity reinforced color naming with the VPK students as they would name each color before placing the sticker onto the paper. The activity also assisted in developing dexterity, motor and creative thinking skills along with math as they carefully counted their bounty.
Once all the VPK children finished placing their stickers onto the paper and writing their names (by themselves) on their sheets, it was time to discover new books to read!
The children quietly exited the reading room and were encouraged to find a book of their liking in any of the shelves! After selecting a book of their choice, the students were given time to look through their selections while sitting on various comfortable chairs and bean bags. Many gathered around Miss Sandy as she read aloud the story of The Pirate Princess!
There were also blocks to play with for those hands on and creative children who were not interested in reading.
Towards the end of the visit, any child with a library card was able to check out three books of their liking that could be taken home with them. By this time, the VPK students were ready to go back to All Superstars Preschool. They loaded into the van, had their seatbelts and attendance checked, and made it back to the preschool just in time for a thorough hand washing and lunch!
Many thanks to the Lee Country Fort Myers Regional Library staff, parent volunteers and teachers for making the very first field trip for the North Fort Myers All Superstars Preschool location an outstanding success. We love getting our children involved with the local community and this is a cornerstone to our philosophy when it comes to early childhood education.
You can also view a video recap of our field trip here below: