Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
One of highlights of Early Childhood Education Program at WIS is field trips in an attempt to let children explore and discover more about the world outside the classroom.
Have you ever noticed that how inquisitive and interested your children become when you take them on an outing compared to playing indoors? And have you known that at such young age groups, children are highly perceptive to new information and experiences and absorbed by everything around them through their senses of hearing, feeling, smelling, touching and seeing? Going on a field trip is such an enriching experience for children and promisingly strengthen your child’s education in many ways.
By taking learning experiences outside of the classroom, children reinforce, complement and enhance what they are studying within the school setting and it allows students to try new things, enables them to relate what they have learnt to the real-world thing, and perhaps grab their heart, curiosity and imagination along the way.
Furthermore, a closer teacher-student bond and a close-knit friendship are built since students are willing to learn about a particular thing or place through interaction and exchange of ideas.
As a part of school curriculum, students at WIS normally have at least 2 half day field trips in one semester and 1 full day field trip at the end of each academic term.
Filed trips at WIS are distinguished from excursion programs at any other childcare centers. We take advantage of excursions as a learning tool to enhance our curriculum by allowing our students to better grasp and retain academic concepts and bring these to real life scenarios. Learning by doing. In addition, kids are encouraged to express themselves through 4 keys of educational experience: I explore – I think – I feel – I want.
Each excursion tells a story. Some of the trips which our school took over the years include:
“Loving Soul-to-Soul” which means my soul meets your soul and together we make magic.” We read books and had discussions about the topic of love and sharing before we took our “Loving Soul-to-Soul” trip. Our students visited, played, talked and shared gifts with orphan children. These gifts could be their favorite toys, their used books and clothes, and confectionery that they bought, using their saving pennies to raise a whole class fund. Students have learnt that it doesn’t mean either of us is perfect, but we love each other anyway, and likely, we love each other even more because of our imperfections. After the trip, we made some time to sit together, talking about what we explored and spoke out our thoughts and feelings and discussed things we could do to spread out love. All these would be presented in an artwork that we drew and painted together.
Another remarkable trip tells a story, “Wonderland”. The story of Alice and the Wonderland has given a lot of inspiration and left our kids wondering about such a wonderland in a real life. Each kid has nurtured in their mind a world of many wonderful things. Perhaps it could be a land full of colorful and fragrant flowers, a land full of thrilling games, a land of animals or toys that can speak like humans or a heaven of sweets, ice-cream and biscuits, etc. It’s unbelievable how kids’ imagination can flow and go far. We explored and had a lot of fun at one of the most popular amusement parks in Ho Chi Minh city. After the trip, our kids shared about what they explored, thought, felt and wanted, and after all correlated their hand-on exploration to the wonderland of their imagination.
All parents and children are invited to go on a school tour and please contact us to get more information about our school and our school curriculum.