Dear Families,

We began our week completing work on our long term project of a bird for Prince Philip to fly upon.  The children expressed more and more interest in this activity as they could see it becoming recognizable as a bird.  We discussed the process, remembering the sequence of all the steps involved  and brainstormed about details still needed.  “He needs eyes.”   “He needs a nose.”  “That’s a beak.”   “He needs a beak to smell.” “I breathe with my nose.”  Someone had the idea of using a pine cone for a nose and someone else suggested that he needed yellow polka dots.  We learned a new technique of painting, dabbing the tip of a brush into color and lightly tapping it into the side of the bird’s body.  This kind of detail takes excellent small muscle control and concentration. “He needs to have wings with feathers to fly!”  This step, too, took much determination and precision, to apply glue sparingly and pick each small feather up to attach in just the right place.

 

Girl with a polka dot sweater putting polka dots on a bird

We sat together to hot glue the wings and button eyes and pine cone beak and the children were really excited to hold their creation once the glue had cooled.  “It’s really a bird now!” “We have to tell Prince Philip.”  “Where is he now?”  “He’s in my desk drawer,” I answered.  “Is he sleeping?”   “Yes, I think he’s taking a rest.  We’ll wake him up next week and let him know.”   “But he really lives in the woods in a tree, right?”  “That was part of the story I told when we first met Prince Philip.”  “That’s the real story, right?”

This is a question that arises repeatedly – what is real?  Are stories real, is art real, is the puppet real? Children can seemingly hold multiple realities seamlessly – they know when we use blocks to tell the story of the three billy goats that we are using wooden blocks, but they also know that this story and the emotions it touches upon are real.  When they are playing at being a family on a boat, escaping over the ocean, they never say, “But this isn’t real.”  Nor do the children creating roads, tunnels and caverns  with ‘excavator’ hands in the rice table say, “This isn’t real.”  Their imaginations and ability to create worlds with simple props are real and vital components of their understanding, learning and beings. And yet, they are also trying to understand how   the world works in a different way and sometimes step back to ask, “What is real?”

Carefully ‘feathering’ the wings

 

Is this bird real, yet?

 

 

Another exciting curriculum strand has been emerging since the beginning of school – the idea of circles and all the places and ways we can see this shape expressed in ourselves and in the world.  We begin our time of coming together every day with a signal from our beautiful blue singing bowl which is awakened by being tapped by a rod.  We have noticed that the bowl is a circle and the rod which hits it has circles on either end. We sing our song about sitting in a circle , “like the sun,” and the children now raise their hands to offer up other circle ideas: The moon, the grommet in Zora’s sneaker, the treads on Stella’s shoe, an apple pie, our eyes, a clock.  Reese told us he had a ride on a big circle called a Ferris wheel and other children mentioned riding on a carousel.  We looked at a flat piece of paper.  Could this be a circle?  When we folded up the edges there were gasps of amazement -yes!

 

Can this flat road lead us to a circle?

 

“Yes!!!”

These discoveries led us to look for circles outside as well.  We like to go on walks around campus and see what we find as we observe and listen to the world.  We especially love to visit the school bus. On a rainy, overcast day we walked out and were astounded by circles everywhere!!!

A waterfall coming out of a circle pipe

 

Our beautiful class in front of a big circle – the bus wheel!
Shiny orange circle next to tiny yellow screw circles

 

How many circle are on the back of the bus?

 

“It’s a clock for birds!”

 

“Take a picture of that circle!”

 

Ground circle

 

Secret circle hidden by plants

 

Beck in front of the big circle tunnel in the berm

 

It is wonderful to see children’s excitement as they find more and more examples of this recurring pattern that is in us, on us and around us.  We will be documenting our circle discoveries and putting them together in a class book.

The biggest excitement of the week was preparing for Grandparents’ and Grand friends’ day on Friday. The children had  painstakingly wrapped rocks in wool in preparation for felting apples, an activity we wanted to share with our special guests.  We practiced separating the wool fibers, looking through them and then covering our rocks in warm little nests of wool. These apples will be used to help us count and sing songs about apples.  The children noticed they were  like circles.  When we baked apple muffins for our guests we noticed so many circles – our arms stirred batter in a circular motion, the yolks in eggs were circles, bowls, muffin tins, lids and more!!!

 

Wrapping rocks with wool for felted apples

 

Apple muffins and lots of circles.

 

Sprinkling cinnamon on the muffins

 

It was lovely to see children showing their families their classroom and sharing time playing, building and creating with beloved grandparents and family members.

 

Stella and her Grandpa make a heart together.

 

Duncan shows his grandmothers how he can fit shapes into a puzzle.

 

Reese shows his aunt all the pine cones standing in the rice table.

 

Zora and Suleman explore clay with her Grandfather.

 

Beck makes a heart with his grandparents.

 

We are so lucky to be surrounded by those who love us and care about spending time with us.  Thank you Grandparents and Grand friends!

We are also lucky to have two new friends who will be spending time in our class each week.  Neeka and Meg are in the eighth grade and will come every Wednesday to have lunch with us and spend time getting to know the children and talk and read to them.  Thank you so much!

 

Neeka reads to Beck and Duncan

 

Meg reads with Suleman, Stella and Zora

 

I look forward to seeing every one on Tuesday .

 

All the best,

Sarah