Preschool

Dear Families,

We began the week looking at our nature basket filled with treasures from our walks.  Something had happened over the weekend! “It’s all crunchy!” “The mint is crumbly.  Smell the mint!” Beck noticed that when he picked up some of the flowers with fluffy gray heads, lots of tiny  seeds floated down.  We spread contact paper on the table and the children chose items from the basket to arrange on the clear, sticky background.  “It’s gluey!” “It’s eewy and gluey!” When the children were done we spread another piece of clear paper over the top, capturing our work in a transparent “nature window.”

“I can see the shapes!  It’s a feather.”  “The penny is stuck!”

Children looked up from lunch to comment on the beautiful art they had created together, “I see the twigs.” “I can see through that.” “I want to carry the basket.” 

All around the room, there is a growing collection of our work as a class – symbols of the time we’ve spent together and what we’ve been thinking about. Above our in-class cubbies you may have noticed collages with red tissue paper apples.  These are illustrations for our song about Farmer Brown’s apples.  Each child approached the task differently, choosing to connect branches, trunk, leaves and apples in unique ways.  Neal noticed paper that the leaves had been cut from and became very interested in trying to fill the negative space with the correctly shaped leaf.  “It will be grass,” he said. “It’s under the tree in the orchard.”  “What’s an orchard?” “It’s a kind of thing where engines pick up apples and they’re delivered to the village.”

“I put all my glue on the rest so it could stick down.”

The children feel much empathy for Farmer Brown, and often say when the song is ended and all his apples have been eaten, “Let’s give him some ice-cream!”  “Don’t be sad.”  “We can plant more seeds.”   This desire leads us into another song we sing about ice cream, “I want a bowl of ice cream, I want to put some (fill in the blank!) on it.  I want a bowl of ice cream, mmm and a little bit more!” Children raise their hands to have a turn suggesting a line of the song.  We’ve had ice cream with sprinkles, rainbow sprinkles, gummi worms, gummi bears, chocolate chips, chocolate sauce, spaghetti, pickles and mac and cheese! Reese, Stella and Zora went to the board one day to draw what kind of ice cream and topping they liked best and ‘read’ to each other what they had drawn or ‘written.’

We have been telling stories to each other using other symbolic languages as well.  The Three Billy Goats Gruff  is a story the children have listened to with only a voice and guitar as accompaniment.  They have requested it again and again and we began to use things from our block corner to help bring the tale alive.  One day some of the children helped to enact the story using small, medium and large blocks for the goats, a large’x’ shaped block for the troll and an arched block for the bridge.  Someone suggested using a blue silk scarf for water and a green silk scarf for grass to cover the mountainside, also known as Stella’s lap!

Dear Families,

Our first full week of school flew by! We began working on a bird for Prince Philip to fly upon.  Children helped crumple paper and attach masking tape to form a body. We worked in small groups to wet strips of newspaper and dunk it in watery, sticky glue. “Quack, quack,” said Suleman, showing his growing knowledge of English words, especially related to animals!

Some friends were most interested in ripping tape, while others found tearing and crumpling paper most captivating.It was hard to believe that this activity would transform into a bird! Outside of baking, this is our first piece of collaborative art work.  The process will continue for weeks as we revisit our puppet friend, talk about feathers and notice birds outside, linking our classroom stories and culture to the greater world we all inhabit.

“Look,” said one child as a ‘V’ of geese flew overhead, “they’re going way far away.”  Later, we brought out bubbles and children ran to try and catch the streams of iridescent spheres the wind helped blow. “Are they flying,” I asked.  “Yes!” “But how? Where are their wings?” “You can’t see them.”  “Are they invisible?” “Yes, you just can’t see them.”

The children watched quietly and closely as the story of the star inside the apple was told using our tiny dollhouse inhabitants. At lunch we often discuss how fruit holds seeds and pits and how these seeds can become trees.  This is also hard to believe. How can a humble seed transform into a fruit-bearing tree?  The children were evenly divided on whether or not they believed there would be a star inside the apple. “There is!” “Yay! There is one.” “There’s really two!”

One morning we put out collage materials. It was interesting to observe how each child approached the task of creating a whole from such disparate elements:green tulle, tiny apple tree twigs, golden grasses, sunflower petals, black beans, white beans, sparkly glitter, colored wooden tiles and shiny buttons. One child spent time painstakingly breaking branches into tinier and tinier pieces, stockpiling his wood beside his palette of cardboard.  Another child spent time pulling petals from a sunflower’s face, another picking only black beans out.  Each collage is like a small self-portrait.  Come see our ‘class picture’ above the fireplace!

We revisited clay.  “It’s cold!” “It’s wet.” “It’s stuck on the table!” This material takes getting used to, it is not pliant and easily manipulated like play dough, it takes strength and intention to work with it.  It can also be tremendously grounding and it was amazing to see a group of small children working so quietly and diligently together to create little worlds. “It’s my garden.  See?  My garden has all these trees.  It’s a forest.  A forest garden.”  “This is the snowman and he can go way up on this tree.”

 On Friday we were surprised by an unexpected fire alarm.  We were very proud of how well the children adapted to this “very surprising” event and were able to quickly and quietly exit the building. Later we took a peaceful walk around our beautiful campus and collected many treasures from nature:goldenrod, ‘cherry apples,’ twigs, bark, pennies, leaves, pebbles, jewel weed and more!  We will make a different collage with these treasures on Tuesday.

It is a joy to see these children growing in confidence as they continue to familiarize themselves with their classroom materials and routines and forge friendships with one another.

I hope you enjoyed a beautiful last weekend of summer!

Sarah

Dear Families,

A visitor appeared at our morning circle on Friday.  Philip is a shy prince who lives in the forest behind our school. A little bird had flown by to tell him that there was a very special classroom nearby, where very special children sang songs about feathers and created beautiful works of feathery art that fluttered from the branches. Philip really wanted to visit because he was hoping the children in this room could help him fly!

“It’s ok!  You can come out.”

“We’re your friend.”

“Maybe we can make him a wing.”

“You can fly on a bird!”

Walking in the woods later, we noticed some large ancient trees with huge branches and holes in the trunk.  We saw woodpeckers and  chickadees and  wondered if Prince Philip’s home was nearby. Somebody noticed that when the wind blew, leaves that looked like feathers were ‘fluttering’ to the ground. Children also pointed to a picture in A Fairy Went A-Marketing – “She’s using a feather to write!” “That’s her  ‘quill.’ ” It is amazing how quickly children incorporate and utilize new knowledge and vocabulary and apply these to novel situations!

Before going home on Friday afternoon, some children were able to attend an outdoor school assembly. We saw  several birds and looked at the amazing feathers in the wings of an eagle, a turkey vulture and a kestrel. We saw the tiny feather of a hummingbird and the huge feather of an ostrich.  In the coming weeks we will  learn about the parts of a feather, write with feathers and create art inspired by our imaginations and our quest to help our new friend, Prince Philip, to fly.

This week we began baking!  Children used their reading skills to decode the  picture messages in a pizza recipe and scientific skills of observation and measurement.  We noticed attributes of yeast, flour, water and oil and how each of these changed when they came into contact with one another. We observed how the balls of dough we had kneaded and formed doubled in size after they rested.  We wondered, “Why?” We also wondered where flour came from.

 “From a bag.”

“From the store.”

“From a seed.”

“You could plant an  apple seed.”

“You could plant a flour seed and a flour tree would grow and you could climb and pick it.”

 Conversations like these give teachers great ideas for future curriculum explorations! It was lovely to feel the sense of growing camaraderie amongst the children as they worked together and enjoyed the fruits of their labor later at snack time.

One last snapshot of the week I wanted to share is a song we have been singing every morning at circle:

Farmer Brown had five red apples hanging from a tree

Then he plucked one apple and he ate it hungrily! 

There is a picture of Farmer Brown on our little blackboard and the children love acting out the gestures of ‘plucking’ and eating and taking turns erasing the apple that has just been eaten and the ritual of turning the farmer’s smile into a frown when his apples are all gone.  We are very impressed with the children’s abilities to quickly call out the correct answers to the mathematical problems in this story.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend and looking forward to our first full week of school!

All the best,

Sarah

BCD’s youngest students have begun their library journeys with me by learning the library song, meeting and snuggling with Sunny, our meerkat helper and sharing stories. With the help of our traveling trunk, we embarked on our first exploration, book care. When we opened the trunk this week, we found an assortment of household items ranging from pencils, juice boxes and blankets to dolls, a toothbrush and a toy boat. We discovered that we were to sort these objects onto either a red piece of paper (for “stop”) and a green piece of paper (for “go”) This helped to remind us of how we should treat our books in the classroom and at home. We discussed why some objects were not safe for our library books.
Although no one knows exactly where the traveling trunk will journey to next week, we know that there will be excitement along the way!