Dear Families,
The children began working with a new material this week. Ms. Milani let us borrow Geo-boards. Each child stretched colored elastics over a grid and were delighted to see shapes emerging: “Look I made a triangle!” “Mine is like a guitar – listen.” “This is a boat and a rocket ship.” “It’s a big city and these are all the windows.” There was interest in sorting the colors into separate baskets. When work flowed into imaginative play about a train and a conductor, the geo-boards became video games! Later in the week we looked at Mondrian’s painting “Broadway Boogie Woogie” and thought about how his art looked like a geo- board and like a map. We also looked at diagrams of lots of different bridge trusses and were reminded of all the intricate shapes and designs that had been created. It is exciting for the children to be able to recognize echos of their own work in the world outside the classroom. We will continue to explore this interesting mathematical and artistic manipulative.
The children did another experiment this week – adding food coloring to white play dough and seeing what happened. They each had a chart to record information. 5 drops of green food coloring = five dots of green on the chart. They were very concentrated as they worked, checking and rechecking the numbers to record. After playing with the transformed dough, the children labeled bags to put their play dough in – reading the information from their charts and translating it to sticker dots on their bags. They were extremely proud of themselves for this work! It is displayed in the classroom. Please come look.
We continued to look at maps and think about them. We posted a map of our area and thought about special places. Each child took a turn walking on the bridge to mark their special places on the maps with an orange dot. Some children have begun making labels for these places. Please come look!
Other exciting developments this week – our beans continue to grow taller and send down longer roots, even without dirt! Our hibernating creatures finally emerged from their cozy log and spent some nights outdoors in the hollow tree by the playground! Work continues on our map for the 3-D map/village, we made bread on Friday and we picked lots and lots of dandelions! Each week is so full!
At circle time we talked about how as of next week we would have five weeks left until the end of school. We began to talk about next year and how the B3s would become the Pre-k class. This made some people a little sad, but we also talked about how we would continue to be neighbors, how I will still see the children every day and their new teacher is a well-known friend -Mrs. Atwater. The children assured me that they would be able to help me a lot with the new children entering our school, because they would be the big kids! Since the beginning of school we have sung “This train is bound for glory,” and allowed each child to choose a destination for different verses. Suleman’s train was going to Pittsfield, Stella’s train was going to Boston, Aaron’s train was going to Hong Kong, Reese’s train was going to Ohio, Beck’s train was going to Rock Harbor, Zora’s train was going to Martha’s Vineyard and the train for the B3s was bound for Pre-k.
We look forward to seeing all who can make it at a mother’s day celebration on Thursday at drop-off. There will be songs, smoothies and other delicious treats to celebrate moms. Dads are invited to join!
Friday is pizza day.
I hope you all are enjoying the beautiful weather. All the best!
Sarah
