Dear Families,

 

We have been thinking about maps – what are they?  What do we know about them?  What would we like to know?  The children had so many ideas: “Maps can help you find your way home.”  “Maps could help you find treasures.” “Where are we on the map?” “Can we see where we are?”

Coloring in maps of BCD. “I’m making the pond blue!.”

 

Painting the base of our, “real map.”

 

Attaching buildings and parks.

 

Map on a phone.

 

Map on the globe.

 

Detail of road and telephone wire.

 

Long tailed Nanny-o in the park.

 

We looked at maps on phones, maps of the globe and maps of our school.  We noticed that roads were often lines and on the globe, mountains felt bumpy! We began working on our ‘real map’ – a three-dimensional model of a neighborhood.  The children connected their dwellings with roads and put up telephone poles with wires so they could talk on telephones! Some people glued hidden treasures on the map and even a little lizard to represent our song, “The snake baked a hoe-cake.” This project continues to evolve and I love that we can leave it out,  allowing children the time to work on  it for extended periods over days and weeks. I am curious to  see how new ideas and discoveries will impact this collaborative creation.

Some interesting ideas we discussed at circle time: Is a diagram of an egg a kind of map?  Is a self-portrait a map of a face? Are sentences maps of speech? Is a cake recipe a map for making a cake?

I noticed that our map work moved into the block area, too!  We rolled up the carpet one day and this allowed for a huge expanse of building space.  Everyone worked together to create structures, linked by pathways, roads and bridges. On Thursday, the children began constructing a long road that went all the way to the rice room. We wondered if we had enough blocks to go all the way around!

 

Skyscrapers!

 

Building with doorway.

 

Restaurant, dock, harbor, roads.

 

Huge roadway….

 

going around the corner…

 

all the way into rice room!

We continued planting more seeds and observing the plants outside pushing up through the earth.  Our bulbs from the fall are beginning to sprout and our pumpkin is still visible in the compost heap – it’s hard to believe it was once so bright and round and orange.

Shoots emerging!

 

Our pumpkin after a long, hard winter.

On Monday I will be hanging the children’s art work at Ralph’s Pretty Good Cafe on Main Street in Chatham, NY.  The show will be up until May 15th.  Although, I would have liked to have a celebration/opening, it does not seem possible.  The cafe space is small and the owner felt it might be overwhelming to have all of us arrive en masse.  I do hope you can come, though and you are welcome to let me know when you are in town.  If at all possible I will meet you there for a cup of tea!

Also- our field trip to Hancock Shaker Village had to be rescheduled.  We will be going instead on the 18th, this week!

All the best!

Sarah