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