Wednesday News

February 20, 2013

We began our morning meeting by lighting a beautiful candle and sitting in a circle to share a few moments of silence together.  Lower School as well as all of the divisions in the AFS community honor Meeting For  Worship every Wednesday by going for Meeting in the Meetinghouse.  We have been introducing the concepts of silence and Meeting For Worship with our younger children by gathering each week in a circle, sitting in silence for a few minutes and inviting the children to share a thought or feeling they may have during our time of silence. The children seem to like to share a thought and we have noticed the classic domino effect where every child mimics in some way the words of the previous person! The children seem to be quite proud to have a few moments to share  'thought' as their peers listen quietly. We will probably visit the Meetinghouse again with the Lower School in the Spring.

Art class with Sam today was such fun!  The children LOVE to go to the studio and always are so enthusiastic when they learn that our schedule includes a visit with Sam. Sam introduced clay today. Each child had their own slab of clay and board to work with and Sam began the session by asking thought provoking questions such as:  What is Clay? Where does it come from? What can you do with clay?  Sam talked about the earth and dirt and described how clay is kind of in-between the two and is a natural material found in our environment. Sam invited the children to first explore the clay with their hands and even their sense of smell.  The children pulled, pounded, rolled and stretched the clay and soon realized the ability they had to mold and change the clay .  After exploring with hands only, Sam introduced tools that she thought were fun to use when working with clay. Thin clay knives, plastic forks, spoons and knives were also added to the work areas for the children to explore. The last group of materials that Sam introduced were objects that could be used to make prints in the clay.  Large plastic caps with varying textures, magic marker caps and other found objects that would make prints and the children were very interested in working with them.

A few more photos of our day...