We began our morning today with a visit to the Lower School library for a story time with Gwen. The children love visiting the library and especially enjoy siting in the cozy reading area for stories read aloud by Gwen. The experience is an important time for the children to practice and develop listening skills. Listening to books read aloud to larger groups involves maturation and practice for young children and we have observed a tremendous growth in all of our children in this area. They are learning to listen to longer stories read aloud and are following the content of the story with greater clarity. Reading aloud at home is a very important component in developing reading readiness and comprehension skills. Today Gwen read the book A Friend Of Mine The Smallest Stallion, by Charlie Cantrell and Dr. Rachel Wagner. The children love to look through books that Gwen lays out on the library tables which she feels may be of interest for our children and then offers the children the opportunity to borrow them to keep in our classroom. This sense of responsibility in being able to really borrow books from the school library is very empowering for our children.
We visited with our friends in Kristan Moyer's 6th grade science class today to meet the rolly-polly bugs or better known as pill bugs. Our 6th grade friends will be studying the rolly-polly bugs and conducting several experiments with them to learn more about them over the next several weeks. They invited our Cardinal class to their science lab to have a chance to learn more about the bugs. The children had the opportunity to hold, touch and look through the telescope at the bugs with the help of their 6th grade partners. The children were fascinated by the bugs and several children were eager to hold the bugs and let them crawl on their hands and arms. We learned that when the bugs are scared, they curl up into a ball and roll..hence that is how they got the nickname rolly polly bugs. Kristan spritzed the bugs with a little water and that made the bugs move more or roll up! The level of comfort with the 6th graders is quite apparent. The children were much more relaxed when entering the science lab and the familiarity and comfort that all of the students felt with each other was a joy to see! We feel so fortunate to have this wonderful opportunity to build community in such an authentic way. Thank you Kristan Moyer for helping to establish this connection.
We were asked by Jason to come to his Music room for a special, extra music time. When we entered we found a two special guests (Lori) and her baby! She had come to share an exciting musical experience with the children, but first, the Cardinals shared some of their music. We shared our "Say Hello" song, and even began learning a new, and very relevant, song about rainy days. To this rainy day song we applied our instrument work from the last music class, adding some bells and rain sticks. Then, (Lori) shared with us a very special instrument. She asked if any of the children could identify what instrument she had brought with her, and our cardinals were able to tell her that it looked like a violin. This violin she brought with her was the smallest size of violin that is made for young children who would like to learn to play. Then she showed us her adult-sized viola and we discussed the differences in sound between the tiny violin and this instrument, and what reasons there might be for those differences. She even played a couple of songs for us on her viola! We learned a song to help us remember the names of the strings.
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