Our First AFS Lower School Assembly

First days of school are filled  with many new experiences!  The air of  excitement is felt in our Cardinal classroom as we approach each new activity.  This week we joined as a full Lower School community and participated in our assembly program.  Assembly is a special time in our Lower School world where the children come together as a  community and begin to feel  the connection to our larger AFS family.  As the children gathered together in the Mueller auditorium,voices of joy were heard as children spotted familiar faces, friends , siblings and Lower School neighbors.  Joining together as one community fosters one of our most valued goals of building community from within.   

In today's assembly program Rich Nourie played guitar  and sang songs with us! We joined in a sing-a-long and everyone enjoyed singing together with all of our new friends!  We became more familiar with the names of the teachers in Lower School through a fun, interactive game .

As we walked through the hall back to our classroom, children we relaxed, holding friends hands and chatting along the way! What a great beginning to our school year!

Sharing Traditions

Our opening days of school have been fantastic! Children are making new friends and are thrilled to be back at AFS reunited with classmates and old friends.   Our sense of our "Cardinal family" and classroom  community is evolving and is clearly observed and felt throughout the day.  Morning Meeting has been a wonderful way for the children to begin to connect with each other,  their teachers and our flow of the day. Today at Morning Meeting , Paula shared some of the traditions and customs she and her family have in celebrating Rosh Hashanah.  Paula set 'the holiday table' with several of the traditional items that her family has on their table for the holidays and sang the blessings that her family sings when lighting the candles, breaking bread and drinking from the kiddish cup.  We looked at beautiful photographs of children celebrating the holidays in the book Celebrate Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur and learned that Rosh Hashanah is the celebration of the New Year.  The children loved eating challah for snack and enjoyed dipping apples into honey to symbolize a sweet year for all! Sharing family traditions supports our goals of developing a deeper awareness of our similarities and differences as well as establishing our sense of community. We welcome you to share family traditions and customs throughout the year.  

Our Writing Center is evolving.  Children are asked to  sign-in each morning upon arrival . This a an opportunity for children to practice fine motor skills, develop pencil grip and support readiness skills. We have a basket of the children's names available for copying and several of the children are learning to recognize and read the written names of their friends. As interest and readiness  in writing develops, children often select words and names from our word baskets and enjoy copying words for their work. 

 We introduced journals today in the Writing Center.  The children were very excited to have new 

journals and were fully engaged in both drawing and dictating stories.  Several children asked to share their journals at meeting and were so proud of their work!

Glimpses of Choice Time

Glorious First Day of School

Our first days of school have been glorious!  The children are becoming familiar and comfortable  with our Cardinal classroom and seem to be adjusting to the beginning days of school with ease!  Children are engaged in play with each other in several learning centers in our classroom as well as in our outdoor classroom. On more than one occasion, we have all commented on how the group has blended together in such a natural way and that it actually feels like we have been together for weeks !  What a great feeling....

It has been a joy to observe new friendships emerging as well as old friends reuniting after our summer break.  Our pictures speak a thousand words... enjoy getting a glimpse of our first days of school captured though the photos we have taken.

Happy beginning of our Cardinal year together!