Tuesday News

May 28th, 2013

We were thrilled to be reunited as a class after the long Memorial Day weekend. And our first day back was a busy Tuesday! We began with going to Lower School assembly to see some of the final assembly performances by the older students.

There were several amazing presentations including musical performances as well as a fun fencing demonstration!

The children watched each performer on stage with interest and were a wonderful audience. 

Returning to the classroom, the flower shop was very busy with a new branch of flower artwork, hair dressing, and several of the children, and even the Cardinal teachers, ended up with beautiful new flower enhanced hair styles. 

The journal table was very active this morning as well! There were a lot of great Memorial Day weekend stories to be told, and the children worked on their kid writing skills, beginning the writing portion of their journals themselves rather than all dictation! 

Late in our morning, the children walked to the 4th grade fair which was moved into the gym due to uncooperative weather. The 4th graders were wonderful hosts, and had prepared games they thought the children might like to play!

At lunch time, the Cardinals had a wonderful lunch addition when Stella's Mom and Dad, Kristina and Andrew, came to make smoothies with the children in honor of Stella's birthday! 

As we had lunch, they helped the children pick out delicious fruit to blend together and make a fabulous treat. 

Planting our Garden!

May 18, 2013

It was a beautiful morning for planting our Cardinal Garden! We started our morning inside finishing our jobs around the classroom, and writing in our journals an entry about the outdoors.

 Looking out our windows, the planting beds outside have been set up and we were lucky enough to have a visit from Trace's Mom Melissa who shared with us her knowledge of plants and brought with her trays of interesting seedlings along for us to put into our garden.

We gathered on our front rug as Melissa introduced what plants she had brought, and asked the children what they already knew about plants like tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, beans, and small flowers!

We smelled the leaves, felt the stems, and watched as Melissa showed us how plant roots grow into the shape of their containers.

After listening to Melissa explain how plants grow, and how these specific plants would need to be taken care of, we headed outside to our garden to put our plants in the ground.

With some tools Melissa had brought with her, we loosened the soil, and then placed our plants carefully into the beds.

Finishing our garden session with a good watering, we settled our new plants in, and look forward to seeing these plants continue to grow, and hopefully we will see them flower and get some vegetables to enjoy before the end of the school year!

After the gardening excitement, we finished up an excellent choice time. Inside, we also celebrated Donny's birthday! He had brought delicious treats in for his Cardinal friends to share, and the cupcakes were inhaled immediately.

After being reenergized from our birthday snack, we went back into the beautiful outdoors to finish our morning in the fresh air.

Tuesday News

May 14th, 2013

Our choice time is an essential part to open-ended exploration in which

the children's imaginations shine and they are able to independently engage in an area of interest for themselves. Today, the legos provided a wonderful opportunity to support the children in dramatic play. They used the legos to create ships, bridges, and machines.

Also, a polar bear family game continued this morning, as a small group identified what the baby polar bear would need. This nurturing and caring feeling in dramatic play, has strengthened the children's bonds and translated to our interactions among each other in our Cardinal community!

The children continue to show their love of reading as they sit in the big comfy chair and retell their favorite stories to their friends. As our spring study, involving flowers, plants and other living things continues to emerge, the Cardinals are gaining more knowledge and beginning to ask questions after reading books such as, I Love Bugs. The children are wondering what types of bugs we might see and immediately are making connections with their environment as they explore and identify their findings in our outdoor space. 

Building off of this love of nature, and motivation to learn more about spring, the children have begun to create a Spring Mural. Today, we began by finger painting blue shades on large paper to create the background of our scene. We then started brainstorming ideas of what else to include in our mural and recorded them on a large language experience chart. We have already begun to add flower paintings, drawings and petal collages. As their artwork is displayed, adding essential pieces to the spring display, the children feel a sense of pride and joy in the recognition of their pieces and the culmination of their ideas with that of their friends.

Outdoor Exploration: The outdoor play space has also provided the outlet for big body movement and the freedom to explore! This is building our social bonds with each other as the children continue to create new games or invite their friends to make discoveries or investigate with them. The connection with nature and the AFS outdoor environment is apparent when the children use their senses in a tactile way to explore what is around them. Digging up worms, sculpting with sand, and just bathing in the sun have been many ways that the children are developing their love for nature and becoming more comfortable in their world.

Journal time has also grown and the children are expanding their ideas as they work on their own illustrations and story dictations. 

The appreciation and awareness of beginning our study was displayed today as many children created pictures consisting of flowers, bugs, butterflies and more.

*Families, enjoy the shining sun and inviting weather as you read the blog today. Tomorrow, we are looking forward to a visit from Xander's Dad, a cardiologist, at 8:30 am. We are excited about what he has to share with us about his job, responsibilities and what he knows about an essential part of our bodies, the hear!