Photogenic Friday

April 26th, 2013

With light streaming through our Cardinal classroom windows, this morning felt fresh and bright filled with friends building upon this week's productivity in all areas. We continued our Spring inspired activities with a fun art project that used some of our left over seeds from our plantings.

Then our middle school friends stopped by to join us for the morning. The joy in the children's faces showed how much they appreciate the relationships that they have developed with our older peers.

A few minutes after their arrival we headed over to Gwen's library to read a story about a happy little chipmunk who explores a backyard. As the weather gets warmer Gwen shared with us that there are sometimes chipmunks near the entrance to Lower School and to keep an eye out to spot these furry friends.

Back in the classroom the block area was bursting with added sections of buildings, so much so we nearly ran out of blocks to use!

So they took out the Legos too.

Other friends revisited our collaborative sculpture, adding new beads and using different materials.

Friends also found a teacher or a middle school friend to read with in a comfy spot. Snack was a wonderful social experience today as children enjoyed eating together and having conversations spread throughout the classroom. Numbers were also running through our minds as the children initiated math games with each other and their middle school friends.

The rest of our morning was spent in the outdoor space soaking up the sun! Please take a walk through our day as the pictures tell the story:

Have a weekend full of warmth (hopefully in weather and spirit!).

Tuesday News

April 23, 2013

The children began their day with a few calm activities around the classroom. The atmosphere was quietly buzzing with busy Cardinals demonstrating their self assured knowledge of the different areas of the classroom and the comfortably confident children found great places to get to work building, reading, or exploring the art studio.

Soon it was time to take a short walk over to Gwen's Library where the children gathered in front of Gwen to listen to a story about friendship called "Help!". This story, includes the adventures of mouse who learns an important truth about his friendship with his animal friends. The book was well known to the Cardinals but, as always, the children were able to bring original perspectives to the story based on their own experiences. We left Gwen's Library after a fun, stimulating discussion carrying new books to fill our classroom with fresh ideas.

Back in the classroom, books came alive for the children. Exploring new stories and filling their thoughts with new illustrations seemed to engage each and every child both through small group readings with one of the Cardinal teachers, and individual book perusals.

We decided instead of a usual morning meeting we would take that time to surprise Paula with a special card the children had created for her. We had missed Paula who had been out from school and wanted to find a way to show our love and excitement for her return! Each Cardinal had written a personal message inside the card and decorated it with care, and the pride and joy the children took in making Paula smile was wonderful to see.

After a quick group hug, the children dispersed to different activities of interest, set up today around the classroom. There was a fun cutting and gluing art activity exercising our fine motor skills that drew on themes of recycling from yesterday's Earth Day discussions. We used materials that hadn't been used after finishing previous art endeavors to create new, beautiful pieces.

There were magnetic math games that explored shapes and numbers set up on the front rug that invited friends to work together or individually to try out different configurations of shapes and lines, or matching and ordering numbers.

The mathematical missions continued with geo-boards and child-driven shape experimentation which even led to creative applications from beautiful shape designs to self devised geo-board-games that included several different friends in interactive social math play.

We completed our terrific Tuesday with a little fresh air and outdoor play.

A Thursday Walk Through...

Looking back on our morning together, the Cardinals participated in many exploratory activities such as building! Block play and building are ways for our children to test out problem solving skills while also engaging in dramatic play.

At an early Morning Meeting, the teachers announced that the Cardinals would be having a special Art Class with a visiting teacher named Amanda. Just in time, Amanda visited our room and we greeted her. She shared with us a little about herself, telling us that she loves to paint. After a snack and short choice time, we excitedly made our way to the Art Room to see what type of art we were going to create with Amanda.

The children enjoyed playing a guessing game first, using their sense of touch, to identify the materials we were going to use. They reached in a colored bag and shared what the item felt like with the group. After seeing all the different pieces laid out on a white surface, we identified the similarities and differences. All of the colored and textured scraps were forms of paper and Amanda demonstrated how we could use the pieces for collage making. The children shared different ideas and techniques on what to do with the paper such as: "ripping it to make it smaller", "folding it", and "standing the paper up". This sharing time inspired forms of art as the children engaged in the collaging activity in small groups:

Bridges, Carnival Rides and Space Stations were created and the children continued to select materials to add to each piece showing an ability to build on a beginning idea!

After our art time, we ventured outside and explored in our Outdoor Space. Looking around, the teachers were reminded of a request that was made to the Cardinal Class. We were asked to collect any natural materials that could be used for art work for visitors coming to see our school this weekend! We loved the idea and used this as a perfect opportunity to go on a nature walk. Collecting and gathering are beginning ways to experience math skills such as counting and exercising our growing observation and classification skills. Our children's connection with nature was truly observed in their interactions with each other and their discoveries:

As we joined together in our classroom before lunch, a few friends had special items to share and the children had the opportunity to hear about each of these items and what makes them important or special:

"The Paper"

"A Pretend Flower"

"The Guitar"