Continuing to Build Community...

What an amazing day of building community for the Cardinals! We had an unexpected visit from Upper School Photography students who were interested in visiting with us and wanted to get to know the children in our community!  We were so excited to learn that the older kids were interested and doing the same things that we were at this time of the school year!  Our new friends stayed to play with us a little and took some photos  to use for a display in the Upper School to reflect our full AFS community.  The children loved the time spent interacting with the older students and we hope that this is only the beginning of a wonderful rapore.

We decided to take a walk around our school today in hopes of meeting more people in our school community.  We were so successful and excited about all of the wonderful encounters we came upon on our walking adventure.  Actually, we started our adventure with the intention of stopping at 2nd grade to deliver a ' Kindness Card'  to our new 2nd grade partners to express our appreciation for the time they spent reading to us last week.  On our way , our friend Shannon Haley, one of the 1st grade teachers popped her head out of the doorway and both greeted and welcomed our Cardinals for an impromptu visit with her 1st grade!  It was so much fun!  Chelsea and Evan were especially excited because this was their sisters' class!  We had many friends in the 1st grade class who had been in Early Childhood,and it was very special to see the children  in such a grown up way!  Our friends the Owls were passing by and they also stopped in and we all joined together on the meeting rug for a brief gathering!  First grade is studying Monarch Butterflies and we had the opportunity to see the chrysalis in the butterfly box.  We invited 1st grade to visit with us sometime and they were all thrilled to accept the kind invitation.  So off we  went to continue our community adventure...

Walking down the Arts corridor we peeked into the art room and saw Sam working with 3rd graders creating art with tissue paper.  The large windows into the art room were ideal for observing! 

 We continued down the hall a bit and peeked into Jason's music room.  Jason came to  the doorway to say hello to us and then invited us to come in!  The children were so respectful of this new space and were quite remarkable in connecting with Jason for a impromptu music lesson. 

Our community adventure continued as we walked back to our classroom!  We met Felix and his 3rd grade going to lunch and Sandy and Betsy who are the teachers of  2nd grade.

  

This day turned into a really special experience for the children in helping to foster the feelings that a community brings.  We felt welcomed and the feelings of belonging were so beautifully expressed by all.  The children learned from meeting new friends and this was a wonderful way to practice new social skills.  We know that this is only the mere beginning of our days where we will continue to build a sense of community.  

Caring Cardinals

Our Morning Meeting discussion was focused on the topic of kindness. We had spent several days last week talking about kind acts and kind words which led to a sensitive discussion about feelings.  We have also been talking about our sense of community and what that may mean to us.  We identified the different communities we as a Cardinal group belong to.   We recognized our Cardinal class community, our Early Childhood community,  the Lower School community, AFS community and Jenkintown community as all groups that we are a part of.  Working, playing and living in our community together we also recognized that we all needed to work together respectfully and listen to each others' ideas and thoughts in order to establish our classroom community.  We talked briefly about solving conflicts and conflict resolution and identified three important questions we should always ask ourselves regarding our actions.
     IS IT KIND?
     IS IT SAFE?
     IS IT GOOD FOR THE COMMUNITY?
All of the children agreed that these were three very important questions we should ask ourselves and agreed that these would help us learn how to live and work to together and grow.  We decided to write a contract and titled it  Cardinals' Caring Contract. Our contract is simple and states very clearly the three concepts stated above.  The children were really excited to participate in such a 'big kid' experience and we asked each children to sign the contract if they agreed with the ideas.  Enthusiastically each children signed their name!

At Choice Time we invited children to come to the tasting table and explore their sense of taste!  Shannon began by sharing a story about how she had noticed so many new and beautiful fruits and vegetables at the supermarket during the weekend.  We thought it might be fun for the children to sample different kinds of apples and that we are all seeing in our supermarkets at this time of year.  The tasting center was opened and the table was set with a green apple, Red Delicious apple, Honey Crisp and Yellow Delicious. When the children visited the center, they were asked to share their observations of what they noticed about the apples. Below are a few of the comments our Cardinals' had:
    "This is green my favorite color. Pears are green. I don't like pears but I like pear cookies.   We have them at home."
    " It tastes bitter. It looks like a blurry red. Can I taste this one. This one will taste like a darker reddish."
    " There are little ones and dark ones and big ones. It tastes like grape."
     " I love green apples. I love red ones. They taste salty a little bit so I'll try a green one."
     " There are different colors. I think these too kinds are really sour kinds. This is the plain kind and this is the cherry kind. It tastes really juicy."



The question was posed,"What can we do with an apple?" The children had many ideas including "make apple pie, applesauce, apple smoothies, make apple cobbler and share it with the class, and maybe we could put legs on the apples and make them into spiders. Maybe we could go to a store that has straight pretzels and make them into legs...."



We had so much fun playing outdoors on the soccer fields.  The weather was glorious and the children absolutely loved the open space to run and play together.  The group is so cohesive and it is so special to see the children developing friendships and connections with each other and our community

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