A Wonderful School Community

What a busy day! Today was a day where we truly took advantage of the benefits of being in a larger school community! During Choice Time, we had a Seventh Grade Helper, Jade, play with us. She was so sweet: drawing, holding hands, and singing along with our crazy silly songs. Other Choice Time activities included finger painting, building, and making up adventures games to classical music.

Then JoJo, a teacher from the Caterpillar Room came to read us a story. She read Jan Brett's The Mitten. It was one of Robby's favorite stories so he had to try hard not to tell his friends what happened! Then JoJo had a game for us to play where we acted out the story, putting giant pictures of the animals into a giant mitten. Bringing the story to life in new and different ways is a great way to build literacy and story telling skills.
After playing on the playground for a little while, we set off on an adventure, this time, to the Lower School Library, where Gwen the Librarian had set aside some books for the Turtles. The Turtle teachers are always looking for good story books featuring diverse characters, and Gwen helped us find some new ones. (Do any families have favorite story books featuring diverse characters? Let us know in the comments!)

The Many Math Skills of Daily Life

At Morning Meeting on Tuesday, we decided on our baking project for today, and despite some interest in cupcakes and brownies, the end decision was banana bread! It turns out that this was a good choice because the Turtles are excellent at mashing bananas! Cooking is also a great time for incorporating math and science skills into the day as we measure and count cups of flour, and watch the changing textures as wet ingredients mix with dry.

At Morning Meeting, Carol read the book, Music Around the World with beautiful images of people all around the world enjoying a wide variety of music. On almost every page, the Turtle broke into rhythm or song, adding their own flavor to the book. For instance, when we read the page, "Music is for celebrations," the Turtles spontaneously sang "Happy Birthday" and the "Go Well and Safely" in unison.

The playground was filled with fun chase games, explorations of the changing garden, and swinging on the swing. The Turtles are also enjoying interacting with the other classes on the playground, and are quiet good friends and helpers to the younger children!

At Read Aloud, we revisited Farmer Brown, this time in the book Click Clack Splish Splash. The Turtle are developing their one-to-one corresspondence, the idea that one object corresponds to one number, and today, Tamara tried to trick them as they counted. She would touch each object in a series, and then stop! The Turtles had to stop counting too, instead of continuing the rote counting. They are getting very good at this, and Tamara only managed to trick them a few times!

Quakers and Compost

Today was Visiting Quakers Day, the day when members of Abington Meeting visit the school to observe classes, read stories and come to Meeting for Worship. Loretta Fox, a Meeting member (and Meeting Admin Assistant) visited our classroom. We have a lovely (and prolonged) Moment of Silence, and then Loretta talked about of our Moment of Silence is a little bit like Meeting for Worship. She also said that during Meeting for Worship, people often think about what is important to them, and asked the children what was important to them. The answers ranged from "my family," to "Slider!" We ended Morning Meeting singing our song about Peace for Loretta:

"What a goodly thing

If the children of the world

Could dwell together

In peace."

Choice Time was filled with more artistic endeavors as the children continued to decorate the climber and work with markers and at the easel. Carol and Tamara continue to be amazed at the ways the children are expressing themselves through art!

On the playground, we worked on collecting leaves for our compost pile. Compost piles need a mixture of greens (like food scraps) and browns (like leaves), and so the children worked hard to collect lots and lots of leaves!

Parachute Walk!

The Turtles are fascinated by letters, and the teachers have been finding myriad ways to support and build on this interest. Today at Choice Time, Carol worked with several different children to use the letter stamps to make their names. She wrote their names in capital letters across the top of the page, and each child then found and stamped out their names.

The children have also been engaging in amazing group building projects, and today, those projects were building boats and decorating the climber.
At Morning Meeting, we decided on our baking project for Thursday (banana bread) and sang a new song, "The Little Red Caboose." We started out singing it slowly, and got faster and louder each time!

Then we set out for our Parachute Adventure! We started out playing some parachute games, and then used the parachute as a giant tarp to walk in the rain.

We went over to the Muller Auditorium where we sang the "I Saw A Bear" song, and told a Round Robin Story with all the the animals from the class (bears, dragon flies, ducks, and butterflies!)

A Little Teacher-Talk (and a whole lotta fun!)

 Choice Time continues to be rich with creativity and learning. Each week the teachers plan what activities to offer during Choice Time, carefully thinking about the different developmental domains (math, science, language, literacy, physical, arts, and social) and how to extend their learning. Working at the easel (a very popular choice this morning) builds the torso, shoulder, arm, and wrist muscles, as well as allowing for exploration of color, texture, and form. Building with big blocks (today the train was stuck in the mud!) also develops the children's upper body strength, spatial relationship skills, and social skills as they negotiate their ideas and share play themes.

At Morning Meeting, we did another whole-class story, with the animals from Friday making their appearance again today as they all went to the meadow to play.
During Movement with Missy, the Turtles are amazing at listening to the directions in the music and following along by dancing, skipping, jumping, or crawling. We played bean bag games, first passing it around the circle fast and then slowly, and then playing catch with a partner. And perhaps the most exciting was the Obstacle Course that Missy set up - which included a spring board!!