While the construction area is a buzz, some of our ladies found a peaceful moment together while they bonded over their similar stuffed animals friends!  

After brainstorming several different ideas for the birthday gift, we were eventually inspired by the children's interest and love for stories and books. Each child will be given a story, written and illustrated for them by their birthday committee. Once decided, we recognized a connection to a centrality of libraries within neighborhoods.

Monday commenced the birthday committee work. This year Dagny's birthday will begin our school birthday celebrations. Her committee, Elena, James, Vivienne, Tegan, got a story started by contributing either their ideas and imagination in words, drawn pictures or both. They will present Dagny's completed storybook next Tuesday. 

With so many fall birthdays, the work of the committees will steadily persist for the next month. In fact, Caleb's birthday is on Monday, October 02. His committee, Tommy, Abby, Maisie, and Hugh enthusiastically joined together  in the studio today. The committee members first had a discussion about some preselected books. This invited a way to learn about the type of stories Caleb most appreciates. Then the story was written--in a day! Tomorrow both Dagny's and Caleb's committees will complete the storybooks by adding the work of their illustrations. 

,The concept of being a neighbor and the tangibility of a neighborhood are at the center of our Rainey Room yearly projection.  On our first day of school, and remarkably our first day to have all 15 of us together, as a class, we opened up this topic. Beginning as we typically do, we presented the children with a blank slate of our knowledge and a question to provoke and encourage their own thought processes and their sharing of what they already know. 

We asked, "What is a neighborhood." This produced responses related more to the word hood than to the partnering word, neighbor. The hood of a car and the hood of a jacket were referenced. So, we simplified it: "What is a neighbor?" 
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Caleb: A person who lives next to you. 
Vivienne: I have a neighbor across the street. 
Zarina: I have three neighbors on one street. 
Tommy: My house is here [gestures with a tap of one hand] and my neighbor's house is over there [directs by placing a hand further from him].  ... My neighbor lives across the street.
Melanie: If a neighbor lives next to us, who lives next door to us?
Hugh: I do.
Melanie: So Hugh is St. John's neighbor.
Allison: Do we have neighbors in the school? 
Caleb: Brown Room and Tucker.
Maisie: I have a neighbor right next to me?
Melanie: How do you know they're your neighbor? 
Maisie: Because they're on the same pavement as me.

We followed up on the conversation about neighbors by reading back the above conversation to a small group. Next, we depicted our homes, our neighbors homes,  and/or neighborhoods by drawing our "neighbors". 

Again: "What's a Neighbor?" 
Max: It's somebody who lives next to me. 
Cate: Molly lives next to me and has two dogs. Molly also has neighbors...with no dogs.

And: "What's a Neighborhood?" 
Lily: We have a neighborhood.
Caleb: A place where your home is in.
Max: I live with my sisters. 
Melanie: So a neighbor is not someone you live with?
Max: No (suggesting that neighbors are not someone you live with).

Later, while drawing their homes and their neighbor's homes:
​Melanie: Where is your house, James?
James: Reservoir Road.
Melanie: Where is that?
​James: It's near Wisconsin Avenue.
Melanie: Where can we find those roads, those streets?
James: Washington. In Washington.
Cate: (exuberantly chimes in) DC! Washington, DC! ... We all call it different words. 
Melanie: So, what is Washington, DC?\
James: It's a city.

Making Circles: 
During yesterday's afternoon community discussion, the topic of circles were a spark for conversation among the children. So today we followed their lead by setting up a provocation of circles and circular things, including the suggestion to find circles throughout the room. Maisie explored circles through the lens of measurement, using the pink measuring tape that shared company with us in the Brown Room. And later with the light projector as she moved around circle shaped transparent objects on the screen to finally create a flower design. Dagny and Vivienne worked with circles as a drawing base and moved into creating more from their circles in any way their imaginations fancied. Vivienne turned her circle into a head and drew a girl. Then she adorned the girl with a beautiful dress made with fancy tape. Dagny created a girl's face from her first circle and then gave the girl a pizza with a second circle. Will worked with Caroline to track circles. This "circle tracking" took him all around the room in exploration. The two of them began with a tally system to record how many circles they found in the classroom. Will quickly abandoned this and replaced the tally with his own logical recording system of drawing a circle for every circle found. And he found them everywhere!  

,Happy Rosh Hashanah to all of you celebrating it! With Allison away Rainey Room welcomed our beloved sub from last year, Caroline Smith, along with her two sons (and St. John's alums) Adney and Eaton. We also welcomed back Dagny and were pleased to welcome Maisie's new baby brother, Finlay into the classroom for the first time!  

Our store has experienced quite the evolution and everyday, depending on who the shopkeeper is, the store takes on a different name and offers different merchandise. Today we were selling pies and while the children played we observed the various ways that they engaged with the materials. As the children play, they are constantly making decisions and choices regarding what materials they use and how and we noticed several examples this morning that highlighted  their thought process and decision-making skills and allude to some very deep learning concepts.

The materials that are offered here are each intelligent in their own right and invite investigations that promote valuable actions. The teaching is evident through the environment and materials and the quality of the children’s learning is driven by the quality of the environment. 
 

When the children engage with the loose parts, open-ended materials they are thinking critically and testing their logic and reasoning skills. The open-ended nature of the materials affords the children the ability to reinvent their purposes and utilize things as necessary to solve the problem at hand. Lily arranges the pies on the stool and it is noticeable how the arrangement represents a deeper awareness and sense of space.  
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Not surprisingly, interactions with the natural world are manifest more earnestly in the outdoor classroom where natural materials are in greater abundance. Within the first minutes of being outside, Caleb found "in place" but out of place Pussy willow branches. Almost immediately he set about to put them into the ground. His actions caught the attention and subsequent interest of other children. Together they displayed a curious and vested interest in "planting the trees." They displayed their capabilities in establishing their intentions to plant the branches into the ground and to use available resources of sand, water, their own human power, and the social capital of their friends and teachers. In the end the "tree" was planted, and Hugh exuberantly announced, "Melanie, we gave the tree lots of water!  Water helps it to  grow! We put water on it and look--the tree got taller and taller!" Toward the end of our outdoor playtime, Max rushed to inform that the "bubbles were overflowing" in the outdoor classroom sink.

Water continues to come through as an interest for manyRainey Room (formerly Brown Room) children. The "problem" of the overflowing water, never mind the bubbles, was presented to the few children who assisted in turning off the faucets. And a question was offered regarding a different but related problem: How can we collect and save all the water that overflows from the sink? As of now, it just flows down the metal sink, onto the bricks, down into the drain, and away where we can no longer see it. Perhaps, experiences for exploring the absorbency properties of different and various materials is to come. Inside the classroom, experiences involving visual spatial play, exploring the stability of a structure, and engaging in imaginative play using a phone, unit blocks, a cash register,  fabric, mini bricks, and a host of other materials were happening already. 

This morning was a very busy morning in the Rainey Room. It was our very first day all together (we did miss Dagny since she is in Disneyworld!) and from the moment the children entered the room, their energy and excitement was palpable. Each child gravitated towards an area of interest and they immediately dove into the world of play.
We took a brief pause to join together for our morning meeting and the children noticed the rainbows created by the crystal prisms hanging in our window. Cate explained to the group, “Rainbows are from the light and the rainbows reflect from the sun onto the carpet.” It could be interesting to explore the natural provocation that the light in this room suggests  as the sun makes its way across the walls and floor of our room throughout the day. 
 

In similar fashion to yesterday's half group, the children were given a tour of the classroom. This was done to allow the children to observe, explore, and experience the classroom and materials with more focus and intention, in the comfort of a smaller group.  
The children listen intently as Allison shows the children an eraser and other message center materials. 

Allison: How many people do you think can fit here to work?
Maisie: 1 person
Caleb: 4 people

We were just as pleasantly satisfied today as yesterday with the intentional use of the areas along with the patience and respect the children have for each other and for the materials. 

 The children constructed a diverse collection of structures using the colorful connecting discs. They discovered a scale and a phone and pondered over the similarities of their numbers while identifying a difference in their function and built a road to Candyland/Disneyland, and together enjoyed the late summer weather.