Messages, Clay & Trains

At morning meeting, Louise had exciting news to share: her baby sister is on the way! We were all happy and excited for her. In the classroom afterward, there was a lot of activity in the message center. Louise worked to make messages for her mother and the baby. She carefully prepared and thought about the materials and the words that only she could write in the message. Margaret joined Louise and collaged a book message for her mommy. They were excited by the envelopes and decided to use them in sending their messages.

In construction, there was a lot of work in planning through train layouts. Trial and error of deciding which track would fit was the challenge while working through layouts for the engines and cargo to travel on. Questions about how to make the line straight or curved, up or down, problem solving getting the bridge to get it to work right and also fit the right sized piece into the layout all took team work and making lots of wrong choices to figure out the ones that would work best. Friends were helping friends and thinking through the layout as a collective unit to play a fun game of "Traffic Light Says Stop or Go" at the end.

In the studio, we continued our work on intentional building with clay. We covered a range of subjects and expanded our work in lots of directions. Leigh and Lou built volcanoes, Jossie and Grace used techniques they learned with Jill and Kate to build arched rainbows on a stable bases. Will, Charlie and Jack built free-form tower-like structures. Leigh and Will also learned how to hollow out a large figure to ensure it dries and fires properly. Everyone worked carefully, using special tools and techniques to ensure their pieces were stable and held together. The work in the studio echoed some of the work lately in construction, and shows the children's deepening fluency in the language of clay. 

At snack, Lisa shared some souvenirs and stories from her trip to New Orleans, including LOTS pretzels and peanuts sent as a gift from the flight crew to the Brown Room children. Last Thursday, children asked for photos from the trip, including inside the airplane, the airplane snacks, houses in New Orleans, dinosaurs and dragons. Lisa shared photos of all of these things as well as photos of a cargo ship and a trolley car. We had fun trying to name these vehicles and talking about how a cargo ship was different from a tugboat. Austin explained, "A tugboat would be tugging something."

Our outdoor time today ended with a real spring cleaning. The children teamed up to try to get all of the sand and dirt off the mushroom table. Despite their efforts, they weren't satisfied with how dirty it remained at the end the day. Jossie finally called it, saying, "We're going to have to finish this tomorrow." Luckily tomorrow is a backwards day so we can start first thing!