We've been invited!Reading Tucker Room's follow up message and directory of expected Halloween decorations sightings along the way, before Tucker Room joins us in the Brown Room so that we can all take a Halloween walk together. And we're off!"I saw a spooky house." -Eliza Group shot!Thanks Tucker Room for the invitation!Thank you Brigitte and Elena for joining, and Franny's grandma and Caroline's nanny, Day, who took our group photos. See you at the Book Fair Events!
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"Are they going to a morning meeting? Or a night meeting? What kind of meeting?" - Henri, 3.2 years We want to start by thanking everyone for a wonderful Fall Classroom Stories Night. It is fun, and important, to share the work of the children. We hope that you enjoyed the evening and gained some insight into our day, the relationships that the children are forming, and the exciting threads that are developing in our classroom (Toad and the Bell Tower). "A movie about us?" - Eliza, 2.11 years Viewing the presentation with the children gave all of us another chance to revisit the work together. As we mentioned on Thursday night: Throughout our day, we are constantly documenting - through photos, videos, audio recordings, hand written notes, etc. Documentation, in any form, is a tool for critical reflection and revisiting. It assists all of us (both children and teachers) as we push the work forward. It is used to make the depth of the children's learning and strategies visible to them, us, and all of you. Documentation in the classroomAs you can see in the photos, and you saw in the videos last Thursday, the children are reading the documentation and referencing it as they work. It’s informing their choices and ideas. As you’ve seen here in the blog and on the wall in our classroom, we have written projections - both monthly and weekly- that we use for planning purposes. This year, thanks to a wonderful conversation that the Tucker Room teachers had with Amelia Gambetti, an educator and our collaborator from Reggio Emilia, we have created a visual form of our projections. It offers transparency to the children, as they have a right to know the direction things are going and insight into our thinking. It contributes to the construction of their memories as we use it to reflect on the work we’ve done, talk about the actions of the present, and look to the future work. The children are using it regularly and excited to see the photographs and discuss the projection of the work. the “The walls of our preschools speak and document. The walls are used as spaces for temporary and permanent exhibits of what the children and adults make come to life.” - Loris Malaguzzi
We are looking forward to seeing all of you at Classroom Stories Night this Thursday, October 20th at 6:30. It is a wonderful night when we get to share the work and voices of the children, beautiful videos of their time here at school, documentation (through our presentation and throughout the classroom), reflect together, and dialogue as a Brown Room community.
We are working so hard to prepare all of these things for you. Therefore, we will not be posting blogs this week while we prepare. We will resume our regular blog schedule next week. Getting back to our work for a visual representation of morning meetingWe started a morning meeting drawing for our visual flow of the day, and so, we aim to finish what we start. Today we did it. Following Lou Lou's initial morning meeting illustration, Will and Eliza participated in drawing additional morning meeting illustrations, for a total of three drawings. Each of the three drawings serves to represent one of our three class schedules (M&T, W, TH&F). What will you draw for morning meeting, Eliza? "A big circle," Eliza replied. Below is another morning meeting drawing, by Eliza. Will and Lillian contributed to the work by stamping the Wednesday children's symbols. Next we'll begin working on a visual representation for our snack time. Stay tuned! Backwards Day with Caroline!Introducing WireFor our first experience with wire, the table was set up with spools of wire, short lengths of wire, medium lengths of wire, and a box with samplings of different gauges. There were three metal types represented (copper, aluminum, and brass) and 7 different gauges. For this first experience, we did not provide wire tools (one pair of wire cutters were nearby in case we needed additional pieces). We invited the children to explore with their hands and to see how they can change and manipulate the wire. Similar to clay, we wanted the children to explore the material (and its properties) before we add the increased complexity of tools. The Children's ApproachThe children were cautious, but curious, as they approached the table, and each started their exploration in a different way. Pierce immediately picked up the aluminum wire spool, while Zoe and Lou Lou approached the box of different gauges. The box displays a variety of wire all cut in short lengths, but sorted by their gauge.
Wrapping the animalsGeorgia sought out something to wrap the wire around, and the animals were her favorite item. She carefully wrapped the wire around each stuffy, ensuring that she didn't poke them with the wire because "it's pointy." "It looks like he (the rat) is dressed up." - George, 3.1 years "He is." - Georgia, 2.11 years "I need the wire cutters." - Pierce, 3.1 yearsSoundHenri and George approached the wire with a lot of energy and interest in the spools of wire. Then, George discovered all of the tiny pieces of aluminum wire. He dumped them on the table, and they began experimenting with the sound of the wire pieces. They compared it to bells and jingle bells! Henri also compared the sound of the tree cookie to the sound of the wire and noted that they were very different because the wood is heavy and the wire (pieces) is not. We will revisit wire this week, and the children who attend on MTThF will have their first wire experience. Documentation- Valuing their workDocumentation, in any form, is a tool for reflection, revisiting, and is also used to push the work forward. Documentation makes the children's learning visible to them, us, and all of you. Among many other things, it demonstrates the amount of value that we place on the children's work and dialogue. The blog is just one form of documentation that we use. One of our goals for the year was to make the blog more visible to the children -- they see what we are sharing with all of you; they can view their own work and the work of their friends in Brown Room; and we can share it together to reflect, revisit, and move forward. The blogs are hanging near our visual projections/written projections/calendar. We hope that you are also able to share the blog with your child and have beautiful conversations about their work at school. We will also share additional thoughts about documentation, and invite you to dialogue with us about it, at Classroom Stories Night next week (10/20). In the meantime, we would like to share this moment in the classroom where Cully finds the blog about Toad.
This moment with Cully really emphasized our value in making learning visible, being transparent with the children about what we share and how, and supporting the connections that they are making by providing a rich environment full of possibilities.
Our Flow of the Day: Creating a Visual Schedule"Is it time to go home?" -Henri "It tells us what day it is," says Henri in response to the question what is a calendar. Have you heard the word schedule? "No," reply the children unanimously. The sound of the bell, signals time, and the children are picking up on this. However, what time of day the bell indicates remains unclear, and this has prompted an intention to make a visual schedule to help us grasp the flow of each school day. "It (a calendar) has numbers and shapes and ... you choose a number...that's birthday." -Lou Lou Inquiring about the flow of the day, George provides an accurate, day-dependent, reply (Mondays and Wednesdays are the only two days that we end our day outside): "First mommy and daddy drop me here, next they leave, next we make a message, next we clean up, next morning meeting, next go to studio, next go to snack, next go outside after snack, next we go home after we play outside." To kick off our work we focused on the event and block of time that is our Morning Meeting. We approached this through drawing morning meeting in a small group setting. Most of the children emphasized the morning meeting configuration by moving around their black, felt-tip markers in circular motions, representational of our morning meeting rug. Zoe (bottom right) also illustratively indicates the people around the rug (in color) where some of the other children werevdepicting people sitting around the rug with dots. Developing the idea of representing morning meeting, with our circular rug and everyone sitting around its edge, we chose to invite Lou Lou to start again, extending and slowing down on her previous idea. By slowing down and extending the work, Lou Lou effectively drew more people like images around the large circle. Our with this continues... Happy 3rd birthday, Adaline!The Making of the Gift, the Celebration, and the Finished CollageTomorrow (Friday), we will be leading our first sing-along, and we have a lot of enthusiastic singers (also movers and shakers)! So, we are looking forward to an energetic, Brown Room sing-along debut. Feel free to join us, at 9:15am in Blake Hall, even if it is not your child's attendance day. The Acorn Song: I'm a little acorn bronw Lying on the cold, hard ground Everybody steps on me That is why I'm cracked, you see. I'm a nut. (click tongue) I'm a nut. (click tongue) I'm a nut, nut, nut (clicking tongue) Songs we will be singing tomorrow:
Ask your child to share, with you, what they know of these songs An additional blog will post tomorrow."Clay is so much fun!" - Zoe and Win During the Brown Room year, the children are introduced to many materials and techniques. Often, they are exploring these materials for the first time (e.g. clay instead of play doh). When we plan experiences, we are thinking about a lot of variables - some we can plan for and others that we cannot. In Brown Room, we also know that some children's first day with a material will be other children's 2nd or 3rd (due to the staggered scheduling). All of these things impact how we might set up an experience/provocation and document it. For Wednesday, September 28th, we knew that it would be all 9 children's first experience with clay (in Brown Room -- understanding that some may have worked with it during summer camp). We decided to set up the tables with two 25lb blocks of red clay. We did not provide any clay tools, but invited the children to work with their hands (and bodies). These are some, but not all, of the questions we considered as we prepared for the day.
Observation notes You may notice that in our preparation, we considered whether the children would take the whole block of clay, make smaller pieces, and then create larger (stacked) structures. Or, we considered that they may pinch/pull smaller pieces and arrange them on the table. On Wednesday (28th), we primarily observed whole >> small >> whole/stacked work. The blocks at the end of the day: Day 2: A slightly different approachFor day two, we set up the two large blocks, or what was left of them, and three smaller (wedged) blocks -- Pierce helped wedge them the day before ("I'm wedging it up."). As the children entered the studio, they all gravitated towards one size block or the other, and most of them stayed near that same block for the time that we were in the studio (30-40 minutes). The big blocksAt the large blocks, we observed a lot of pinching, pulling, and patting. The children pulled small pieces off and began to flatten it with their fists. This technique quickly spread among the children working with the large blocks of clay. This group also danced and laughed (a lot) while working side by side and together to create large piles of clay pieces torn from the big blocks. Adaline, Cully, and Henri Once the blocks of clay were lighter in weight, George discovered that he could lift it. Pierce encouraged George as he brought the piece over to add to their tower of clay. Small Blocks"Three clays!" - George, 3.2 years The children at the three smaller blocks had a quieter approach to the clay. It was also their first day with clay (Eliza, Gracie, and Will are not at school on Wednesdays). Will, Gracie, and Eliza each made smaller pieces of clay from the wedged block. They flattened them with their fist, but also bent, stacked, and shaped the pieces. Then, we noticed that they were playing "peek-a-boo" with us! On this second day, the joyful energy in the studio was contagious! "I made a hole." - Pierce, 3.0 years Poking holes in the clay was also a popular approach to exploring the clay. Both Pierce and Will used their fingers to poke designs in the clay. The Outdoor Studio and KilnOn Friday, we took the clay to the outdoor classroom. We also introduced the children to the Clay Guardian and the kiln. "Clay!" - George, 3.2 years |
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March 2024
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