Blog Archives

Celebrating Big and Small Moments

4/30/2026

We love to go on trips!

Theo built an airplane and insisted on taking Brigitte on a trip to France and then to California! " Brigitte come sit at the back of my plane" - Fun. Jake said "I am a snake guy", so watch out for him on the plane!! Susan and Leo also came along on this fun adventure. We had a little bet of turbulences due to a storm but Theo stayed in control at all time!

Another Day Another Trip!

Theo - " Brigitte come sit at the back of my plane. We are going to Japan, we are taxing right now, then we have to go on four planes! there's a storm, so buckle up"

The Tug of war between the Tuckers and the Raineys was fierce!

It all started with three Tucker friends against two Rainey friends, but other Rainey friends joined in solidarity!

Helping Brown Room with dying fabric stripes was fun

Our Brown room friends were dying stripes of fabric in the outdoor classroom and left some blank stripes and watercolors for the CW children to also enjoyed the process.
Max: "Can we do more tomorrow?"

More planned trips in the classroom

Thomas and Theo came up with a fantastic plan to go to Candyland, they will get there by driving a kid jeep, and nobody can stop them. Of course when they get there , they will only eat candy!! how fun!

Theo and Thomas are planning their fun trip to Candyland, then they drew their ideas

Theo drew him with Thomas and the gingerbread man

Thomas drew the king of Candyland, which is made out of candy

Theo drew three gingerbread men from candyland

Puppy Training School

This week, some of our CW friends decided to create a puppy training school.

Elizabeth was the puppy trainers and Betsy was a well behaved puppy

A little visit to the doctor's office seems mandatory in CW

Susan ; "Last call for Florida, Last call for Florida! we are leaving Jake, Last call!"

Light Table Work

This week the children enjoyed drawing on transparent strips to create a story

Elizabeth completed her beautiful flower garden

Dru

Elizabeth

Betsy

Henry and Gus

Gus

Henry

Gus's great "Gum"story

Message Center, Collages, and More...

Tommy - " I am going to keep it here everyday until it's finished"

Dru filled every single square

Dru worked on an elaborate collage

Elizabeth made a drawing of her and her friends

Leo : " That what baby Marco looks like" (his baby brother)

Leo ; " This is my building, and my apartment is in this building, I broke the fire place with a toy!"

Lucy and Gus are telling each others funny stories

Theo drew a picture of his Pasha

Sander made a long message

Henry made an interesting message

Lily was working on creating masks

Lily choose to turn this one into a mask

Thomas drew his self portrait to add to his school portrait now that he is officially in CW

Still cross stitching!! YES

Some CW children are still excited about cross stitching!

Yay !!Gus is starting a cross stitch

And Maeve just finished hers

I am making the longest line - Sander

Sander was wondering if he could make a line out of cubes longer than the low table, and he did as Tommy confirmed

A Bit of Watercolor and Tempera for Springtime Things

Repurposing some different materials - strips of air filter woven with pipe cleaners, we gave these "flowers" a pop of color!

Repurposing egg cartons and valuing the density of their paper composition, Max saw what we hoped would be imagined - a bird - or in Max's words: "It's looks like a duck!" So we got the tempera colors of his choice and got to work painting the bird. Betsy soon joined and much later, Maeve voiced interest. We'll keep working on the birds and flowers for spring.

Table Setting Moments

Come and Get Me...

Sharing the CW video with the children at the end of CW today. They had fun watching the "long" movie.

Thank you for your presence at our CW presentation this morning! We know many of you were unable to attend and we missed having you in there. We love that we were able to spend so many CW days with your child.

0 Comments

What is happening to Spring?

4/22/2026

0 Comments

The CW children are thinking about Spring, they noticed new bugs in the outdoor classroom, new flowers growing, more birds flying around. They are also confuse about the weather, which seems like a battle between Winter, who doesn't want to leave and Summer who wants to rush in. So, we are all patiently waiting for Spring to show up with its milder temperatures and more enjoyable weather!

Maeve's beautiful spring flowers

Elizabeth 's beautiful"Welcome Spring" sign

Monday - CW is in the Middle Room

On Mondays, we have CW in the Middle room while the St John's staff gather in the Tucker Room for staff meeting.

Maggie is reading a book while the table setters, Betsy and Gigi, set up the table for lunch.

Celebrating Spring on the Light Table

This week, the CW children traced DC birds on the light table and more spring flowers

Betsy is very happy with her work

Camila traced daffodils

Camila traced a patch of flowers

Theo is carefuly tracing tulips

Elizabeth, Camila, Betsy, and dru are working on the light table

Tommy is tracing tulips

Theo is tracing a morning Dove

Theo is very proud of his work

Betsy traced two kinds of spring flowers

Drew wanted to trace tulips

Maeve and Lily are working at the light table

Maeve traced a red robin

Lily worked really hard to trace a blue Jay and then added all the details

Lily 's drawing of a blue jay

Working on our Self-Portrait

Lily is paying attention to her face

Lucy is drawing her self-portrait

Lily is adding her body her self-portrait

Life in CW

After lunch, the CW children have the choice to either; draw on the light table, make messages, work on a puzzle, build in the construction area, play in the dramatic play area, play games, cross stitch, sew with beads and fabric on a sewing hoop, work on collages, or draw.

Max, Susan, Jake, and the baby are in the car on their way to Florida

Max, Susan, and Jake are playing a fun game together

Betsy and Elizabeth are working with Melanie on abstract collages (crayon wrappers and egg cartoons)

Dru, Gigi, Elizabeth, and Betsy are drawing and making messages at the low table

Dru and Leo are drawing together

Betsy found fun stickers and made a message for Cece

Leo is drawing a train

More collages work

Lucy, Max, and Leo are having fun playing together

"I am So excited to give my friend a message!"- Leo

Leo was so excited to give a message to his friend Theo who was working in the construction area

Camila, Sander, and Tommy are making messages

Dru, lucy, and Max are also working on messages

Construction Area

"We made a house for the animals" - Henry, Theo, and Maeve built a great building together

Table Setting Moments

Bon weekend!

0 Comments

Yeah !! More projects are being finished in CW !!

4/15/2026

0 Comments

Persistence - Persistence - Persistence has been on our mind in CW!- Betsy and Elizabeth are so proud of themselves for finally finishing their very hard cross stitch projects that took many many weeks to complete. And, we are also very proud of them. Maeve is also working very hard on finishing her cross stitch project.

Super Proud Betsy

Super Proud Elizabeth

Hard Working Maeve

"And guess what?" Betsy said : "I want to start a new cross stitch , a small one for Brigitte to keep"

"We want to keep braiding" - Betsy, Elizabeth, Lily, Maeve

This week, Elizabeth, Betsy, Lily, and Maeve wanted to make another long colorful braid for their hair. What an amazing skill to have!

Betsy was showing her friends her little braid in her hair

"I want to learn how to braid too" - Jake, Dru, and Max

"Look, I made a Rainbow!" - Dru

This week, The CW children had the opportunity to sew beads and fabric on a piece of white fabric. Dru surprised herself when she added several beads on her needle and it created an arc, so she happily said, "Look Brigitte , I made a rainbow!" Dru kept on sewing and made several more rainbows!

Tommy loved adding pieces of fabric to his sewing

Theo was also interesting in sewing

Tracing Spring Flowers on the Light Table

Leo is tracing tulips

Construction and Games Areas

Lucy, Max, and Jake played chutes and ladders together

Theo added complexity by using a pair of tongue to pick up the very small sticks

Lucy is perched high like a bird!

Sander used a little boat to bring the small wood sticks to fill all the holes

Gus and Theo are also demonstrating Persistence while working on completing a puzzle

Dressing up or pretending to have a baby is also a fun part of our CW days (Theo - Lily)

We always love to draw in CW

Drawing together with all sort of drawing tools might be a favorite part of CW.

Tommy drew a little rainbow family and wrote his name.

We LOVE Exchanging Messages

Leo is making a message for Theo because Leo said: " Our names are almost the same, Leo-Theo" -

Leo is delivering his message for Theo

Sander is making a message for Leo

And, Leo is very happy to have a message from Sander

Table Setting Moments

Friday at the Park!

Enjoy the weekend!

0 Comments

Welcome to our new CW friend, Thomas

4/7/2026

0 Comments

We were all super excited to have Thomas with us !

This week, Thomas joined the CW crew and he was very excited about it. His joy reminded us of the deep CW values of our strong sense of community, where Children are so excited to be table setters, eat lunch together, share stories, learn new things together, watch Brigitte dance the clean plate club song and have fun! CW is truly a heartwarming place. Thomas, your overwhelming joy really brighten our day! Thank you!

It's always exciting to be table setters and every Monday morning the children checked the CW attendance board as they are looking forward to their table setting days. Betsy made a message to Camila on Monday to let her know that's she is SO excited to be table setting with her on Friday.

Transition time between lunch and play

While everyone eat at their own rhythm, children trickled to the "puzzles table" when they are done eating. Puzzles offer some nice thinking skills, we also have some fun games that can turn into interesting play!

Lizzie and Betsy love to add stitches to her sewing projects after lunch, while both Susan and Leo made crowns with the "snap together" game

Paper folding for table setting

In CW, we always encourage our friends to finish their works, and we encourage everyone to give the new activity/experience a try. We will be using our paper folding composition as table center pieces

Learning to braid can be tricky!

Melanie found lots of pipe cleaners in the Tucker closet and thought children could practice their weaving or braiding skills with them. Then they also tried breading with cording and shoelaces.

Betsy said : "I am looking at Camila's braid to help me braid"

Construction

We love going up the ladder to add materials on top of our structure

Drawing

Susan loves to practice writing her name

Lucy is working on her self portrait

Free check ups are always available

Leo, Camila, and Gigi enjoyed playing doctors with the babies

Table Setting Moments

Have a wonderful weekend!

0 Comments

Hello Spring!

4/1/2026

0 Comments

Bonding Over Shared Interests

Max came to school with his little stuff lamb and spent most his day bottle fed him, so Brigitte was happy to share her recent experience feeding a lamb!

Welcoming Spring..

We were all excited to come back to school and share our fun spring break memories. The children are so happy to have had such incredible weather this week.

Elizabeth drew spring and rain because the flowers need rain to grow. This inspired the other children to draw their version of spring!

Camila's spring

Dru's spring flowers

Max's interpretation of spring

Lili drew a dog enjoying the spring

Betsy's

Elizabeth also drew Betsy's spring house

Susan : "It's me and my daddy, and I have a baby in my tummy! and There's a cube for the baby"

Susan: "It's the Universe"

Paper Flolding

This week, we are working on our paper folding skills. The children are exploring this through folding paper in various spiral shapes and sticking them on the container lined with glue. They would observe and point out how the paper would move as it slightly unraveled once they let go. Throughout the week they have the opportunity to fill the negative spaces between the spirals with tissue paper, beads and buttons!

Susan is adding materials to the negatives spaces

Lily

Sander

Betsy

Dru

Maeve

Dru (2)

Susan

Tommy (in progress)

Camila (in progress)

Jake

Construction and Dramatic play Area are buzzing..

At the moment, we are offering small world as our table setting materials and as transition from lunch to classroom. Wonderful stories always emerged from playing with small world.

Susan used the clay luminaries as furnitures and one of the luminary's became a bath tub, where the daddy dipped his feet in for the children to wash.

Gus built a bar for his four cowboys, added chicken, ice in the middle of the bar, and a hot tub on the side!!

Jake, Max, and Leo went on their own fun adventure

Tommy and Sander's play were inspired by the recent rocket launch

Henry and Gus made magic potion in the mystery area

Gigi and Leo love to read books together

Cozy time at the end of the day!

Cross Stitching is still happening

Elizabeth, Tommy, Maeve, and Betsy are still enjoying cross stitching

Betsy : "How many more rows do I have to do?
Brigitte : " 9 more, you're almost there!"

About "Cross stitching" on a large scale? About learning to braid!

Which one goes faster? - Lily

On Thursday, Lily, Betsy, and Theo wanted to experiment with speed on the incline with mini skateboards and have races. After many repeated attempts, they learned that the placing of the skateboards determined the outcome of the race, here is a small sneak peek at their experience.