With wet media painting, projector drawings and beading on offer today, it seemed like children were instead mainly interested in play - large, group play that is. What started as a small family script between Lila (the mother), Cassius (the father) and Jay (the baby), en route to a pizza party, transcended into a group play scenario with the entire Thursday crew. The script centered around a larger, growing family, facing multiple dramatic and tragic problems including death by shark bites and drowning in the sea! Fortunately, with the help of "i-pad" and my little pony powers, family members were revived and brought back to life. The group play became so dramatic that we decided to move to the outdoor classroom. There, family play continued as friends used the pirate ship as refuge from the sharks lurking in the waters below! Enjoy the slideshow from our fun Thursday today!
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Lunch is a huge part of the KW program. Everyday, we start with table setters. Here, Mac carefully arranges materials to create a centerpiece. There's more to the table-setting process, however. Children need to be aware of how many children are in attendance on a certain day. They also set out a place card for each child, which helps them understand one-to-one correspondence. Today, Mac also introduced us to a new lunch time ritual. After Ellee and Prate led the group in a moment of silence, Mac rang the mindfulness bell. He explained that everyone should eat silently until they no long could hear the sound of the bell. He also advised against eating crunchy foods at this time. With this practice, our lunch got off to a peaceful start. After lunch, our crew was eager to get to work! We posed a construction challenge in the block area today: build the Cathedral that we saw on on our Friday visit to the Bishop's Garden. The final structure is in the Tucker Room, so check it out when you arrive in the morning. Another group of children worked with smaller materials to re-create the Bishop's Garden. Here's some of the things they said as they built: Hadley - We're actually building the path. Lila - (With a clipboard) And I'm drawing the path. Hadley - We had an idea! This (some netting) can be the fishy pond! Can I make the castle? Lila - And I'm checking the things they build. A fish pond...check! Prater - (Bringing a butterfly drawing over to the area) I had a good idea. This can be a butterfly for the garden. Hadley - (Using small brick block to build the gazebo) It has windows... and we're in there. Lila - Window... check! There were two opportunities for drawing today: small and large. The large drawings took place at the easel with projected images. Children participated in the process in different ways. Ellee traced a butterfly, Mac traced a treasure map, while other children drew more fanciful people and things that were inspired by the projected image. We finished the day with reading a Halloween book (one of our favorite things to do), eating the banana bread that we baked yesterday, and a few rounds of "Doggie, Doggie, Where's Your Bone" (another favorite thing).
We started this afternoon by revisiting some of the "wish conversation" from last Thursday (wishes were initially made on a trip to the canal and we revisited them in KW last Thursday). We shared the wishes from Thursday's KW crew that were made last week, and asked today's friends if they could add theirs to our growing collection. Mac: I would wish for a duck to be at my house forever in case my dog dies. Carl: I would wish for treasure. Cassius: Me too! Jay: I would wish I would have a pet dog. A pet wolf, actually. Max: I would wish for a fire truck. Mac: A fire truck that you can actually drive. Max: I wish for a areal one and a toy one. After lunch, children drew their wishes. Below Carl draws gold treasure and Jay works on his wolf. Friends also created leaf imprints and resists using glaze in clay. Jill: Why does the leaf have lines?
Cassius: They just grow that way. Ellee: I think I know. They need them to breathe. To leaf breathe. Friends also helped prepare some delicious banana bread which we plan to share as a snack tomorrow. Today was a perfect day to kick off the long weekend with a picnic. We took our lunches and headed to the bus stop in order to get to The Bishop's Garden at the Cathedral. We waited a long time for the bus, but luckily we had a book to read as we waited. Once at the garden, we ate our lunch near people setting up for a wedding reception tomorrow. Part of the decor included hay bales, and there was some speculation that perhaps it would be a wedding of two horses. We were informed that there would be no horses, only people. We explored the garden and noticed a lot of living things. There were flowers, other plants, fish, and butterflies. We remembered that yesterday Lila had wished for a butterfly and Ellee was happy to note that her wish had come true, at least for us. We brought along capes, and there was ample opportunity to hold court in the gazebo area, check out the "cauldron," and run away from the witches (Kate and Jill, of course). We hope you all have a weekend where your every wish comes true. On a field trip to the canal last week, children were keen on throwing rocks into the water to make a wish. We heard about wishes for my little pony's, to be Princess Celestia and also for the canal to be free of garbage so the ducks and turtles could have a nicer place to live. Today, we asked children if they remembered any of their wishes from the canal: Grace: My wish was for the stream to be clean, because the ducks were in dirty water, so I thought of it. Because I want the ducks to be happy. I hope it comes true. Prater: I wish the duck wouldn't be in dirty water. Ellee: I wished it for the turtle. Jill: What were some of your other wishes? Ellee: That I had Princess Celestia stuck in my room. She's a unicorn. Jill: Even if you weren't on the trip, do you have something you would wish for? Cassius: Money. Ellee: I wish for a huge bunch of money. Lucy: I wish I had owls all around my room. Lila: I wish I could have a pet butterfly. Vivienne: If I told you, it won't come true. But I wished for a pet fish. Lila: I wish I could sleep outside with my mom in a tent. Ellee: If I had Princess Celestia for real, she could make my wishes come true. Jill read a poem to the children about wishes, and in it there's a special wishing rock. Kate found a very similar looking rock in one of our collections and brought it over to the children. They dubbed this the magic rock for making wishes into because it had the same white stripe as the rock in the story. Each child went around and whispered a secret wish into the rock. After lunch, we decided to draw and/or paint some of our wishes. While drawing:
Prater: This is a treasure map for your wishes. You have to pass through the water and the red door for your wish. Kate: Are all rocks wishing rocks? Ellee: No, only rocks with white stripes. Kate: How does a wish get granted? Ellee: God grants wishes. I guess it's God. You can't wish in the school because you don't throw it in the water. It has to be clean (where you throw your wish rock) - even though we have water outside, it just wouldn't come true. And I think God lives in the water, which makes it come true. Once someone makes a wish first, then it's out of the magic. More to come on our wishes and their connection to our past canal trip, and also where they might lead us in the future! We ended our day making a delicious cream cheese glaze to coat our sweet potato cinnamon buns for tomorrow's coffee! And as the taste-tasters, we all agreed that they were delicious! Our large Wednesday group kept very busy. We were happy to welcome Willa, who gave KW a trial run today. We offered many leaf drawing opportunities today, but the nature experience that drew a crowd was projecting materials on the shadow screen. Children created beautiful compositions, and we noticed connections between this work and other recent themes. For example, Hadley moved a stick around saying, "It's not a brew, I'm making a potion." Potions were also a part of our dramatic play at Rose Park last week. Take a look at these stunning images: We also tackled what is perhaps our most complex cooking project.... ever! The group began making sweet potato cinnamon rolls. A small group started the process in the morning so the dough would have a chance to rise. At various points in the process, children noticed the way things smelled. Hadley - It smells like eggs, scrambled eggs. It smells like chicken nuggets. Grace - It smells like where I wish I could be. Max - It smells like dough. Lila - It smells like cinnamon. Tomorrow we will bake and frost the rolls and they will be served at our Friday morning parent coffee. We'll let you know how they turn out! On a nature walk to Volta Park, Max glanced up at the changing colors of the leaves in a tree and asked, "How do they know when to let go?" We revisited that question at lunch today: Vivienne: When we were going to school, we saw different color trees. Cassius: Because it's Fall. Kate: So does nature know when it's Fall? Cassius: Yes. Ellee: Nature decides when it's Fall. Jay: God decides when it's Fall. Cassius: Yea, God decides. Ellee: Fall is nature, so nature is Fall, so nature decides when it's going to be Fall. Mac: I think it's because leaves are scared of the ground. Jay: And then people can pick them up. ...So maybe it's God who decides, maybe it's mother nature...we'll keep investigating this one. After lunch, children explored leaves a little further in two different contexts. In one, scanned images of leaves were printed onto white paper with the idea that children could transform the shapes of the leaves into a new drawing. Jay: How do I transform this? Ellee to Max: Is that a tree house? Because it looks like a tree house. Jill: I was surprised that some of these leaves from the ground were still green. Ellee; That usually doesn't happen. Well, maybe in Summer. A second provocation was available on the light table. An arrangement of leaves paired with tracing paper and various drawing tools were set out for exploration. Ellee traced her leaf and its veins with a black pen. (While tracing) "You know how I know how many veins there are? I can feel them." We also did leaf rubbings using crayons onto the tracing paper and were excited to see the vein outlines come through when we were finished. We enjoyed some play at the magnetic chalkboard and building with magnatiles before heading to the outdoor classroom! Magnetic Board: Seeing which balls can make it all the way across the magnetic board and into the bucket.
Carl: I think the white one will (white one goes flying). Carl makes an adjustment by starting the white ball in the middle instead of at the opposite end - that ball makes it into the bucket! Carl: The yellow ones are so hard to get into the bucket. On a new run, Jay angles the bucket toward the tube to catch more balls. Cassius is about to straighten out the bucket. Jay: Cassius, Can you please not flatten that? It's catching balls that way. |
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April 2024
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