May 22nd, 2020

Our Growing Community!

Our community comes to gather to celebrate Baby McMillan!

We had a lot of participation in our Zoom experiences this week!  It was fantastic to see everyone and to observe the work you were doing.   Some special friends also made appearances!  On Tuesday, we meet Caroline David, who is already comfortable with the Zoom experience (or so it seems)!   Although Alexandra is not new to our community, it was great to see her and Elena participate, all the way from Germany, both last week and this week!   Who could forget Sally's per hamster, Nibbles, who is extra cute even if he fell and hurt his ear.  Of course, we are all eagerly anticipating the arrival of Jessica's baby, an up coming event that was celebrated at  today's Sing-along!  Many thanks to all who contributed to and participated in this wonderful gathering!   

Silhouettes and Shadow Puppets

Inspired by the Everyday Mystery post regarding silhouettes, we decided to try our hand at shadow puppets.  The students worked on a variety of animals, people, and rainbows.  Grace David exhibited some problem solving right from the start, saying, "We didn't have sturdy paper, so I'm putting papers together to make them sturdy."  Later in the call, she offered a suggestion to Sally, who wasn't sure how to draw Nibbles.  Grace D. explained, "Look at picture, and color it in white.  Extra white."  We've heard that the idea of storytelling has been big in other classrooms.  After Grace M.  transformed her rainbow shadow puppet into an ant, she told us a story about the ant.... about three ants actually.  Her story is loosely based on "The Three Bears" and can be found n our Seesaw page.  Evelyn not only made a butterfly shadow puppet, she also took it right out to a sunny spot on her deck, where we could all see the shadow that it made!  Here's a collection of our work:

Weaving

Thursday's Zoom was all about weaving.  As we got started, we noticed there were more ideas, object, and materials related to rainbows.  Joslin had rainbow strips for her box weaving.  This led Sam to share that we was working with a rainbow loom (a new technique for us!) and Evelyn brought out her rainbow piggy bank.  When Ellie showed us her work, she told us it was a rainbow, and then added to it to make it a "real rainbow."  Gigi also worked on a series of stripes that looked like it might be a rainbow.
Throughout the weaving process, children demonstrated their individuality and creativity.  Almost everyone had uniques strips to weave with.  Leigh and Prater cut theirs from old magazine pages.  Alexandra showed her paper saying "I made it from my paintings from last week."   Evelyn had worked created marble paper with food coloring, dish soap, and milk.  She cut the resulting papers into strips for weaving.    While her friends worked, Lane added tape decorations to a troll house she was making.  Just creating while being together is very satisfying, or in the words of one parent, "almost therapeutic."  

Memories

This afternoon, our Zoom call was short and sweet.  We chatted with Louise and Ellie about a number of things happening today.  Louise told the story of Katherine Nix being a real-life hero when Frances was locked in the bathroom.  Ellie was getting ready to have a play date with her friend and neighbor.  They also told about some of their KW memories.  Louise mentioned her headband as her favorite KW creation.  Ellie mentioned her journal and her rainbow house as important.  

We hope you all enjoy your long weekend!  We also hope that everyone can join us for next Friday's Zoom Call.  This call will be our end-of-year celebration, featuring a slide show of many favorite memories!  
It will be held at a special time: 4:00 pm.
 Hope to see you there!