Wednesday, March 13, 2019

We took another small group on a field trip to The Lantern bookshop this afternoon. We went with the plan of finishing picking out our stack of used books for use in our altered book art. Before we left, we talked about what makes a good book for the purpose of altering. “A hard cover,” said Caleb. We told the children about the range of books available which include everything from a $1 paperback book to some very old and rare books. We all agreed to only look at the books on the rare book shelf, noting many are very old and fragile so we shouldn’t touch them. We planned on looking primarily in the children’s book area at books in the $3-4 range. We learned how to find the price: look on the first page inside the book.

At the book store, we met Caroline and Chris, the two women volunteering at the shop today. They offered us our pick at some old songbooks they were getting ready to dispose of! So James helped sort through what might be good books to keep. James noticed the books didn’t have numbers (prices) in the front of the books. Caroline explained this was because the books were free. Caroline and Chris let us have two bags of free books!

Meanwhile, the children looked through books to buy. Caleb was curious about the numbers of pages in the books, “How many pages is it? Four hundred and sixty one.” The children were also quick to discover the prices. They scoured the shelves announcing the prices. “This one is four dollars,” said Elena. After a few picks of soft cover books, the children realized they needed to stick with hardcover books. Soon we had a pile of books to choose from! Elena added one more filled with brightly colored photographs, “This one is great for collage!” Tegan and Abby especially seemed to enjoy looking through books. Abby found one with beautiful illustrations, “Look at this one!” Tegan found a book she wanted to buy with a lovely embossed ginkgo leave on the front. Unfortunately that one was $20, so not ideal for making art in.

This was a great opportunity for children to put their decoding and pre-literacy skills to use in noting numbers of pages, reading the prices, trying to guess book titles, and identifying the shop sign as we walked up to the store. And now that we have two bags full and 6 others we bought today, we have enough books for everyone to have their own altered book and some great collage papers as well!

After we shopped for our books, we spent some time reading and got to know Chris and Caroline a little. Caroline read a couple of books to us too! We had a delightful time at the shop and Caroline and Chris told us they hope we come back soon.

Literacy in Table-Setting and Building Plans

Literacy emerged as a common theme across all our work today including parts of out daily routine and the work children did back at school in preparation for their building workshop.

During table-setting, children have many opportunities for real-life uses of math and literacy skills such as counting how many people we have, making sure we have enough chairs, and figuring out which place-cards we need for the day. While Grace and James set the table for lunch today we realized we needed a place-card for Jessica Kuhn as she was joining us for lunch and the field trip. Grace offered to write it. She wrote the letters as Jessica M. read them out loud. She explained to James as she drew on the purple place-card, “This is for another Jessica. I’m writing wings for her.” When Jessica Kuhn came into the room Grace asked her, “Do you like the color purple?” Jessica said, “I do. How did you know?” Grace replied, “I know because I noted it.”

Another opportunity for children today was to draft plans for possible building structures. Previously several children had suggested making a type of home and today Lou Lou said we should make a home for Shelly, a rock children, especially from the Rainey room, are especially fond of caring for in the outside classroom. So we invited children to draw their ideas for building. James drew a house for his stuffy, Hedgie and several children drew homes for Shelly and signs for Shelly's house. Louise made a floorpan, drawing around Shelly, "Shelly fits inside!" Children showed their knowledge, interest, and growing confidence in literacy concepts while they worked. After drawing, children spent time building with wood and loose parts.