Rainey A: Moons and MuffinsWow! December already! My how time flies when you’re having fun! Speaking of having fun, we’ve been having plenty of it this week in Rainey Room A! Yesterday, reconnected after the break with a discussion about the moons we saw during our time away. To accompany this discussion, we looked at pictures of the moon taken by Jen, Violet, Elena and Molly.
Elena: Do you think this is all the same moon in each picture? All: No Elena: You don’t think it’s all the same? George: Black, black, and black (referring to the three pictures with darker composition skies) Cc: look, white moon and white moon Elena: Could these be taken on the same night? CC: No it’s not on the same night Elena: Why do you say that? George: Because this is not on night CC: That one’s darker, that one’s a little bit lighter and that one’s a little bit lighter Elena: So maybe the skies look a little bit different? CC: yeah, that one is the darkest  Adjacent to our obstacle course, moon and sewing explorations this year, we’ve also enjoyed watching the persimmon plant in the outdoor classroom grow and bloom. When we arrived on Monday, many were ripe for the picking and we happily grabbed three that we could reach! George: Look, its a tiny pumpkin! Brigitte: It’s a persimmon! George: yeah! A perscinnamon! 
 Stay tuned for the rest of this week’s explorations!
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Rainey Room B This week we are rediscovering clay. We started by thinking about how versatile clay is and what we could make with it. Maxon - "I can make a cloud out of clay" Jane - "I can roll it and use a rolling pin." Giacomo - "Tools make unicorns and clouds and everything." Maxon - "Tools can scoop out or mark or smash it" But what is clay? How can we manipulate it to build some of the unique ideas we have? Rainey Room B will start my working with our hands and really getting to know the clay.  It's big and heavy and sticky! - Janie
We learned so many fun tricks and techniques while we explored clay. We learned to make bricks and coils. We sprayed water to keep our clay from drying out. After our adventures is clay, we talked about what we could make with the clay. An angler fish - Lucia A tree house - Jane A dragon - Maxon A castle - Giacomo A lion - Jane  Rainey AHappy Thanksgiving! Thank you to all who joined our Zoom feast! Please enjoy the pictures below of us prepping for and enjoying the feast!
 Stay safe and well! We will see you back next week :)
"I'm thankful for T-Rex." -Cedar HAPPY THANKSGIVING! What do you want to share about our Thanksgiving Feast and soup? SYLVIE: It was hard work. I liked being helpful. SYLVIE and GIACOMO: We mixed it. MAXON: I loved the soup. I liked the carrots the most. What was your favorite part? JANIE: Smelling the soup. GIACOMO: I liked the books. What are we grateful for? LUCIA: Thumbs up is to be grateful. In preparation for making the soup and chopping vegetables: What food comes from the ground: Giacomo: mushrooms Janie: broccoli Sylvie: lettuce Lucia: carrots Jane: cucumbers Maxon: celery Sylvie: onions Cedar: spinach Jordan: shallots Melanie: squash and kale Sylvie: When I was little I loved spinach so much. Janie: I still like spinach. Cedar: I like carrots. Giacomo: You have to like spinach, it makes you stronger. Giacomo: Earthworms eat things in the ground and turn them into dirt. One plant that doesn’t live in a pot and is big is a tree. These have roots. Cedar: I don’t like soup or vegetables. I only like chocolate. Sylvie: I love chocolate! Maxon: I love chocolate too! Cedar: I like beans. Giacomo: The most thing I hate is soup. Janie: I like soup. Maxon: I like soup. Everyone else says they do not like soup. CLOUD RESEARCH Rainey Room BThis week we have been building our understanding of clouds and rainbows through a deeper dive into opacity, transparency and translucency. We have been using the light table and a variety of different materials to understand how light travels through various materials. Rainey Room B noticed certain materials worked better than others and used that information to create opacity/translucency collages.  "You can't see through this, It's soft wood." - Giacomo "I can't see the light through that." -Jane  "Bluish white" - Giacomo "Can you see through that?" - Maxon "I can through it. Kind of. Like a little." - Sylvie  "You can see through a little bit." - Janie "This is lighter and this is darker." - Giacomo  "This is clear." - Lucia "This one has more light. It works better." - Janie We loved experimenting with the different properties of the papers and see what we could create! Jane was excited to show the Rainey Room her collage house. Some of today's completed work, courtesy of Jane, Janie and Sylvie Rainey A
 We set our rocks aside to dry with the intention of adding to them tomorrow using natural materials such as our collected leaves, pine cones and sticks from the playground. The sculptures will be a beautiful compliment to our tablecloth!  Today, we also had a chance to enjoy time with CC! We practiced some of our songs for the singalong, read Dragons Love Tacos 2 and chatted with her about our paints as we mixed them.  As part of our morning meeting today we read A Rainbow of My Own, courtesy of Lucia and her family. It was undoubtedly on point with our ongoing interest and investigation into rainbows, colors, light, clouds, and even a recent introduction of flowers. Thank you so very much, Kim and Lucia for sharing this book with us!
If you were a rainbow, where would you hide?SYLVIE: Under the clouds. JANE: I'll hide in a box. JANIE: I will hide under a tall box. GIACOMO: I will hide in my house. MAXON: I'll hide in a dragon's mouth. LUCIA: I will hide in a cheetah's mouth. CEDAR: Under a bush. JANIE: I'm going to hide in a lion's mouth. Where do you think the rainbow in our room hides?LUCIA; Behind that big screen (shadow screen). CEDAR; Up there (points at window), the rainbows under there (the shade). SYLVIE: The rainbow is the book. GIACOMO: The rainbows are in...are on the books. MAXON; I wish I could be an astronaut and I could fly to capture our rainbow (it hides in space?). JANE: The castle. GIACOMO: It's not a castle, it's a tree stump.  Creating wire flowers for our birthday gift:On more than one occasion, the children have been heard chanting "we are flowers," while belly down on the green rug or what we are calling "the grass." So, we proposed the idea of making a bouquet of flowers for our Rainey Room B birthday gifts. The children were pleased with the idea and so it begins. Jane and Gicacomo's birthdays are not far off in early December. Jane (and Jordan) are on December 3rd and Giacomo's birthday is the following day, on December 4th. For these bouquets we are using the language of wire to wrap (and thread) around other materials such as paper, cloth, beads, and buttons. "Is there a garden for this?" -Maxon "Do we have a garden?" -Janie
Continuing our investigation of the qualities of light in materials: What is material density, opacity, translucency, and transparency Rainey A: A Gingerbread Kind of Day
We mixed the molasses, ginger, flour, eggs and baking soda together with helpful suggestions from CC who joined us on Zoom.
After we stirred it as much as we could, we let it set in the refrigerator while we were on the playground. When we came back to it, it was perfect for flattening and shaping with our hands! We chose not to use cookie cutters, but instead build with it since, as Marley pointed out, “it’s like clay”.
Yeah, I’m trying to copy the gingerbread man.I want to do some eyes… wait! What about the chocolate sprinkles! - Jack  We thoroughly enjoyed our cookie creations out on the steps before pick up. Its certainly something we will have to do again! Especially “because CC didn’t get to do it with us” as George pointed out. Check below for some pictures from our time outside. We’re looking forward to all kinds of future baking projects! Rainey A
Along the way we’re taking the time to add smaller ribbons and pieces of fabric from home. If you have anything you’d like to send in, we’d love to have it!
For the remainder of the week we will continue to work on our Thanksgiving feast decorations, a gingerbread baking project and preparing for our singalong on Friday!
Rainey Room BOpacity - It Means You Can see a Little Bit (Janie) Today, as we continued our work on clouds, light and shadow, we went to the light table to learn about opacity. There we found different types of paper in different shapes. Our work, as we explored, was to see what types of shapes and colors we could create with the different materials. While we worked, we thought about what materials worked best at the light table and why. Could any of these materials be used to make our own clouds?  It's much darker than it was before. This is lighter and this is darker - Giacomo.  This one has more light. It works better - Lucia They feel different. This one is better. It's more crumbly. - Janie But you can't see through this one. Its' soft wood. - Giacomo  This is clear. I see you We also spent time exploring our new flashlights and how we could change the light the came out of them. What happens we the source of light changes distance? Can we change what the light looks? What happens to the light when opaque and color materials are introduced?  When you get far away, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger - Giacomo
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