We were all feeling so excited about celebrating this special holiday together at school. 
What better way to get our enthusiasm out then with a super fun dance party to start the day?!

Next we took a snuggle break ... 

Then we prepared ourselves for Thanksgiving chapel. We used our battery operated candles and our new rattle bells to help us create some music and ambience while participating in chapel songs. 

Did you know that we visited the kitchen to check on the thanksgiving soup during its preparation yesterday?

When Wilder was 0 years old he liked to ...  blow raspberries!
When Wilder was 1 year old he liked to ... eat avocado!
When Wilder was 2 years old he like to ... run with balloons!
Wilder is 3 years old and he likes to ... Ride His Bike! 

After a round of delicious chocolate cupcakes for our special snack, we celebrated another friend turning 3 years old. Wilder's color choice to represent his birthday celebration and message from his friends? PURPLE! 

Similar to Jade's birthday gift, children created their birthday message to Wilder using clay which Brown Room children show continued interest in working with and exploring further. 

After we finish our classroom celebration, the birthday child is able to open his/her individual birthday box on our classroom calendar.
​Inside each box is a small representation of the message/gift created by their peers. 

Did you know that there is a persimmon tree in the outdoor classroom? Children have taken notice of the trees  beautiful changing leaves as well as the bright orange fruit that grows on the tree. Today, children inquired again if the fruit was "ready yet".  We have had previous discussions about having to wait to pick the persimmon until it finishes growing and is ripe. Today's questioning led to further research and a discovery that yes, the fruit is probably ready now! We picked two of the ripest looking persimmons from the tree and will allow them to mature at room temperature over the weekend. Hopefully they will be ready to taste next week! 

Today after arriving at school, children were excited to share both their "thank you" and "place" cards for next weeks Thanksgiving feast.
If you haven't yet made your place card / thank you with your child at home,
​please have fun creating these over the weekend! 

In preparation for our Thanksgiving Feast on Tuesday every classroom prepares different ingredients for the soup, which Molly and Jessica will cook for us on Monday. The Brown Room's responsibilities this year were cutting spinach and green beans. In order to get the vegetables into small pieces we used scissors or our hands to bend, snap and rip them. 

In the beginning of the week the Brown Room presented their work with wire in form of a "Gallery Walk" outside during drop off and pick up times. It was wonderful to finally be able to share some of our work with you and the St. John's community. It was especially great to see some Tucker Room families show interest in our work as well. Thank you to everyone for stopping by and sharing. This has been a new experience for us as well and we are excited for many more Gallery Walks to come in the future. 

Today we celebrated our friend Jade's 3rd birthday!
Although we typically do not celebrate a birthday at school on a child's actual date of birth, it worked out that we were able to celebrate our friend Jade on the day she turned three! 
Jade walked around our classroom birthday candle three times doing her signature "cowboy pose" strut.

Did you know that Jade is a HUGE fan of Toy Story?
Her favorite character is Woody and she loves dressing up in cowboy/cowgirl attire herself!

Here are some photos from Jade's past birthday celebrations that she shared with friends in the classroom as well as photos from this years "theme". 

Yesterday, our Tuesday children were introduced to the concept of combining both clay and wire in their work.
Today,  (while a continuation for some) the majority of our Wednesday class was also introduced to using these two materials simultaneously. 
As we observed children working with the materials today, we asked ourselves to think about and document the similarities and differences in how both groups of children approached the combination of two "languages". 
​
Interestingly, today's group of children were not as drawn to including the wire in their work with clay pieces, but they were very observant of their peers and modeled many difference techniques for one another. There was obvious collaboration occurring in the form of observing, demonstrating, attempting, and mirroring each others approach to the clay as a way to manipulate its form. 

While working, Luke's clay also "broke" as he bent his flat piece causing it to crack. Wilder was there to offer assistance if needed!
Oh no! Broken! - Luke
​Can I help you get it together? - Wilder
(Wilder then showed Luke how he attaches clay pieces together using his fingers to "smush" the clay together)
Yay! Fixed! That my friend! Wilder help me! - Luke

Luke and Wilder also used similar found objects to "smash" and flatten the clay as they observed each others techniques and results!

Using tools to create imprints in the clay did not go unnoticed by others! Soon, many children were using a variety of tools to create their own markings in their clay pieces. 

Later, Luke demonstrated his learned technique to his friend Frannie so that they could create similar circle imprints together. 

Look! I got circles in mine. - Frances
Hard, hard! Circles! - Luke
I LOVE it! - Frances
(while looking at Luke's circle prints)

Jade shared photos of her birthdays at home with us during morning meeting on Monday. The children were especially interested in the balloons they found in the pictures and the beautiful cakes she had over the years. Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos with us, Jade! We can't wait to celebrate your 3. birthday with you tomorrow. 

 During our morning meetings we are discussing our plans for the day. The children get to choose what they would like to start working on.
​On Monday Daniel was especially excited about the option to paint with watercolors in the light table. A few children started their day with that and another group went into the studio to work on our Thankful Tree. Since we have been exploring the language of collage in the beginning of the year in different ways (with paper, small loose parts or natural materials), we wanted to include this interest in our Thanksgiving Feast center piece. Another interest of the Brown Room is COLOR. We explored and studied colors during birthday committees, painting with different kinds of paint and the children are looking forward to finding rainbows in front of their cubby every day (and are missing it deeply on cloudy days). The children used a wide ribbon as their collage base and added string, cellophane paper, tissue paper, ribbons or small pieces of fabric in different colors onto it with glue. These collages got wrapped around our Thankful Tree.

On the light table we worked on creating the thank you notes for our tree. During their work the children noticed a change in the shade of colors depending the amount of water they used and explored intensities of colors on their paper. The more water they used the lighter the color got. 

Bea: I'm gonna paint a nice nice monster that gives kisses and hugs.
Jade: I'm making a scary monster.
Hugh: I'm making a colorful rainbow.
Lily: I'm making a machine. 
Jade: I'm making a rocket ship.
Bea: It's a bird. 

Many children have asked us last week if we could use clay again. And of course we can! Today we offered both, clay and wire. Pieces of wire were used for different purposes in different ways.

Wire as a tool
Bea and Daniel each chose only one piece of wire first and used it the cut smaller pieces off a big piece of clay. Cate and Finlay poked multiple wires into their clay to create 'holes". Remy chose to not get a piece of wire but instead chose a tool from the shelf to create bigger and wider holes. Luke first used one wire to poke  holes into his clay while saying "Bee hole. Bee hole." He then showed interest in Remy's tool which she kindly shared  with him and assisted him in creating a similar kind of hole. After pushing clay into a small glass jar, Daniel also used wire to pull the clay back out.

The persimmon tree in the outdoor classroom seemed to have changed colors over night (or over 4 days of not being at school). The bright yellow and orange leaves were so inviting to jump in and to throw around. 

The Brown Room children have very strong connections to their symbols. This morning, when first arriving upstairs before entering the classroom, Luke noticed friends using our check-in board with their photos and symbols. Later once exploring the classroom, Luke noticed friends using their symbols at the message center and was shown the symbol organizer. 

​Luke then began making marks of his own on paper using a variety of different stamps. When his friend Frannie visited her drawer in the symbol organizer to use her symbol on something she was working on, Luke made a connection that he didn't have a stamper in his organizer drawer yet! 
"Oh no! Empty!", Luke said when he opened his drawer and didn't find a stamp inside. 
Without hesitation, he then chose a "moth" stamp and placed it inside of his drawer. Closing the drawer with his newly chosen symbol inside, Luke was still disappointed. He noticed that next to his name there was only blank space - no symbol image!
"No! My symbol!", he said pointing to his label on the organizer drawer. Ines then helped Luke stamp his image next to his name. He celebrated his decision with a little wiggle dance, then moved on to exploring other areas of the classroom. 
Luke has not yet identified his symbol with a "name", but we look forward to learning what he will call his beautiful image. 

Yesterday, children began exploring wire. In what ways could this material be used?

Vocabulary used by the children during this initial exploration to describe the way the wire pieces were being manipulated by their hands included twist, bend, and fold. 
As children began to shape the wire into different forms, teachers offered additional descriptive vocabulary including spiral, loop, round, curve, and arch.
Children observed that the wire differed in colors and communicated these differences with one another.
​Weight and thickness of the wire was observed when attempting to cut the wire from the spools. 

Today's group of children began their initial exploration of wire by manipulating the shape
​with their hands as well. 

Then, a collection of small hollow materials were offered to the children and they immediately took to threading the items onto their wire pieces. They demonstrated fine motor control, hand-eye coordination, persistence, patience, sorting, and sequencing abilities throughout this process.
We compared our creations to some homemade musical instruments that we have found before in the school instrument cabinet.
​We have always been fascinated by these and now, we have our own handmade rattles to use in the classroom! 

We took our clay outside today and continued to work with it, but in a new format. Our intention was to use the clay to make birthday messages for two of our friends with upcoming November birthdays! Cape and Lucas worked on creating a clay message for Wilder, then Lily and Wilder worked together on a second clay message for Jade's birthday. 

Each birthday committee duo was offered the following materials to use for creating their unique messages.
​They were also asked to think about their process and intention behind what they would create for the intended friends birthday message. 

What do you know about Jade?

​Lily: She likes her cowboy boots. 
Wilder: She likes her red boots. 
Lily: Are you sure they are red?
Wilder: She likes her little boots. 

Lily and Wilder agreed to create "Frogs" and "Frog Jumps" for Jade on her special birthday message. 

In a small group with some of the children, we started to discuss our school Thanksgiving celebration and what is important about the Thanksgiving holiday.
​What does "giving thanks" mean, or simply put, what does the word "thankful" mean?

For Thanksgiving! 
Like for Thanksgiving we can celebrate. - Hugh

We plan to add beautiful touches to our classroom in preparation for our special Thanksgiving feast and started to create something beautiful together this morning!
​Stay tuned to see how this project unfolds as we continue our work next week.

Fun Fact: Frannie loves "Cuckoo Clocks" !
There are some bird houses hanging in the trees in our outdoor classroom that remind Frannie of cuckoo clocks. She and Daniel wanted to reach them today, but understand that it's not the safest idea to climb on top of the xylophone because climbing on the instrument could damage it, or they could end up hurting themselves as well. 
They need to reach those birdhouses! How did they solve their dilemma? They built something else to climb on!

Wilder's many facial expressions during his first experience working with clay. He explores the physical properties of the red clay block and what methods he can use to best manipulate this new material. 

Once children have explored how to subtract pieces of clay from the block, what do they choose to do with it?

As Wilder used his fingers to pinch and roll the clay into small pieces, he would then stack and add the pieces he created together. Something was beginning to take shape and the placement of the pieces gradually became more intentional. 

I'm making a fox. This is a big fox. I put so many clay on it. - Wilder

When asked about his sculpture, Wilder told the class that he was making a fox. He then went on to list some parts of the fox that he was working on - Ears, a body, and a tail. 

Do you know what, Ines? I already did the tail. - Wilder

Frances had been observing Wilder and listening to his description of his sculpture. 

You make it so beautiful! - Frances

After working with the clay for an extensive amount of time using just his hands, Wilder decided to incorporate tools into his sculpting process. Wilder used both modeling and rib tools to "cut", "carve", and "smush" his fox sculpture. 

Frances and Wilder worked side by side throughout this exploration period. The observations they made while watching each other work with both their bodies and tools, as well as the dialogue that was had about their work, influenced their individual processes.

I'm making a pumpkin. - Frances

I'm making a pumpkin too. I'm making a pumpkin and a fox. A pumpkin fox!  - Wilder
*laughs to himself*

I'm carve it. - Frances

I'm carving my fox too. - Wilder 

What a gorgeous day! We were fortunate enough to spend some extra time outside today.
​During our outdoor time, Cate made some really great observations about her shadows.