It's December? Already?

We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break filled with good food and love! We are happy to be back at St. John's and are looking forward to a great December!

Brown Room Sing Along

​Today we started our day with another fun Sing Along led by us, the Brown Room. Yesterday we decided on the songs we would like to sing with everyone. Besides a few old favorites we added two new songs that we had learned recently (A Ram Sam Sam and the Peanut Butter and Jelly Song). We also sang the Fire Truck Song, 5 Green and Speckled Frogs, and the Alligator Song that Rainey Room taught us during one of their Sing Alongs.

​We always love seeing our friends, family and caregivers on the big screen. Thank you for joining us! And our lovies enjoy using instruments while singing just as much as we do :)

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Introducing the idea of a blue print

​On Monday, Cate started in the construction area with the idea of building a house for her bunnies (later she changed it to a house for herself) but wasn't sure about how to construct it. Since Cate is very confident in and familiar with with drawing, Sam suggested to her to draw a "design" of the house she had in mind first. During that process Cate identified parts of it (the roof, bottom, two windows, a door, the sun, a little statue and "Me on top. I'm wearing a flower headband.") and shapes she would need to look for in order to create it - "A triangle" for the roof. She constructed her house out of blocks and different tiles and created the sun out of long wooden magnets, which she arranged around and taped on top of a round wooden disc. During the process she kept referring to her 'blue print' and identifying more details she could add to her construction. 

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Houses interpreted with loose parts

​We continued our explorations of houses in a new way today. After having built houses in the construction area in the past, today we created interpretations of houses with loose parts on pieces of cardboard. The children choose a house that sparked interest for them from different photographs of Brown Room homes and chose a piece of cardboard that would work best with their vision of the house.
Is is narrow or wide? Is it tall? Is it more square or rectangular? 
While deciding on which loose parts to use and how to arrange them on the base we asked questions like "What shapes can you see?", "Are they close to each other or far apart?" or "What item(s) could best represent what you see?" The shape, exact placement (also in relation to other items), color and size of items were factors which had to be considered while choosing loose parts. The children worked on their projects with a lot of intentionality, focus, attention to detail and used critical thinking to solve problems that came up. 
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​The following three children have completed their projects today. Bea, who chose Lily's house as an inspiration, will continue her project at a later time.  
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