May 04th, 2021

Pod A

Mapping Our World!
(Stories from both Monday & Tuesday)

Yesterday, during snack, we read three books as usual, and one of those happened to be a library book called "Mapping Penny's World."  In this book, a young girl makes maps of her bedroom, her house, and her neighborhood with the help of her dog.  We enjoyed this book very much, and a couple children expressed interest in wanting to try it themselves.

​When snack was over, Grace and Olivia got to work on their own maps!  During their work session, they ended up collaborating quite a bit to collage and draw elements of their bedrooms.

"The best part is, we didn't just make these by ourselves, we helped each other."
                  -Grace

Today, inspired by the two beautiful maps made by Olivia and Grace, we drew our own maps.  Lane was still thinking about maps when she came in this morning, so she brought in an atlas of the world.  See a selection of maps below.

Lane's Work

Lane:
Top Drawing: "This is my house.  I did "S" for Sedgwick.  The path has many twists and turns, all the way to Rodman (R).  You know how far away Iceland is?  There's many, many twists and turns on the way to Iceland (I)."
​Bottom Drawing:  "A map of the whole world.

​Gigi's Work
​Top Drawing: "The living room with a tiger toy."
Middle Drawing:  "A map of the bedroom.  It has pillows stacked on the dresser, cracks in the ceiling, and a cheetah rug."
Bottom Drawing: "A map showing the kitchen and middle room."

​Olivia's Work(Mapping the Whole House)

Top Left: Daniel's Room
Top Right: The Backyard

Middle Left: "This is Daddy's bathroom with daddy in the shower."
Middle Right: The living room.

Bottom Left: The garage and the alley.
​Bottom Right: Downstairs living room.

Grace's Work...

Top Left:  Map to the Carousel.  "They're closing the pool."
Top Right: "A map of my yard."
Bottom Left: "A map to my grandpa's house and back."
Bottom Right: "A map from home to grandma's house."

Wolf's Work:  His bedroom and the stairs leading down to the living room.

The New Light Table Area!

This week our travel area has been replace by an area with a light table, a digital microscope, and natural and translucent materials.  Yesterday, the test tubes in the area led to the creation of potions:
   Oliver - I’m going to make a potion.  It’s going to turn Jill into a frog.
   Fletcher - (Whispering to Jill) I’m going to make a potion to turn you back into a human, but don’t tell Oliver!
    Olivia - I think my potion turns people into a unicorn.
A bit later….
    Oliver - I’m doing a melting pot.
    Fletcher - A melting pot like in (the book) “The Three Little Rigs.”
    Palmer - And this can be a bug pot.  I’m filling it with a potion.


Today, children worked on homes for the bugs encased in glass:
    Palmer - I’m making a home for my scorpion.
    Fletcher - We need to make a base.
    Palmer - There’s a pond around it.
    Fletcher - It’s a bug hotel.  I’m going to turn it into a bug village.
    Cannon - We’re building a bug castle.
    Palmer - Yeah, because it has 3 bugs: KIng, Queen, and Prince.

Above: Cannon paints a solar system...  


See more photos in the slideshow below!

Marvelously Miscellaneous:

• We started the day with Sing- Along
• Children helped Jen sort some new materials.  We discovered a LOT of dice, which led us to start inventing games.  We want to continue this work in the coming days.
• In the studio, children made pop-up cards!  We used wooden clay tools to crease the edges of the paper tightly.  Each child focused on carefully matching up the edges of the paper before completing the fold.  We can't wait for you to see the final product later in the week.

Pod B

Birthday Committee
This morning Andy and Aida began work on Fletcher’s birthday committee. They asked Fletcher what color he might like on his pot:
Fletcher: Green, that’s the only color I like.
Andy: What animals do you like?
Fletcher: Maybe a snake?
Aida: What do you want on your pot?
Fletcher: I do like summer, when bees are buzzing. I do like trains. I do like hiking and camping.

Andy and Aida got to work painting the background. Tomorrow the group will add some other details that Fletcher had mentioned.

Kurt’s Book
Maren and Nora helped edit the Yoda book. By looking at real books, they decided that to add a dedication page. Maren and Nora also spent time adding more dialogue to the book, to make it a bit more dynamic to read.

After snack the full group reviewed the changes and explored what book jackets include about the authors and illustrators. Each child then dictated what she/he wanted to say.

Outside
We were outside for an hour today. In addition to testing out some new spray bottles that the school recently purchased, there was also sand play, swinging, climbing and more.