Yesterday, we took a walk down to the waterfront.  We divided into two groups.  Each group had a "job" to do.  Elyse and Molly took a group straight down Potomac, over the canal, and down to the waterfront park. 

Today, a few of us shared with Lochie and Jessica M. about the trip we took to the waterfront.  

Why did we go?
"Because we were looking at the water." - Lochie
"At the bridge!" - Reed 

How did you get there? 
"I runned fast." - Reed 

"You bringed stuff, but that was at school [noticing our blocks]." - Lochie
"There was blocks." - Reed
"And a lot of bridges." - Lochie
"There's a seagull." - Lochie
"We feed them." - Jane

In the other group, what did you do?
"Draw something?" - Lochie
"St. John's." - Reed
"That's a big clipboard.  What were you doing with it?" - Jessica M.
"Drawing on it. How to get to the waterfront." - Audrey 

Looking at the photo of a "one way" sign: 
"Why did Melanie take this photo?" - Elyse 
"It's because she wanted to walk to the bridge." - Reed
"A sign." - Lochie 
"Go that way." - Audrey 
 "I was all the way in the front and to the waterfront and I saw a truck and then I walked all the way down a hill." - Reed 

Looking at a photo of C.C.: 
"She's drawing a map." - Lochie 

Photo of bridge [below]: 
"Something stuck to the bridge." - Lochie 
Audrey points to the lamp posts. 
"Something stuck in the bridge." - Reed

Lochie was carefully observing the photo of the lion as he worked to add the second eye and placement of the ears. 

After we established a marker for St. John's, we decided we would take turns drawing our directional lines, which would eventually illustrate the way we went to reach the Waterfront. "Purple dog can go, then me, then Reed, then C.C., then Sylvie," Audrey said, suggesting an order for our turn taking. So we went with it, and with that we were ready to depart and embark on our journey!

As we have been reflecting on our work over the past few weeks (6-ish), we realized that we have come back to a word that we discussed (amongst ourselves) quite a bit at the beginning of the school year: connection(s).  As you may recall, our Fall Classroom Stories night focused on the development of relationships and the connections that the children were making with each other, the languages, our classroom, and the school in general.  Recently, with Cedar's trip to Kenya, we have returned to connections by way of message making, bridges, owls, airplanes, marking our package's path on a map, marking other locations on maps, FaceTime calls to connect with Cedar, and more.  At the beginning, the conversations focused on how to get our package of messages to Cedar, and as we began to explore some of their theories, they began to draw and construct bridges and owls; ways to connect with Cedar while she was away.  The structure of a bridge, and the ability to extend the bridge from point A to point B, and then to point C, opened up this new way of thinking about connections. 
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Today, as part of laying some foundational thought process for how we can make connections/bring things together/extend smaller marks (bridges, pathways), we offered a long piece of paper, with two different colors of tape on each end, and asked, "What does it mean to connect?" and "How can we connect our blue tape to our green tape?" 

As each of the girls began to make strokes down the length of the paper, we noticed that they each had different techniques and there were some gaps/empty space between their marks.  

Just as we did with Audrey and Reed, we started by reading the book about lines. When we finished the book, Sylvie began giving us some ideas on how we might proceed: 

"​Maybe we can find all the ways that we can..we can...Let's try to do over here and on the edges [using finger to point to the blue tape]."  - Sylvie
Lucia is watching Sylvie and listening attentively. 
"Lucia can be on that side and we can work together. Maybe Lucia, you, and I can do it all together." - Sylvie

We have been anxiously awaiting Cedar's return from Kenya!  Cedar's departure back in January was a launching point for many of our ongoing explorations/projects, but we have been missing her terribly.  Cedar's journey and time in Kenya has given us so much to think about in terms of connections, travel, messages, relationships, how we care for and connect with our friends, where we/our families travel to and live, and so much more. 

The children and adults were all so excited to see Cedar and Jecca peek through the window.  Cedar was kind enough to bring crackers to share with all of us at snack, and they were delicious.  We are so happy to have our Cedar Bug, and her family, back in the Brown Room! 

Lochie, and many of the children, shared some reflections from our conversations about Cedar's travels.  They showed her our wall of maps, messages, post office photos, etc.  Lochie shared some of his theories about how the messages might get to Kenya, and Jecca let us know that they did not quite make it to them (they will see them in the summer).  

We also welcomed Lochie back today!  While Lochie was gone for a shorter time, he was greatly missed.  The children have been asking about him and creating messages for him, which he received in the mail on Saturday morning.  Lochie entered with joy and smiles this morning, which brightened our day from the very beginning!  

Please join us in welcoming both of our beloved Brown Room friends back to class!  

Before leaving the post office, Audrey was asked to decided where on the line we were and then draw the new line to match the direction we were facing. We used blue marker this time, instead of black to differentiate direction and route. Due to where Audrey chose to mark the line and the direction, we went through an alley and a few additional turns were added to our return route. This was great because it created an opportunity to go a different way back than we came!

Thank you for your patience with the blog.  It simply would not load yesterday!  We wanted to share this work that we did on Monday.  Please take time, the next time you're in the Brown Room, to look around at the documentation about our work with Cedar in Kenya, maps, packages, bridges, owls, etc.  We encourage you to ask your child about it as well.  Also, if you have any feedback on what the children are talking about at home, in relation to our work in the classroom, we would love to hear about it (email, etc.); it gives us so much insight that we may not get here at school.  

We're sure that you all experienced the downpour this morning, which influenced our backwards day.  So, we started the day with our parachute, yoga mats, and a game of "Little Owls".  The little owls flew all over Blake Hall, found their trees, slept in their nests, and climbed the tree to Kenya.  

In the classroom, we thought about how to construct our bridges from us (our group symbols) to Cedar.  This requires structures and beams, and we've been looking at some photos to think about how this translates to our materials.  Nearby, Jack, Marley, and Janie made some large, home structures for the animals.  

In the studio, Audrey, Giacomo, and Lucia explored Audrey's theory about how the owls could carry the messages to Cedar in Kenya.  There was also an owl inspired palette at the easel.