Celebrating and Connecting

5/22/2020

Happy 3rd Birthday Lucia!

We were so excited to celebrate with Lucia on her birthday! Lucia rounds out our group of 3 year olds! For just a few short weeks all of our Brown Room friends are 3!

Thank you all for joining us to celebrate with Lucia's family as they shared special photos, a book, and Lucia's collection of teddy bears! Birthdays are such a wonderful time for us to come together and celebrate, and we appreciate your love and care for each other during this time apart!

Lucia's Loves

After we saw some beautiful photos of Lucia with the people and things that she loves, Lucia's sister Loren was so kind to read Lucia's favorite book for all of us!

Lucia asked all of us to think about bears for her birthday, and you all were so creative! The variety of materials, colors, techniques, and types of documentation for your gifts continues to blow us away! Thank you all for taking the time to think of Lucia and her favorite animal, the bear!

Cedar collected Peonies for Lucia, and brought her Paddington bear to share! It turns out that Lucia and Cedar have these things in common! They found a new point of connection with each other!

Loren was kind enough to make Lucia a candle in the shape of a 3 and light. Lucia took her three trips around the candle to represent her three years, and we sang Happy Birthday! Lucia, we hope that you enjoyed each of your gifts, and our time together!

What does it mean to connect?

Melanie and I have been thinking about this from the beginning of the year as we observed the relationships developing in the Brown Room. How were they connecting? What were they doing with each other? How were they helping each other? As many of you may remember, we saw them assisting with shoes, teaching new gross motor skills in the outdoor classroom, and more.

As the year progressed, we began to thinking about this word in a new way. Our dear Cedar travelled to Kenya, and the children began to think about ways to stay connected to her. We thought about how we could send messages to Cedar; how would they get there?; how could we get to Kenya?; how can we communicate with Cedar?; how far away is she? and more. We spent time making messages, sending them from the post office, talking to Cedar on FaceTime, and communicating via whatsapp.

The children's theories about sending the messages, and their interest in the maps we were using, led us to think about others types of connections-- points between here and there. How do we connect these things? How are we connected in our own classroom? How are we connected in our neighborhood or to our neighborhood. We explored lines connecting, how our houses might connect, and more.

Now, during this time apart, we are thinking about this once again. How do we connect? What does it mean to connect (with each other and materials/objects)? Who do we connect with?

We also heard from Lochie who said that we can use glue to connect things, and possibly hair ties to connect our bones.

What keeps us connected?

Revisiting Connections

There is no "correct" answer here. There is no time limit on sharing our thoughts. The idea of connections and relationships will continue to be a foundation of our time together.

As this discussion continues at home, we ask that you share any ideas or work that focuses on "connections".

Family connections are important. Violet spent time at the place where her parents were married. Janie shared her love for her mommy and Miggy! Jane brought her favorite stuffed animal and one of her favorite people, Yaya. We are connected to others through shared experiences and love.