October 06th, 2020

Rainey A: Birthdays, Bananas and Building 

First and foremost we want to wish CC the happiest of birthdays! To celebrate, we enjoyed decadent chocolate covered strawberries, a book about Taekwondo and counted at CC took her four big turns around the candle! CC also had a chance to wear the Rainey Room birthday cape, showing it off to our friends across the hall and family on Zoom.

"It has zebra stripes!" - Lochie (who helped to design the gift) 

Last week when we made an Apple cake, George suggested that “next time we make one with bananas”, so today we did! Following a similar recipe to our apple cake, we poured, stirred and baked, resulting in a delicious, crispy banana cake. While we didn’t have time to try it today, we can’t wait to try it for tomorrow’s snack! ​

When we weren’t indulging in sweet treats, we spent lots of time building. CC, Lochie, Elle and George took on the role of city planners as they made a “big place for animals”. CC suggested “we have to make a bigger space (referring to the foundation blocks) before the cities so we can have more animals”. 

In the adjacent Lego town, Jack constructed a variety of materials with a celebratory intent in mind. “This is a birthday building that I’m making. The newest I could make”.

Yesterday, we introduced a new obstacle course provocation. Over the weekend, Brigitte constructed a malleable version of our outdoor course using poster board and photos of materials. In the last two days we’ve had a chance to work on imagining and repositioning a variety of our building materials to make new obstacle courses both practical and fantastical. We’re hoping some of these designs inspire our obstacle course guidebook!

Rainey B

First and foremost, a big thank you to the Baillie family! We had a surprise expert join us this morning. Jonathan 
Baillie demonstrated his didgeridoo talents outside today for Rainey Room B. We learned about the Aboriginal people and how they created their instruments. We even learned about circular breathing techniques for playing wind instruments. Thank you so much for supporting our musical and cultural exploration! Check out SeeSaw to see more of his performance!

After the performance, we went inside to discuss the instrument and the performance. After some discussion we decided that:
"It's as big as the stage" - Giacomo
"It's brown" - Cedar
"It might be made of trees" Audrey
 Once we established those features, we went to the studio to draw didgeridoos ourselves.

We realized, as we drew, that recreating a music instrument was harder than we anticipated. How do we even draw music?
"It's black, orange and brown. Here's orange to share" - Maxon
"These pieces have to connect" - Giacomo
"I didn't stripes"  - Giacomo
"I drew those. They are music notes" - Sylvie
​We have much to ponder...