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!  

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! 

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!  

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? 

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. 

We are connecting to the incoming Brown Room children through photos and messages.  

Melanie and I have been so blown away by the birthday celebrations, gifts, and most importantly, thoughtfulness.  So much of what we do is dependent on our social connections and relationships with each other, and so we just want to thank you all for helping us maintain our sense of community.  It is such a beautiful reminder that just because things are different now, it does not mean that they cannot be just as beautiful and meaningful.  

We saw so many wonderfully inspired gifts today! So many different languages were represented: Drawing, painting, collaging, cutting, oil pastels, videography, costume design, and more!  Thank you all for taking the time to think about George.  

One of the beautiful things about our birthday committees is that the children take on the challenge of thinking about what the birthday child is interested in.  While we have focused a lot on the actual animal, the children have shared ideas and gifts that demonstrate a true thought for that child and what they might like. This is such an important skill in life, and gives such depth to our relationships, and community overall.

We have some incredible story-tellers in the Brown Room, and their enthusiasm for sharing is infectious.  Reading with family and teachers, looking at photographs, listening to stories, seeing the written word throughout their environment, oral story telling, and recalling memories/days events/dreams, all contribute to their emergent literacy skills.  We are so excited to continue sharing favorite books, telling stories, and creating stories with each other. 

It was so much fun to see your faces (sleepy as they might have been), so thank you for joining us!  Our sweet Audrey seemed to be lulled to sleep by our reading!  This upcoming week will be at a different time, so we hope to see you guys then! 

On Thursdays, from 10 until noon, we are available for individual or (very) small group chats!  We'd love to connect with all of you, so don't forget to email us and set up a time! 

Violet's mom lights the candle and Violet exclaims, "There's smoke!" Then she proceeds to walk around the candle after we sing Happy Birthday. Then she blows the candle out.

What a wonderful way to start the week and spend an overcast Monday morning together, tucked in and snuggled up with some good books: Sylvie was in her new "big girl" bed with her Sylvie-sized knitted teddy bear, Cedar was with her Lemur lovey and brother Wolf, Audrey was with her momma and big sister Tegan with some books they wrote together, Lucia was with her mom and magna tiles, Jack was with big sister Abby, Jane was with her daddy and their loved book Babar, Violet and George were in a cozy place in their homes, and C.C. was comfy in her mermaid tail blanket with her big sister, Emery. 
Melanie and Elyse took turns reading books while everyone was contentedly and quietly listening.
Join us again this upcoming Monday for more of the same and bring along a loved and cherished book to share with everyone! 

Wednesday was a different kind of wonderful! Instead of reading a story already thought out, typed up, and put into a book, we put our minds together to sequence events to tell our own story (We started off with two small pigs - a pink pig and a green pig (which you may recognize from the I SPY activity.): In our first story Reed got us started off by suggesting that the pink pig took a bite out of the green pig. As the story went along it seemed more a friendly than foe type of bite. Who can say for sure because the story took a turn as others helped tell what happened next, and eventually Lucia bought out a whole host of animals. (We know these children have a lot of love to share for their animal friends!) The next story, still featuring the two main characters of pink pig and green pig, was a very different story that started off with a hug instead of a bite.  Sylvie was particularly loving the cozy and creative time of telling stories together. We will be storytelling again next Wednesday to keep our imaginations alive, foster an understanding of sequencing, comprehension, memory, verbal participation, creative problem solving, and more. All the while having fun together!