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                                      TUCKER ROOM

Celebrating and Connecting

5/22/2020

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Happy 3rd Birthday Lucia! 

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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! 
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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! 
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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! 
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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!  
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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? 
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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".  
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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. 
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We are connecting to the incoming Brown Room children through photos and messages.  
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"We are connected with music." - Lucia 

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Maxon was thinking about how materials are connected when you put them next to each other. 

We are connected through music and dancing

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Focusing on Characters and Sound

5/17/2020

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Monday: Reading Stories and Drawing Characters

In continuation of our exploration of storytelling, we chose to focus on characters this week. We started off the week, with inviting the children to draw while we read to them. While not everyone chose to draw, the children remain engaged and attentive to each other and to their work at home. 

Wednesday:  Characters and Character Development

THE CHARACTERS AND THE STORY:

Reed brings a pink pig, a horse, and a cow. "Pig says oink, oink." Her horse and cow don't say anything. 
Violet brings a triceratops character.
Janie brings a "Bad cat. He's not nice to the mice. He woke them up... Because it was Cinderella. ...And Fairy Godmother."
Lucia brings an elephant. "Everybody else went o the zoo to find an elephant." "They eat something yum." 
Jack ​brings his pink dinosaur, Leif and another lovey named Foxy. "They find another dinosaur."
Maxon brings a little lamb and Elmo and Cookie Monster, and his lovey, Hoot. "Elmo is very special to me. He's red. Cookie Monster loves cookies. Chocolate chip cookies." (He then introduces Hoot after Elyse introduces her dragon character.) "And the dragon can breathe fire on them. 

What a great lot of characters and ways to think about them!

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THE STORY: 
How will the characters get to the playground?
Cedar: "They can ride on a dinosaur [to] where the playground is."
George: "This dinosaur is riding on the doggie."
Cedar: "They're there now [at the playground]."
George: "Have to get a plane."
Audrey: "Cows digging in sandbox [at the playground]."
Sylvie: "She spins on her tail." 
Cedar: "Killer whale ate the rain cloud."
UH oh... Now what?
Audrey: "There's a house."
All the characters get into the house to hide from the killer whale rain cloud. While in the house they have a snack. What do they eat for their snack?
Sylvie: Hay
Cedar: Strawberry tea
George: A candy car
Audrey: Seaweed
Sylvie: The mommy cow has a bell and the baby eats it. 
​What will happen next? Will the killer rain cloud go away? Will the characters hark back from the house to the playground to play again? Stay tuned! ;-)


THE CHARACTERS AND... THE SETTING:

Cedar brings a white bunny, a pink pig, a doll with red hair, a cow with dangling legs, and an orange dinosaur name Lulu (sp?), and a killer whale (or orca). 
Sylvie brings Panecaka (sp?) - a doll from the Czech Republic, her purple bunny lovey, Lilac, a squishy cat named, Figaro, a brown cow, and an orca.
George brings an orange dog with a mask called Zuma (sp?) from Paw Patrol.
Audrey ventured out beyond characters and brought us a setting for our story with her drawing of a playground.
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Friday: Sound, Beat, Rhythm, and a Dance Party

MAKE SOME NOISE!

Rhythm instruments with guitars and percussive instruments with maracas and wooden spoons. We even heard a "police car" song from George!

JUST DANCE!

We danced to Pharell Williams "Happy", Katy Perry's "Roar" and Idina Menzel's "Let it Go." We'll do more dancing next week!
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George's Birthday, Story Time, and Sing-a-long!

5/8/2020

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Happy 3rd Birthday George!

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.  
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George's family shared some beautiful photos of George, one from each birthday and a wonderful "George Lion!" 

Thank you George, Hilary, John, Lucy, and Jack!  It was so wonderful to see all of you this morning and share our lion inspired gifts! 
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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.
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Reed and Praytor painted

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Janie brought her favorite lion
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Sylvie created a lion mask
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Violet used scissors and paper to make a lion's mane

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Cedar and her mom made a video 
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Jen shared a photo of herself dressed as a lion
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Lucia made an still life drawing
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Melanie used oil pastels for her lion
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Elyse used tissue paper and watercolor 

Sharing Stories

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. 

Surprise story time! 

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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! 

Sing-A-Long with Elizabeth

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We are so grateful that Elizabeth, from the Levine School, joined us for Sing-A-Long this week!  It was so much fun! 
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Individual and (very) Small group Zooms!

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! 
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April's Showers bring May's Flowers...

5/1/2020

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Happy, Happy 3rd Birthday, Violet!

We were so thrilled to celebrate Violet and her birthday and to see all the love and thoughtfulness around birds and Violet's "birdie" symbol. These birthday celebrations help to keep the feeling of connectedness alive and well among our Brown Room community. While we are far away in distance we are near in thought, heart, and spirit! There is no substitution for this. It's so nice to keep up our connections!

See the sleeping birdie...

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Maxon shares a flamingo.
Jack's work for Violet.
Jen's bird made of a strawberry, an avocado, an two endives.
Lucia's drawing of 3 sparrows on a wire.
Jane's shares an owl bird.
Sylvie's bird for Violet.
Audrey's clay puzzle bird.
Tegan's bead bird.
Elyse's watercolor of VIolet's birdie symbol.
George's Pokemon drawing for Violet.
Melanie's birthday birdie balloon.
Cedar's shares earthworms and a drawing of Violet's birdie symbol.
"There's smoke!" -Violet
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.

Monday & Wednesday: Reading & Telling Stories

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! 
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Have a wonderful weekend everyone - tell stories!
We miss you all!

Thank you for your flexibility, gratitude, support, care, and participation in our distance, during our weeks of parent teacher conferences, and in general. We very much love appreciate the whole Brown Room ( and St. John's) collective!
Many "hands" make light work and we could not reach the children without all your hands helping, caring, supporting, nurturing, and teaching alongside us! Many thanks and much love as we continue cherishing our Brown Room year! 
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