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What a fabulous Pajama day we had! They were so excited to see that their pajamas matched the new pillow in the room! It was perfect timing because they talked a lot about who created which parts of the pajamas, and there was quite a bit of discussion about the colors of the rainbow (the ones on the pajamas are missing a few...necessarily so). Thank you all for joining us last night, and for those who could not make it, you were missed. The children watched the videos today, and loved them!
Happy Halloween! Stay safe! We'll see you all on Monday!
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We cannot wait to see all of you at Classroom Stories tonight! We're looking forward to sharing the beginning of our year with you. In honor of tonight, we shared some of the videos from our Brown Room Classroom Stories night with the children today! They were so excited to see themselves and their friends. They had so many reflections to share about the videos. "I noticed that when they were littler, their hair was shorter." - Nora, 5.1 years "There's so many shoes." - C.C. , 5.0 years "I miss Cedar." - Jack , 5.4 "That's what friends do, they help each other." - Janie, 4.8 years "I was teaching her how to climb." - C.C. 5.0 years "That's Audrey!" - Lucia, 4.5 years "Oh, that's Maxon!" - Sylvie, 4.9 years Tomorrow we will take time to watch the Tucker Room Classroom Stories videos!
"This is the most special snack ever!" - Marley, 4.8 yearsYesterday, Audrey brought some apples to share with us from her apple picking adventure this past weekend. Snack for Thursday was already prepared, so we had a conversation about what we could eat with them, as a special snack, on Friday! The children agreed on five "dips" for their apples: peanut butter, cinnamon, Nutella, honey, and hummus.
Each child was offered a sampling size of each "dip" to try with their apples and **surprise** baguette! Some children chose to try all five, while others choose only their favorites. "My favorite is Nutella!" - George "I like the Nutella best." - Giacomo "My favorite is the peanut butter." - Maxon "Hummus is mine." - Sylvie "I like the honey on the baguette." - Lochie "I just tried all of them." - Marley  Recent snacks!
A sneak peak into the rest of our week"Are we going to the back?" -Janie "Is it Backwards day?" -Maxon Significant attention has been given to the persimmon tree in the outdoor classroom, so far this year. But what about its context? What about the rest of the outdoor classroom space?  The children love, even sometimes live for, the time they spend, outside, in the Outdoor classroom. And what's not to love? Especially given all the changes made with the strong support and thoughtful partnership of the families. The outdoor classroom has enhancements and new possibilities this year and the children are delighting in their free play time, rain and shine.
Outside, the children get to move and play imaginatively with more space, greater volume, with a different variety of materials and context than inside. It is also a time that further supports the children's gross and fine motor development. Running, bicycling, digging, pushing or pulling logs, balancing, hoisting, climbing, jumping, hopping, scooping, twirling, crouching, lifting, dusting, sweeping, and the list could go on for the ways that the children move their bodies, both independently and cooperatively.  
Our persimmon observations have introduced the idea of color, blending colors, and color gradients. The persimmon, and even the black and white areas, offers us an opportunity to stop and truly observe color. What is color? What are the shades/tints/tones of color? How does color change? What is the process of that change? How can we see the change? How do these questions apply to the persimmon and other areas of interest? These processes are wonderful scientific inquiries, and also require exploration of a variety of tools and languages for us to use as we observe and recreate the color changing process of the persimmon. A few weeks ago, the children used large paper and alcohol based markers to represent the {then current] gradient of one of the persimmons that we have in the classroom. **there will be more about this process in classroom stories 
PastelsWhile this first iteration was thoughtful, beautiful, and a wonderful opportunity for collaborative work, the clear division of colors gave us reason to stop and think about how we can better represent the blending of the colors on the persimmon. Which tool might offer a better study in blending the colors of the persimmon as they continue to change. We decided to present pastels to the children because we knew that they would offer the opportunity for blending and mixing.
Comparing to the ginkgo
 Adding complexityTo add complexity to their exploration of pastels and blending, we provided some textured surfaces on top of the white butcher paper. They spent time layering the colors and textures, noticing the blends, and wondering "what will happen next".
What comes next?As we reflected on this work as a group, Nora was sharing her process, and then suggested that we should look at the paper on the light table.
"Whoa! The colors don't really show. It's like fracting into the thing, so we can't really see the colors." - Lochie, 4.11 years Tomorrow, we will have some of these papers available at the light table for exploration and observation. Will You Help Us Write the Blog?"Tell them that I'm standing by the blue door in the outdoor classroom." -Audrey
 What is a blog? "The blog is where you put picture from school in and then your mom and dad can look on their phones and see the pictures." -Lochie "You read." -Lucia "Where you put pictures of the Tucker Room." -Audrey "Something you say." -Reed  Do you know what the book fair is? "It has lots of books. And we sell them." -Audrey "You just get books and stuff like that. I like books when mommy reads them. -Reed "It's a fair with lots of books and you buy books." -Jane "It's a place where you get books. I don't know if they're free or not, but I think they're not for free." -Jack "I know what a book fair is. The book fair is downstairs and the books go on the bookshelves. We read books." -Violet "Yes. It's a fair that has books." -Lucia "The book fair is where books are about school. Like one year and another year and another year, about when you were in a classroom." -Lochie  Have you heard of classroom stories night? "Melanie told us. It's where your parents come and we tell them what we do in the classroom." -Jack "We already did that!" -Reed "They came here and we didn't tell what we did ... we showed them what is in the classroom." -Lochie "We didn't do that in the Rainey Room." -C.C. What can we tell then about at Classroom Stories night? "How about what we've been doing!" -C.C. Our Persimmon and Ginkgo Observations Continue
"I don't want school to end." Reed
Have a wonderful weekend!The importance of observingTaking the time to observe, to see and notice details, can make us more sensitive to the world around us. - Jen We often ask the children to stop, observe something, and share their thoughts/insights/reflections. This slows down our process in a way that offers them time and space to notice details about an object, experience, photograph, structure, drawing, painting, tree, friend, etc. The children's voices are the driving force behind everything that we do; they are guiding us as we guide them. Observations are a very important part of our process (as both teachers and children). The importance of drawingDrawing is a language that is used almost on a daily basis here at St. John's. I would like to share some thoughts from both former and current St. John's teachers about the importance of drawing: Examining details, and the practice of observing closely, develops focus for an extended period of time while also encouraging fine motor development [fine motor development that contributes to pencil grip, fine motor strength, grip/strength/coordination for handwriting later on as well]. Mark making and drawing provoke thought and elicit details and aspects of children’s work that you might not otherwise see or know was there. It’s another way for children to express their thoughts and ideas, it’s a way for teachers/grownups to listen. - Jessica Kuhn [Drawing is] an opportunity for children to verbally process at the same time, so while they’re drawing they’re explaining their idea further, whereas before they might’ve been more vague with their planning. Drawing encourages children to identify shapes, colors, textures, patterns, and size quantities that are important to their theory or plan. I think that every time children draw, they can learn one new thing about what shapes/lines are best to communicate their idea. - Melanie Ruston Drawings [can be used] as references to help their process. - Elena Drawing is the most immediate connection to the brain. It taps into an ancient mode of expression -before verbal language existed. It is a mode of communication that we have at our disposal that many do not develop, and therefore do not have the pleasure of using (another tool in the toolbox). There are different kinds of drawing-expressive/figurative/imaginative, and then there’s drawing from life-observational drawing which is the one that I think is more “troubling”, because there is a discrepancy between what we know and what we see and how to represent that--you have to train your brain to draw what you see. Drawing and seeing go hand and hand. - Jen  After Jack had drawn each piece of the "fall arrangement" individually (as seen below), he took time to draw the entire set up. He drew the white pumpkin first, and then paused to think about how to draw the orange pumpkin and tree cookie behind it. This seemed to be the toughest part of the process, and certainly took some perseverance. Jack talked a lot about the lines he saw in each piece. We [Melanie and I] have since reflected on the tools we offer for "filling in the color" when drawing; perhaps colored pencils are not the most conducive tool for this part of the process. These reflections and observations influence how we present the materials and tools the next time.
Keeping in mind that we wanted to offer tools that are more conducive to filling in the color of a drawing, we set up more observational drawing with colored pencils, oil pastels, and watercolors (palette and liquid). We will continue to offer many experiences like this, especially as we continue to observe the transformation of fall colors all around us. 
The Tucker Room environmentA few things have been updated and changed in the Tucker Room since our parent tour, so we wanted to show you a few photos!
The documentation from that board has been condensed and is still available for the children, but it's now in our cozy area!
An updated birthday calendar! Melanie has been taking beautiful photos of the children for the birthday calendar. During morning meeting and snack conversations, the children have observed the birthday order, and we've discussed the months and how they correspond with the calendar. Just last week, Nora and C.C. were the only two with colors to mark their months. A conversation about this sparked ideas from the children about what colors should represent each month. "I want light blue for my month." - Maxon "I like sparkly." - Janie "January for Sylvie could be gold." - Reed "I think June should be yellow because the sun is out." - Jack  The final three photos will be added next week!
Mixing Paints to Make Fall Colors"Blue, red and some white, and more white and some yellow and some more white and a little bit of some red and it mixed to this color." - Marley
"Blue and yellow makes green." -Audrey Before we began squeezing the bottles of paint, we acknowledge the colors we had to work with and addressed the three colors - blue, yellow, and red - as primary colors. The color wheel was next introduced. If we have yellow (the outer circle of the color wheel) and we add blue (rotating the inner circle to locate blue) what color do we get?
"White makes it lighter." -Lochie
Reflecting on Our Initial Persimmon DocumentationWhat is it telling us? "It's telling us about the persimmons." -Janie  "Because it has a tree and it has branches and the leaves hold the persimmons. And one was upside down earlier." -Janie "It tells us about the part that turns orange." -Maxon Our Weekly Projection: October 12-15 We've had a fabulous week in Tucker Room! We miss our friends who are traveling, and we cannot wait to be all back together in a few weeks! We've focused on some intentional message making with a fall palette, working and playing together in the outdoor classroom, and continuing our observations of the persimmon and gingko trees! We even mixed some fall colors for our easel (colors that match the leaves the children have been bringing to school)! |
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