Our very first birthday celebration!

9/25/2020

What an exciting Friday!

Wow! Let's start with a summary of our extra special fun Friday.

We started our backwards day with a sing along this morning. We stayed in Blake Hall after arrival and projected the sing along onto the large shadow screen. This was so exciting! Before sing along started, we even had time to do some dancing, singing, and instrument playing of our own around the shadow screen to some really fun music by Laurie Berkner. Have you heard of her? She's great and her songs are so fun!

After sing along, we were able to start our day outside because Friday's are our backwards days. Guess what we discovered in the outdoor classroom today? The sink is not just for washing toys, but can also be really useful when we want to add water to our sandbox! This morning, in the middle of playing in the sandbox, Daniel said, "I need agua." He then carried a bucket over to the sink and began to fill it. So clever! After modeling this method, many other children became interested in collecting water as well. So, if you noticed your child changed clothes today or had a pair of shoes sent home soaking wet, now you know why! As a class, we are also continuing to emphasize the importance of caring for our environment, materials, and cleaning up after ourselves. We take pride in washing our own toys in the outdoor sink when our play time is over. Because we're working so hard, we tend not to notice that we are getting our clothes VERY wet while washing. Oh well! That's what extra clothes and shoes are for, right? Thank you to our families for understanding.

When it was time to come inside, we knew that we would be gathering to celebrate our friend Finlay's birthday. We have been working so hard all week discussing birthdays, how we will celebrate them throughout our school year, preparing a birthday gift for our friend, and practicing so much patience as we waited for Friday to finally arrive. Finlay decided that he would share a favorite snack of his with us today - Trail Mix! Children were able to mix up their own personal mix with ingredients that Finlay brought to share with us. This included popcorn, frosted mini wheats, m&m's, and goldfish. Yum! After we finished our snack, we transitioned into the classroom to prepare for our very first Brown Room birthday celebration. Finlay requested that we sing Happy Birthday to start and then we also learned a new birthday song that Ines taught us how to sing. Finlay's mom, Camille, joined us for the celebration and was able to help us sing birthday songs for Finlay.
Here at St. John's, there is a tradition of circling a candle while we count your age and the birthday child gets to extinguish it. The engagement of each child and the participation of the collective group was so beautiful to witness as our class is learning these traditions for the very first time. Finally, children presented their gift to Finlay. As you have seen from previous blog posts this week, our class has decided that each child will receive a birthday "message" in a box on their celebration day. The message is created and decorated with materials that are chosen based on the favorite color of the birthday child. Finlay seemed beyond pleased with his special gift and there was definitely a sense of pride emitting from the children who put so much effort and intention into creating the gift for their friend Finlay. What a wonderful first birthday celebration experience for us all!

FYI - typically on the last Friday of each month, the staff at St. John's have the responsibility of doing some housekeeping around our school. Because we will be busy on these days cleaning and caring for our space, we will not be creating a blog post. That being said, today was much too special not to share and recap for all of our families.

Please enjoy the following photos from our day. We hope you can see the joy in all of your children. Today was so special!