Play, Work, and Rest

"It's like summer out here!" While I wouldn't have described our 50-degree day in quite that way, everyone was thrilled to be outside in not so many layers. It was fun to see how their play changed to tag, hula hooping, jump roping, and things with wheels. Mind you, it was short-lived, and when everything froze solid again, everyone was back to lots of layers, slipping and sliding down the ice like so many penguins. I love to watch how the weather and what they wear changes the kind of play our kids engage in.

Morgan's PK and K Class

This week the Pre-K and K class: *Worked on the uppercase/lower-case letter Z and what sound Z makes *Worked with the number 14 and the different ways to count to 14 *Celebrated Valentine's Day and talked about ways we can show and receive kindness to others *Played number and alphabet BINGO *Counted/painted 14 dots on our dinosaurs with Q-tips! *Explored wet and dry Oobleck *Used slime and Oobleck for letter stamping for making words *Listened to the older children's stories at their publishing party * Had a special Grandma visit that included stories and a light and water activity!

Have a safe and happy vacation everyone!

Tracy's 1st and 2nd Graders

In math, we worked more with our function machines: figuring out different rules and making sets of numbers that could be processed by our machines. If your child didn't do a demonstration for you yet, please ask them to show how their machine works. Based on what they did at school, you should be impressed! We continue to work on using base ten blocks to represent numbers. The second graders are starting double digit addition and subtraction, and the greater their understanding of place value, the easier it is to understand how this all works with multiple digits.

In writing, everyone now has a new book, "My Writing Words." All of the kids have been writing proficiently using invented spelling. These books have standard spellings for high frequency words, and there are lots of blank spaces to add words that are important to each child. Based on stories being written, we added "dragon," "Hermes," "battle," "unicorn," and lots of others. They are excited to be able to spell so many words the right way.

Theresa's 3rd - 5th Graders

In Yoga, there is the practice of savasana which is essential to all of our work. This week is our savasana.

This past week the 5th graders prepared for and took their latest math test, and they did well! They should bask in the feeling of a job-well-done.

Everyone finished a memoir, where they captured their memories, revised them (in a sometimes challenging and difficult process), and published them to our little corner of the world. Our students should take the joy of that moment and celebrate it.

All of the work that we have been doing has to be absorbed into our bodies and our minds with a well-deserved rest. That rest is essential to continued growth!

Our Theme: The Haudenosaunee

This week we delved into some more stories, continued our conversation about values, and looked at some elements of a story (characters, setting, conflict, and resolution). We read "Rabbit and Fox" and talked about trickster characters. We laughed at "Turtle Makes War on Man." We read "Owl Eyes" and "The Sun's Daughter," a nice segue into talking about the 3 sisters (corn, beans, and squash). A number of children made connections to the story of Persephone.

It was time to figure out which stories we wanted to turn into our play, so everyone had a chance to rate the stories. "How the Birds Got their Feathers" and "Owl Eyes" were the clear favorites - not surprising given how much our kids love birds. I adapted them into plays, and the kids helped me edit those plays. It turns out they enjoy helping me edit my work more than they enjoy editing their own. Everyone is working over vacation to learn their lines, and we're looking forward to an in-person performance again this year.