Spring Flower Power

Dear Parents,

We started our week watercoloring with spring colors. We used all the colors of the rainbow, and then some. 

The next day we used bleeding tissue paper and water to create more colorful paintings. 

During our first music class with Alex, we heard the beating of a hand drum and saw children dancing, and freezing in shapes. The other half of the class worked on planting seeds. 

We chose between chia seeds, garbanzo beans, and popcorn. Everyone folded a paper towel into fourths and placed it inside a plastic bag, added seeds, and water. We hung them in the window because the children said they needed sun to grow. 

We took turns touching all the different seeds. The class said they felt like rocks, sand, quick sand, and popcorn. 

We’ve been observing our tree as the buds opened to reveal white flowers which fell and turned brown during the break. Our tree is now growing small green leaves again, which we can see in our fall tree picture. We counted four seasons, and have four pictures of our tree: summer, fall, winter, and spring. 

We are reading I Love Bugs, Birds Are Flying, The Little Tiny Rooster, All About Seeds, The Carrot Seed, Flowers, and Can You Read A Map? We talked about birds eating bugs, and the maps being a birds-eye-view. 

We’ve been discovering the return of insects to our yard. We’ve seen ants, bees, flies, one baby millipede, and the world’s tiniest snail. The birds are active in the yard as well. We’ve seen robins, blue jays, mourning doves, sparrows, and pigeons. We found a broken blue eggshell and saw a sparrow's nest in the air conditioner grate. We saw two sparrows taking a dirt bath and we're keeping our eyes out for returning starlings.  

On Friday, we played in the yard all day. We looked at new flowers and identified the parts of a flower: stem, leaves, petals, pistil, stamen. Someone kept shouting, “I found some real pollen!” We also noticed a few flowers had visible nectar on the pistil. We read a book about planting bulbs and remembered when we planted our bulbs in the fall. Someone said, “…and we waited til the days go by, and the rain fall, and quickly and quietly, they came…”

We checked our seeds for growth. “I see roots coming out.” “Mine has lots of roots.” “White and yellow roots!”

Have a flowery weekend,

Therese

The Biggest Tornado Ever

Dear Parents,

We began our week writing a story. Each child added a sentence. “There was a little girl and a pig walking through a forest, when animals rushed in…Everyone gets eaten by a stomping monster,” and later, “burped out.” In addition to eating animals, the monster enjoys french fries and chocolate cake. After we read the story, someone said, “That is the weirdest story!”

On Tuesday we wrote a second story. It begins with a pretty princess who makes friends with a jaguar, but is soon eaten by him. He befriends another jaguar while looking at shops. Later, they hunt deer and rabbits. After dodging a tornado, the two live happily ever after, in a castle atop a beanstalk.

We had planned to act out the story on Thursday, but the children were much too excited to wait. So, we had many princesses, three jaguars, four tornadoes, and two audience members. We had to stop once while acting because the pandemonium was so loud, we startled a dog who was downstairs and started barking.

Our last tumbling class with Casey was a hit. She gave everyone a medal. The ceremony was similar to the Olympics, with a platform of mats to stand on, while she placed medals around their necks.

While half the class was tumbling, the rest of us worked on our third story of the week. It began with the Biggest Tornado Ever and ended with a mosquito and a frog swimming at the beach.

On Thursday we acted out two more stories. For the first one, we used animal props and our finger puppets. For the second, we went in the big room and the children played the characters. Both were exciting, and then some. Usually the class is so thrilled during the acting, that they forget to listen to the narration and begin to run willy-nilly. We did manage to complete both stories. And then went to play in the big room.

On Friday, we acted out our third story on the stage in the big room, The Dragon and the Tornado. Our tornados looked especially synchronized spinning around. All the performers were eager to take a bow at the end of the show. Bravo!

Have a fantastic break,

Therese and Nicole