What a Great Story Can Do...

This week the children were inspired by some of our favorite storybook characters- Frederick (from the self titled story by Leo Lionni), Rocket (the dog star of Tad Hills' books) and Mabel (our Phonics mascot) to create puppet versions of the characters and stage an impromptu performance.  As much fun was had in the making as was in the performing! This kind of creativity and and team work is what can come out of our afternoon Explore time. It's a super way to end our day.

Continuing with this idea of what the children are doing entirely on their own, these two pals had a super time connecting over mandalas and then extending that to other designs- check it out.

And then there are the parts of our day that are not student directed. Below you can see children engaged in activities designed to practice new skills- the recognition and ordering of teen numbers and the use of popcorn words in a sentence.  A careful look will reveal that the children are practicing the teen numbers through a card flipping game and their popcorn words are labeling the stages in the life cycle of a pumpkin.

Get to Know Visual Phonics- a short video of hand, sound, and picture cues.

Part of a Learning Community

There is a line in the Orchard School song that goes like this, 
"Here we are, altogether.  We are in community!"

As I reflected on our learning experiences this week, several examples of the different configurations in which the children are learning popped out at me.  Have a look...

We often work in partnerships to build friendship, accountability and maximize brain power!

Sometimes small groups provide an extra challenge in cooperation and allowing everyone's contribution to be seen/heard.

Once a week our Learning Buddies provide one to one mentorship and assistance with special projects as needs arise.

And from time to time special guests, like Mr. T add a bit of variety to learning as a whole group.

You can join the classroom community from home with the next post!  It's a short video of me demonstrating Visual Phonics with hand, sound, and picture cues.  This practice has become a helpful addition to our work with understanding letters and their sounds.

On Your Mark, Get Set...ABC!

This week culminated in the Fun Run and our class seemed to enjoy every minute of it.  From stretching before hand, to running the course, to snacking outside and cheering the older students on- we had a blast!  Below you can check out our pre and post run looks.

Believe it or not, earlier in the week we had a ton of fun with a much more low key activity- browsing though alphabet books!  Working in partnerships the children tried to decide what the overall theme of their ABC book was and which pages were either so interesting, perplexing or unexpected that they just HAD to show the rest of the group.  Take a look-

These days our Phonics focus of every letter having a sound and our Reader's Workshop focus of examining EVERY page in a book- cover to cover, to learn the most you can are converging with Alphabet books.  And little by little we are building our own ABC books as we introduce each letter in our handwriting program.

Flavors of the Season

Living in Vermont brings subtleties to the seasons.  We have a fifth one in some places- MUD SEASON!  Often the timing of the others is sometimes a bit off.  When the calendar tells us it's spring there's still snow on the ground and this year when the calendar told us it was fall, it still felt warm and sunny! Well, things shifted this week and as a class we embraced the change. Below you can see us sampling some apples and honey that Ms. Allyson brought in to signify the sweetness of a new year for the tradition of Rosh Hashanah. 

On Wednesday Kali and Makayla from Farm to School taught us about cold hardy veggies like kale and chard.  They explained how big strong veins in the leaves can withstand a frost.  Then we all helped to make some kale pesto.

 And lastly, on Friday we went to the forest with our buddies to make some art with the colors and textures of natural materials.