Week in Review

 As you know I typically update the blog on Sunday's and many posts have a theme or center around one or two learning experiences from the week.  This time, as I looked over the photos, I felt like a "week-in-review" picture style would sum things up best.  From snap words and poetry journals to math learning and Stuffie Day, the children were busy and engaged!

Have a look at children practicing new words on white boards:

Here is a look at children illustrating this week's poem in poetry journals.

Ms. Finn made our learning about teen numbers visual by showing us what teens look like on Double 10 Frames!

Stuffie Day was SO much fun!  We helped our furry friends to use their Core Values and we dressed them up in clothes and hand made add-ons.

On Friday we channeled our learning about bats into a craft in which we made bats that could hang upside down!  There are five species of bats in Vermont that are endangered.

Pattern Block Mandalas

 Since the start of the school year the children have been coloring mandalas each morning during check-in and arrival time.  They have also been building, sorting, and designing with pattern blocks- mostly during Math time.  This week they put these two ideas together and were completely excited about the results!  Have a look:

Making Connections to Characters and Books

 This week we began an author study of the author/illustrator Leo Lionni.  If you haven't heard of him he's probably most famous for his book Swimmy, which won a Caldecott MANY years ago.  I love to teach with LL's books because they deal with important themes like friendship, individuality, the power of words, and the beauty of nature in ways that children can easily understand. After reading his book, A Color of His Own the children created paintings that showed how a chameleon could change color on different objects.

Over the next few weeks I'll post more about our learning with Leo Lionni's books.  

On Friday afternoon we needed to quickly adjust to the rain that prevented us from building with natural materials out in the courtyard as we have done in the past.  So, we utilized a surprise basket full of colorful bits of nature (flower petals, dried grasses, dried flowers, small sticks, etc.) AND sparkly marbles that we called "a little magic touch", to build incredible "small worlds" right in our room!  Take a look and also, take a guess as to who may have left the surprise basket...the children think they know!

We Are In Community

 The title of this post takes it's name from a line in the Orchard School Song. Did you  know we have one?  We sing it at our all school morning meetings every other Friday!  Here are a little bit of the lyrics:

"Here we are /altogether / we are in community / we are one, here at Orchard / altogether in unity"

So lets start in our room- the classroom community!  Here's a look at our new rug.

Moving outside to the courtyard... we like to think we share this space with the Fairies!  Here you can see us building enchanted, small places to attract fairies (some children even left notes) and also helping out by pulling up old sunflowers because it's the end of the season.

Moving out from our "epicenter", this week we had our first Farm to School Session.  Carol McQuillen (former Orchard teacher and current director of Common Roots) and her team deliver carefully planned, hands-on lessons about nutrition and nourishment from the farm. Here are some pictures of our crew doing Apple Yoga, reading an apple story, and chopping and pounding to make apple butter!

And now for the Fun Run- where the community joined US and we're all doing our part to raise our spirits, our fitness, and our funds for Orchard!  Here is a little time line from start to finish.

Learning with Nature IN doors and OUT

 There's a lot of research out there that supports the power of nature to help us relax and feel a part of our surroundings. I think children AND grown ups feel this intuitively as well. With the addition of some collections that families have sent in, the children are creating some magnificent nature constructions and designs.

On Friday we took to the outdoors to search for Signs of Fall.  If you read the previous post you can see how we began the day by predicting what we might find on the search. In the picture below the children are carrying checklists for keeping track as we looked for different color leaves, straw, a pumpkin, a squirrel scurrying, a scarecrow, wind, and more!