This past Monday brought Valentine festivities which was a great way to launch into the week before break. Anticipation had been in the air for some time because the children have been writing notes to one another in the "Communication Station". After spending the morning delivering cards to Valentine bags in groups of two and three, we took a break to come to the rug and open up our cards as as whole class.
Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the children preparing our Friendship [fruit] salad. It was just a little to much to supervise the handwashing, fruit washing, and fruit cutting while also being a photographer!
In the afternoon the children learned a new math game which is typical for us on a Monday, BUT in Valentine themed clothing things still felt pretty spirited.
It's easy to see friendship flourishing during Explore Time in the afternoon. Often classmates ask me to take photos of their collaborative creations.
Later in the week we read and discussed this month's Reading to Raise Anti-Racist selection, The Arabic Quilt by Aya Khalil. This is a powerful story on many levels but our class was particularly taken with how we were able to learn some Arabic words by how they were used in context. We also loved the idea of a name quilt and enjoyed seeing the colorful patterns that our names made when they were written out on a grid and each letter was assigned it's own color.
A final activity from the week that I wanted to share was creating our February self portraits on chromebooks! Since September, the children have been drawing pictures of themselves each month and building a year's long collection. Here's a look at some of this work in February.
