Flowers, pumpkins, gourds, and more!
Thank you to Wiley’s family for bringing fresh lettuce for our turtles and to Spencer’s and Colette’s families for bringing in flowers this week to our classrooms. These bouquets not only brighten up our spaces but also provide inspiration for color mixing, observational drawing, and loose parts exploration. We also want to thank Jack’s family for all the pumpkins and Emme’s family for the dried corn. Our spaces are looking and feeling like Fall because of all your generosity.
Here’s the link to our SignUpGenius for classroom flowers: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0449afa629a02-flower
Conference sign-ups
West Wing Zoom conferences started this week, and they will continue through mid-November. If you haven’t signed up yet, or if you need to change your sign up, please use this link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0449afa629a02-west16
The West Wing teachers would appreciate at least 72 hours advance notice for the sign-ups to make sure that we have all of the necessary materials prepared.
Halloween Party
Happy Halloween! The West Wing celebrated on Thursday with lots of storytelling, music and dancing, pumpkin exploration, mobile-making, and shadow play. Please check out our slideshow with lots of photos from the day. Here are the Dandelion photos in their highest resolution. And here are the Cilantro photos in their highest resolution.
Time Change
Autumn is a delightful time of year. The air turns crisp, leaves change color, and it’s time to cozy up. We’re also treated to an extra hour of sleep with the Fall Daylight Saving Time change. Yet, children do not know that. Instead of sleeping in, they might wake up earlier. Sleep patterns and behaviors may take time to adjust to the new time change. How fitting that it falls on Halloween night with a rare full moon!
Group updates
Cilantro
We had so much to be thankful for and show our gratitude! It felt so good to receive a thoughtful gift from the Dandelions thanking us for the seeds we had given them. The painting they gave us included pictures of all the children from both groups. It was so touching without being physically touched! The Cilantros thanked the Aloe Veras for a Halloween garland they surprised us with last week. The Cilantro children dictated a note and made observational drawings of an Aloe Vera plant. We’re provoking the children to draw what they see through the shapes they notice. Such drawing develops qualities of perception and new awareness. Shapes play important roles in creating representations. Inspired by the Halloween garland and being able to touch and feel real pumpkins, the children cut out circular shapes to recreate the song Five Little Pumpkins. Circles keep resurfacing in the children’s representations. They are invested in looking at the round gourds through magnifying glasses. This weekend, we ask you to look for circles in nature and email us pictures to cindy@newschoolwest.com and silvana@newschoolwest.com. Happy hunting!
Dandelion
In the indoor classroom, the Dandelions have been exploring the concept of shadow stories: how we can use light and shadow in the Exploration Room for storytelling. We drape sheer and opaque fabrics, turn on the video projector, and put out flashlights. Not surprisingly, this week the children have been using the space to tell lots of tales about ghosts, monsters, and spiders! At the Mini Studio table, the Dandelions have been adding tempera “face paint” to laminated head shots (and then seeing if their peers can guess which face has been disguised!). And, as usual, there is plenty of play happening in the House Area: cars are being driven to work, pancakes on the stove are being prepared, firefighters are being called on the phone, babies are being rocked to sleep.
The Dandelions also have been really enjoying our dance parties! Everyday, we take the time to move our bodies to some fun music before we settle into our Reflection Meeting. Here are a couple of videos of the group of children singing and dancing to two of our most requested songs:
“We’re Going on a Lion Hunt”: https://vimeo.com/472350895/fe2c5c4ea
“Animal Action”:https://vimeo.com/473702303/b9184569c6
“The ants go marching”https://vimeo.com/473702303/b9184569c6
“Five Little Pumpkins” https://vimeo.com/473702303/b9184569c6
Outside this week the Dandelions were introduced to woodworking. Hammers, clamps, hand drill, nails, screws and screwdrivers. The children welcomed all and were eager to work with these real tools. During our reflection meeting we discussed the safety rules for using these tools to the whole group and the following morning, we set them up again at one of the regular tables and invited children to work with them. The flow in the front yard feels more settled now as we observe the children enter each of the spaces more comfortably. New paint colors were mixed on Monday to the colors of our donated pumpkins and gourds, the house area, paper house, building platform and bikes are areas the children rotate around in addition to some running around the tree and striking the wind chimes. Also this week, we felt the wind blow hard and watched how the leaves fell off the tree giving the children lots of excitement.