Upcoming Calendar Reminders
Friday, February 26th, 7:00 to 7:20pm: PJ’s and Storytime with Roleen!
Kids cozy up in their favorite jammies and have storytime together before bed. Plan for 20 minutes. No cost to attend and no need to RSVP. Roleen will send you the Zoom link shortly beforehand.
Friday, March 5th & Monday, March 8th: SCHOOL CLOSED for West Coast Collaborative Reggio Conference with Teachers
Saturday, March 6th, 8-10pm: Wine Tasting — California vs Oregon Pinot Noirs. Hosted by Alex (wine connoisseur and dad to Santiago, EW) and with a cameo by Roleen. Join us to meet, mingle, and sip with other New School West families for our first virtual wine tasting fundraiser featuring pinots noirs from California and Oregon. This will be a fun — and not too serious — way to connect as you drink delicious wine and to raise a little money for the school too. Cost is $100 per family. CLICK HERE for more details and to sign up.
Saturday, March 13th, 10-11am: Family Bloom Zoom Floral Arranging with Jelena (Ana, WW) of Viola Floral. Grab your little one(s) and let’s get together for some flowers, fun, and special bonding time! Participants will receive a bucket of fresh flowers delivered directly to NSW on Friday, March 12th. Cost is $80 per family. CLICK HERE to sign up.
Monday, March 29th through Friday, April 2nd: SCHOOL CLOSED for Spring Break
Thank Yous
The Dandelions had their celebration of love on Thursday, February 25! We are deeply appreciative of the parents for contributing the food, the flowers, and the decorations for our special lunch party. Thank you for supporting us in making the children’s vision for their celebration come true.
Flowers
Flowers brighten our West Wing spaces and provide children with multiple opportunities for exploration and investigation. Here’s the link to our SignUpGenius for classroom flowers: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0449afa629a02-flower
Cilantro
This week the Cilantros were excited to hear that Cindy and Copper will return to school Monday, March 1st! Throughout the week, they eagerly worked on Valentines for both Cindy and Copper to express how much they care for them. In the Middle Courtyard, the children made them welcome back posters. The posters were made through the resist art technique – an art technique that uses layers to expose or define a design in negative space. Teacher Julia prepared the poster with a welcome message drawn in pencil. Cutting and tearing masking tape, the children covered portions of the letters as their first resist layer. The next layer invited experimenting with blending and overlapping the colors as they sponge painted over the masking tape. It was just as fun to smear paint all over their hands as it was to spread it on the paper! The desire to engage through sensory play comes naturally to children. For the final step, the children gently peeled off the masking tape revealing the message, We love you Cindy and Copper. Welcome back!
There’s no doubt that the Cilantros love to move to music and have no hesitation to whirl and bop around the room. Movement and dance techniques help children become aware of their physical presence, spatial relationships, self control, and balance. Dancing moves our bodies up, down, backwards, and forwards and incorporates large, sweeping physical movements. As children practice moving their bodies – arms, legs, hands, feet – in all directions, they start to gain a sense of the space around them, as well as how they can control their movements in that space. The knowledge gained from these physical experiences is carried out through other areas. In the Building Space, each tower that rises and falls is an experiment in how things in the physical world relate to each other, including the relationship between space and their own bodies. In their imaginative play, the children have been engaging in narratives that involve saving each other from asteroids hitting the planets. The teachers introduced a new song to move to, The Solar System Song! Here is the link to the funky tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stnU6xfbjew
Dandelion
Dandelion Day or Friendship Day was celebrated on Thursday for the Dandelion Group. The children committedly worked on cards for the past two weeks in preparation for today’s celebration of being together learning and connecting. Huge THANKS to our Dandelion parents for all their contributions to make this day possible and fun for the children.
Balloons, heart decorations, and flowers enhanced our front yard space under the tree. Evelyn even got tablecloths to make our tables look more beautiful and elegant. In addition to it, the children enjoyed getting the flower arrangements ready for our pizza lunch with strawberries, carrots, and oranges.
During our morning and later circle times the children passed their friendship cards to each other. With their Dandelion bag sitting in front of them, they waited their turns patiently to pass and receive their cards. “Happy Dandelion Day” they would say, or “Happy Friendship Day” and many “Thank yous.”
It was a magical day filled with love, caring, and singing. To get us inspired, we took some time to read a book Luka (Cilantro) gifted the Dandelions called: I Wish You More by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld. Here is the link to it: https://youtu.be/Y_U31UZQiE0 We also sang Skinnamarink and Rainbow outside my window… https://youtu.be/kXLxJ0Ktc18.
With that, we hope the children enjoy taking the time to look at their friendship cards in the comfort of their home and feel that they belong to a wonderful group known as the DANDELIONS.
Knowing that the children have been craving big body play, we made a plan with the Basils to extend our time in the Woodchips from 1 hour to 2 hours each time. This extended time gave the children even more opportunities to play on the structure and slide; to use the trampoline; to run around the woodchips; to drive cars down ramps and tubes; to play with the wooden blocks and dinosaurs; to use the music wall; and to do some woodworking. When their bodies needed a break, the children were able to read books or create Valentines and thank you cards at the tables. We return to the classroom at 11:30, in time for hand washing, Reflection Meeting, and lunch. The Dandelions will continue to have two hours in the Woodchips twice per week moving forward.
In the Mini Studio, we started the week by letting the children choose which materials they wanted to work with in order to observe their interests and their ideas. The children tended to gravitate towards two different types of materials: the awls/hole punches/brads and the sculpey clay. We noticed that in both cases, the attention and focus was on connections. How can one piece of paper connect to another piece to form a chain? How can one piece of clay connect with another piece to make a creation? We decided to see what questions might arise if we continued this line of investigation about connections by introducing wire and beading. Beads and beading provide so many rich opportunities for developing fine motor skills and deepening cognitive awareness of counting, sequencing, and patterning. We slowed down the process, inviting children to be intentional with what beads they chose and what order they added the beads to the wire. As we worked, we asked the children to think about how the strings of beads could enrich our community. Some of the strings will be added to our dramatic play spaces as necklaces and bracelets; some of the strings will be added to larger wire sculptures to provide new light and color for our classroom spaces; some of the strings will be given as gifts to the Aloe Veras, Basils, and Cilantros. As we continue our work with the beads, we will invite the Dandelion children to create their own beads with our Sculpey clay. The children will form the shapes of the beads, create the holes in the beads with different gauges of wire, and then decorate the oven-hardened beads with paint.