Great Week!

Monday was a great gardening day, as we picked strawberries to eat and lavender to use as centerpieces on our table. We love having fresh flowery centerpieces, both for their aesthetic beauty, and as an example of something for which we must practice restraint! “We can take turns smelling them, and then we leave them in the middle of the table for us to look at.” It’s a fun challenge. We had some excellent Montessori work time, and then headed outside to do a not-so-messy sensory project. We used sandwich bags, baby oil, paint, and glitter, to create a beach-inspired sensory bag. Some of our friends noted how the white and blue paint mixing together resembled the sky as well! The gold glitter represented sand that you would find at a beach! In the afternoon, our new friend Morgan, from the infant room, came to say hello! We love getting introduced to the new faces of Green Sprout, and we certainly do what we can to create an awesome welcoming experience for them! Of course, yoga in the afternoon was awesome with Ms. Liz!

Tuesday morning, we had an awesome circle time. Since we brought in the new doll-house, we thought it’d be a great idea to create some “people” to inhabit that house. Our kids’ lively imagination does not discriminate against the joy of simple, natural materials of possibility—the blocks were easily transformed into people! During circle time, we identified different emotions, and every one had a chance to contribute ideas for what emotions we wanted to represent on the blocks. One of the funnest ones we came up with was “potty face”—the intense look that we sometimes have when we’re trying to force a difficult poop out! Genevieve showed us that this consists of closed fists and clenched teeth! This was followed by our usuall Montessori work time and yoga with Ms. Vanessa in the afternoon!

Wednesday was great! Many of our friends have connected Wednesdays to show and tell, and we love calling it Show and Tell Wednesday! This is because showcasing some interesting toys and objects from home is such a fun thing for our kiddos! They take their toys out from their cubbies themselves, sit on the rug together, get focused, and then we try our best to be a respectful and patient audience for each person who presents their toy. This often becomes a demonstration, and sometimes we get lucky enough to have complimentary toys that allow us to demonstrate creative ways to use them together! This last Wednesday we used human figurines from Genevieve’s plane with Malik’s awesome Percy train to watch people ride the train! Then we used blocks to build tunnels and watched the battery powered train travel through! It may sound simple, but enjoying something like this requires that every one practice enough patience to not grab it away—something all our kiddos are working on at this age! The kiddos went out and spontaneously used teamwork to move around together in hula hoops! Moments like this let us know that our team effort between home and school have really given these guys the tools they need to be cooperative team players! Spanish was awesome!

Thursday splash day was a super fun blast! We utilized our big backyard space, and it made for the most mellow and enjoyable time outside! In the coming weeks, we will be using this splash play as a great way to make learning about the world fun! We plan on doing fun demonstrations of floating and sinking, watering plants, washing things, and more! We also had a chance to get SUPER DIRTY in the mud! And it was TOTALLY OK! Daphne came for some awesome Spanish, too!

Friday was awesome! We started out with a lively splash day. Stomping in the mud, pouring, splashing—meanwhile dance music was playing all morning long. In the afternoon, we used some glue to start our new travel collage. We also busted out some really great puzzles donated by Sophie in the primary room! For snack, in addition to our nutritious veggies, Liz made some delicious oatmeal and chocolate chip “cookie dough” mix.


Love,
Jackie
(I'm having a lot of trouble with the connection I use to upload the pictures--Pictures will be up once my new cord arrives!)