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Today was a big day in Pine for some friends. Not only was M able to finish his book I Was So Sad, but some other friends worked together to build a house in the gym.  M was so excited and proud he finished his 17 page book! He took the time today to write the last few pages and even added page numbers after he realized the pages were getting mixed up and hard to keep track of. M also decided he wanted to continue making books next week. Way to go M! In the gym today W began building a house out of the magnetic tiles. After a few minutes building alone, she invited some other friends to come help her. Without hesitation, two other friends came running over to help.  It was great to see a group of kids that don't normally play with one another to join up and build something as a team. They shared materials as they concentrated on making the walls just right. They even laughed when the whole thing toppled over and they had to start again. Such a...

Today the Pine kids revisited an idea they thought of yesterday, creating books. While sitting at the table and drawing different emotions, J had the idea of gathering all of her pictures together and binding them with staples to create a book. Immediately, the others were intrigued and wanted to create their own stories too.  Since the original idea stemmed from drawing pictures of different emotions, we began talking about what someone is called when they draw the pictures featured in books.  "I think they are the drawers!"  "Yeah, they make up all the pictures in stories and books." That is when we introduced the idea of becoming illustrators.  "We can make the pictures for our stories!" But, if there was a name for someone who drew pictures for the stories, who are the people that write the words? "They are the writers." "Yeah they make all the words in the book." "They make words on the pages!" And so...

We've been talking a lot about our feelings over the last few weeks and the different facial expressions that often come with those emotions. The kids are doing great at being able to recognize when they feel happy, sad, tired, sick, and angry. Now that most of the kids are identifying their emotions, what can we do next?  Today we focused on what we can do when we do get mad or sad. What can we choose do to make ourselves feel better? This is a question we will continue to talk about over the next week. During small groups, the kids practiced representing feelings using different kinds of materials.  We will continue to revisit our emotions and how we can handle all of those feelings. It will be interesting to see what the kids can come up with over the next week. 

Oops! Please forgive me in forgetting to publish yesterday's post! Fortunately, we continued on self portraits again today.  Yesterday and today the kids worked on their pictures. This second round of self portraits have been very fascinating to watch.  Many of the kids, like S, have been concentrating very hard in adding detail to to their pictures. Yesterday, S started with a detail not many friends usually start with, her hair.  "I'm starting with my braids first. I have a lot of them and want them to be on my picture." She continued to work purposefully and adding detail to her face.  "I am making my cheeks, and oh my eyebrows! I also need a big smile." Each child took the time to really look at their face in the mirror and try to recreate that on the paper. They would comment on what they saw and how they could represent that with the black marker. It's so amazing to see such transformations in e...

Welcome back! This afternoon was full of exploration. In the back of the room, some of the kids noticed a tent like structure set up. Some crawled in and out, but weren't entirely sure what they could do with the space. A bit confused, some of the kids started brainstorming what needed to happen in order to make the space more inviting.  "It's so dark!" "Wait, I know! It needs a light!" "We can get the flashlights!" Flashlights! Easy fix for the darkness, but was that enough to interact with the space the way they really wanted to?  F & W enjoyed using the lights under the dark sheet, but found it more interesting to press the light up against the dark fabric. They would take turns pressing the illuminated end of the flashlight up against the sheet and peering on the other side to see the bright glow.  How interesting it was to see light pass through the blanket. Both F and W would bring the flashlight under the ...

It's Thursday and that means we caper! Pine joined up with Magnolia and & Dogwood to play and see what kinds of invitations were presented in their classes.  Some Pine friends visited Dogwood where they were working on a collaborative piece we started almost a month ago! The paint is officially dry so we looked around for different small pieces we could add to the mosaic-like painted canvas.  Both J & L chose materials very carefully on where to add them to the large collaborative piece. They used tacky glue to fix small pieces of shell, tile, and rock on the different colors.  "I'm putting purple on the purple because they are the same. I like how small they are." "Look, I am making the purple on here. There are so many to put on!" The Pine kids love to get the opportunity to collaborate with other classes and see their friends doing different kinds of activities than we may do. Another great week at Ambrose! 

The last two weeks the Pine kids have been working on identifying their feelings and then describing why they are feeling that way.  It's been pretty amazing to see a shift in how the kids interact with our feelings chart over the last two weeks. Last Monday, many of the kids waited until an adult asked how they were feeling and then waited to describe why they were feeling that way.  This week, however, the kids began approaching the feelings chart unprompted and moving their names around throughout the day to indicate their change in moods and emotions.  Beginning of the Day End of the Day The kids have also started creating a dialogue about how our emotions change and that it's okay when they do. We chat about how we can handle different big emotions like angry, frustrated, and sad as well as celebrating the times we are happy and feeling excited.  SO proud of the Pine kids and being able to identify how they feel. There isn't any emo...

The Pine room decided it was too muddy to play at the forest today. Instead we went on a walk around the block looking to see if anything in the neighborhood was different or interesting.  M quickly noticed a small fence surrounding a tree.  "I've never seen THAT before! It's the smallest fence!" From there, many of the kids noticed things they didn't necessarily notice before.  "I really like this fence! It has such a beautiful design!" Not far from the two fences the kids spotted before, W looked up and saw strings of bright Christmas lights. "Look! The lights!" All of the kids stopped and stared at the lights. "It's Christmas!" "No, Christmas is over it's just the lights." "We have lights are our house too!" A few houses down, M noticed a small branch.  "What's this?" He inspected the spruce tree branch and then took a sniff.  "Oh it sm...

The Pine class gained another new friend today! We all got to see the amazing things W is capable of, including her detailed drawings and her building skills.It was such a fun day getting to know W. Check out the cool drawings and house she built with some friends in the gym this afternoon.  Looking forward to continue to get to know W and see what else she brings to our classroom!  Tomorrow is forest day, please send your kids in appropriate outerwear! 

This week the Pine kids have been really interested in building with magnetic tiles. Most of the creations made were either towers or castles made with bases that started with four magnetic tiles pushed together to make a cube, each cube was then stacked on top of one another to create a tower containing about 6 cubes.  Today, J wasn't satisfied with a tower containing only 6 cubes. It simply wasn't big enough. In the time lapsed video below you can see how J began constructing a tower that had a pyramid base rather than the classic cube. She realized that this then made a taller tower containing 8 pyramids.  "Look, I can make it taller like this! Now it's the biggest tower!" Love to see this kind of problem solving! 

While playing the collaboratory this afternoon some of the Pine kids came up with a game. They collected all of the small foam circles and began rolling them across the floor to one another or crashing them into other blocks. L had idea, what if they tried jumping over the round blocks as the rolled towards them?  The problem, however, was that sometimes the circles didn't quite roll straight enough and went of course. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, but either way the Pine kids found a way to make a game out of it. They always know how to have fun! 

The Pine kids were SO excited to get back to the forest today. Because S spends the beginning of her day in another classroom, she was already familiar with a coveted branch that hung low enough for the kids to try and swing on.  "There's a tree swing at the forest, we should all do it!" S, who seemed to display a high level of confidence, took a hold of the branch as R handed it to her. She took a deep breath and jumped off the log.  S swung with grace over the ground.  The others watched in awe and quickly lined up to take turns.  Each friend took a different approach and not always quite sure on how to get the same kind of lift and swing S did. W seemed unsure on the whole activity, but was willing to try. He couldn't quite get the desired swinging motion and lost interest after his first try.  L saw how the others were swinging and although a little scared, decided to try several times in a row be...