AFC PINE PM

Wow, anyone else tired?! I truly hope everyone gets some good rest in over the weekend because these kids played hard this week! And with the upcoming warmer weather we will only continue to play outside and get in some good exercise.  Before we began our hard play outside today, the kids took some time to slow down and focus on some painting. We weren't going to use regular paint brushes though, that simply would not do. The other day L mentioned that it would be cool to use feathers to paint and we thought that was a great idea. We loaded up the paint trays, found lots of different feathers and got to work.  It turned out to be quite an experience as the paint didn't spread very well with the delicate feathers. Maybe it was too thick? Maybe we needed different feathers? Either way, the kids enjoyed using a different utensil to paint with and liked the fact that if we let the feathers dry out with paint they might "transform into a new color!"  It's always fun to...

  Wow did we have a great time at Larson Park today! It was so great to get out, stretch our legs, and play! These kids are rockstars. They walked to and from Larson Park without a complaint. We chatted about a variety of things on our way over and got to see parts of Webster we haven't seen as a class.  Once we arrived it was a free for all at the playground. We were lucky to have the whole place to ourselves 😊 Everyone had the chance to go down the multiple slides, climb on every climber, and swing on some swings. We ended our time at Larson with a muffin snack and then headed back to school. I hope we can have days like this in the future, it was awesome! 

  What a gorgeous day to spend outside! We couldn't miss the opportunity to visit one of our favorite spots in the neighborhood this afternoon. Not only did everyone get a good dose of vitamin D, we also got to expand on some of our conversations regarding birds.  The kids remembered that the sculpture park has a giant mosaic bird that is by far their favorite thing to climb on and that gave us another idea... what if we tried to find birds while we were there? Before we left you will notice L in the beginning of the video talking about different homes animals live in- way to connect some dots, L!  We packed up the backpack with some trusty binoculars and got to work! Once we arrived the kids were anxious to peer into the bright blue sky and look for some birds. Unfortunately, we did a lot of listening before we saw one... one little bird that was creeping along the dirt.  "He's digging!" "I think he's hungry!" "Maybe he found a worm." "Bi...

And just like that, the week is over! It was a great last two days full of laughs, conversation, working through tough times, and overall some good fun.  Thankfully, the kids aren't too upset about being inside for our whole day. In fact, they are loving being able to create small homes for our bird friends in the forest! Yesterday, the Pine kids improved their home making skills by introducing some new materials. Pom poms rule all! These once plain cardboard boxes have transformed into the most decadent bird homes we have ever seen!  We are hoping these brightly colored, psychedelic homes will draw in some new tenants at the forest. Not only do they enjoy decorating, but they have been doing great at sharing the glue and other materials they may need. It has been really fun creating such eye popping homes for the birds this week. I really hope we can make it to the forest to hang them up next week! 

  I cannot believe it's been almost a week since we have seen all of these kids! It was so good to get back into the groove of things with them. F became particularly interested in one activity where the kids were trying to recreate some of the Missouri Songbirds. F did his best to create a male Bluebird!  He worked hard as his little fingers picked the perfect blue feathers.  "It's blue! Two eyes! He flies! Tweet tweet!" F continued to manipulate the different loose parts to finalize a product he was happy with.  "Glue please!" F was so impressed with his own creation he wanted to make it permanent. We collected the necessary items and F got to work.  This process took a little more time as there was now some glue involved. He was very precise in his placement.  O noticed all of the beautiful colors and decided she wanted to create "a rainbow bird!" We weren't sure this mini study of birds would continue on or not, but the kids have really enj...

  This afternoon the kids jumped back into our short study of the birds and how we can help take care of them. One way they came up with was through bird houses!  "I am warm in my house, birds are cold outside!" "Birds make nests. I think they use sticks and twigs to make them, but people make them too and they use glue to keep them together." "Birds will stay warm in here!" "I think we should take them to the forest next time we go. We can hang them up on some sturdy sticks!" What a great plan! I do hope we can visit the forest soon, even if it is a walk. So we will continue to make snuggly warm houses for the birds.  Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday!

  Every Tuesday Ms. Julie comes to our room and leads our class meetings. She comes in with a bunch of different games that focus on both fine and gross motor to keep our minds and bodies moving with purpose. Today, after modeling a drawing activity, she asked the boys if they would like to lead the class in a drawing game.  The boys lit up with excitement!  "I want to be the teacher!" "Me too, me too!" Ms. Julie passed the coveted teacher lanyard to each child for the opportunity to lead the whole class in a drawing of their own.  Each boy was so excited to be the leader and tell the others what shapes to make for their pictures. It was such great practice in listening, slowing down, and expanding vocabulary. As they drew their pictures with their self talk, Ms. Julie would help them describe what to do.  "I make a circle and then you need the legs!"  Draw a circle and then two lines down for the legs "Make two eyes and then a big smile!" Make t...

  Today the boys worked on making our own kind of kindness clouds! As you saw from the blog last week, the kids have been really coming around to being kind and complementing one another. In order to keep the momentum, we wanted them to be more apart of the experience. So today, J & F worked for awhile to create some clouds for our newly created sky in the classroom.  The boys worked side by side either cutting or tearing the blue tissue paper into small rectangular shapes. They carefully laid the pieces onto the white paper below. Once the paper was filled with the different shades of blue, each boy was then able to spray water onto to the paper making a really cool cloudy design on the white paper!  We are creating our own clouds in order to give the kids some responsibility and ownership. We want them to be proud of being kind to one another! Our class has lots of clouds to make so this is probably an activity that will stretch out as the week progresses. I ca...

  At the beginning of the week we tried something new in the Pine room to begin to recognize when people were being kind to one another. A visual to represent the good things that happen daily. We call them Kindness Clouds!  On Monday Ms. Kari introduced the class to a brand new long word: compliment. We talked about what it meant to give someone a compliment and how it makes people feel when nice things are said about them. Since Monday, we have heard loads of compliments, lots of turn taking and sharing, and overall kind words being said. It's been wonderful!  Here's a look at today's clouds. Our daily goal is to "make it a cloudy day" in our room and fill the board up with as many kindness clouds as we can. So far, we are doing a fantastic job, I am seriously so proud of the kind things that come out of their mouths.  Have a great weekend and fill your skies with lots of kindness clouds! 

  Instead of our normal forest day, we decided to head on over to the sculpture park! The kids were so excited to get to a place we visit only a few times throughout the school year.  "It has a big bird!" "Yeah we will see the big bird there!" We put on our coats and jackets and began our journey to the sculpture park, but once we approached we saw that it was a little crowded with some neighbors.  "Oh the germs! We have to go somewhere else!" These kids have really understood keeping distance from others, especially people we don't know! In order to keep our original plan we just headed to the other side of the street, a part of the park we don't typically ever go to.  "We have never seen this place before!" "Yeah we don't play here, what do we do?!" Within minutes they were running, screaming, and checking out the new space. As F an J whizzed past me on the sidewalk, they came to a halt.  "WHAT are THOSE?!" They ...

  The last two days the kids have been enjoying watching the birds come to a bird feeder through a live feed we stream directly to the classroom. The kids noticed they were eating all kinds of different seeds and nuts. Was there a way we could feed the birds too? Some of them remembered making bird feeders with cheerios earlier this year so we decided to give it another try!  A few of our friends sat down and ever so patiently began stringing cheerios onto pipe cleaners to make some easy bird feeders.  "The birds will like these!" "Yeah the birds eat them." "We have to put them outside!" After our meeting we took a walk around the neighborhood to the forest to supply the birds that visited one of our favorite spots with a delicious treat.  Each kid picked a feeder and a tree branch to hang it from around the forest.  "They will get them here!" "I think they are going to like them!" "Hey, birds, your food is here!" Although we ...

  Welcome to a new week! Since the eye droppers were such a huge hit last Thursday, it seemed like a fun idea to continue to use them for something different since the snow is gone. Today the kids used the eye droppers to cover white ribbon in all kinds of colors. The ribbon, however, wasn't cut at random lengths, in fact, it was cut to the size of each child!  Each child took turns measuring their friend with a tape measure and then lying the ribbon out to the exact length. They read the numbers allowed while their friend wrote them down and then rushed to the paint table to begin decorating.  What will we do with the ribbons? Well, we haven't quite figured it out yet but I am certain the kids will come up with something great.