Second Week: Sept 14-18
This week we introduced the foundational teachings of Honesty, featuring Kitchi-Sabe (Sasquatch), Respect symbolized by our golden ruler (respect for self and others), and Discipline symbolized by the ear (listening to others) to prepare for creating our school contract together. We will be sharing these teachings with parents as well at our parent community meeting on Monday evening.
This week was spent following our classroom routine and building competency with language and math activities with educator support and guidance. This week our language focus was on independently creating words, working with letters and numbers, and reading. We are very happy to report that we have two emergent readers growing confidence in their abilities daily. Writing was introduced this week as well, as students learned about their school mailboxes connected to the mail person role in our classroom. Every student received a hand written letter in the mail, along with an invitation to a birthday party. Mail supports excitement about reading a message. Students also chose whether or not to write letters back and put them in other mailboxes. This will be an ongoing weekly activity and students are already asking daily if they have mail.
Calendar and math focus time has been a blast, with money as our focus (in preparation of Share the Magic Day) with activities that included songs and LOTS of movement and counting money.
Our outdoor time had us investigating and naming trees in our front and back yards as we build our knowledge of the Plant Spirits that grow closest to our school. We discovered many mushrooms growing in the back yard, and discussed mushroom safety (never touch unless you have a positive ID from someone with experience). We visited our climbing tree and discovered bravery and new confidence as students stretched their physical boundaries. We also learned that our beloved climbing tree is no longer a space that we can climb in. We will be on the hunt for new climbing trees in Kiwanis park in our near future.
Our afternoons Thursday and Friday were spent with our new students and teachers creating their drums. Everyone learned about Deer, Maple, Ash and Sheep, the meaning of our hoops, where the kits came from and how to thread their drums. Everyone was successful and had a blast. On Monday morning students will be birthing their drums in our morning circle outside (weather permitting). Anyone not present on Monday morning, will have a special ceremony on their first school day to birth their drums.
Next week we begin working in the kitchen, drying teas from the garden for sale, brewing up a natural cough syrup, making cooking and foraging for wild chocolate seeds and marshmallow cheeses.
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