Our final week went quickly as everyone enjoyed their last days of the year with all their friends, many who are moving on, and others who will be returning. We talked a bit about the last days and saying goodbye, but the reality of the end of school seems to slowly sink in, often several days after we are out.The weather cooled off and brought some dark, rainy days, but there was a lot of activity. Games of chase, bike riding, digging, and make believe were occupying many students. We dug up the soil in the garden, and added new soil before planting some flower seeds, which we hope will be blooming in the fall.For art on Monday we read the story Petra by Marianna Coppa, about a rock who goes on adventures, and eventually gets collected by a child, who paints it to look like an elephant. We then donned our T-shirt smocks, selected our rocks and paint colors, then commenced painting our own rocks.As it was raining Monday, the children did some fun inside activities. We started with some yoga, then moved on to flashlight dancing, and finally we played many games of hide and seek. It was surprisingly hard to find the hiders, despite the lack of hiding spaces. After hide and seek we took out the rainy day activities.For an art project on Tuesday the children requested painting, so we brought the water color paints out to the art table.On Tuesday we had a special visitor. Janice Mercieri from White Mountain Apiary came in to teach us all about bees. She brought an observation hive, a piece of honey comb, and a queen bee cell. She shared so much information about bees and gave us each an opportunity to hold and observe the honey comb and queen bee cell, and to look at the bees in the hive. We learned so many things! We learned that when bee larva hatch into adults, the first thing they do is clean their rooms so it is ready for the queen to lay a new egg. We learned that all the worker bees are female, and there is only one queen. The queen bee’s only job is to lay eggs, and the only job of the drone bees’, the only male bees in the hive, is to mate with the queen. Janice told us that honey bees live for only 6 weeks, and within their lifetime, each bee makes only 2 drops of honey! To make 1 pound of honey, bees must visit 2 million flowers. Janice also shared that bees do a special dance to communicate with each other, indicating the location of newly discovered crops. The colony will then vote on where to visit. We learned that without bees, 1/3 of our food sources would not exist, as they are the primary pollinators of many crops. We also learned that wax for the honey comb is produced in glands in the abdomen. It was such an engaging and informative visit. Thank you, Janice!On Wednesday morning we read Gary’s New Glasses, sent in by the Armstrong family, and talked about who we know with glasses and why people need glasses. We have two friends who got glasses this week, so it was a good story to help everyone understand how valuable glasses can be and how grateful we are to have them! We then wrote thank you letters to Janice. The children worked hard to draw her beautiful pictures and write their Thank yous.We went outside early on Wednesday, after several friends helped set up an obstacle course. Many of the children had fun doing it over, and over, and over.Thursday was our clean out and good-bye day. We cleaned out cubbies, gathered work from the classroom, and several children took little autograph books around the classroom to get signatures and/or pictures/notes from their friends. We took out some beads so anyone who wanted could make friendship bracelets for their friends. We read the story Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney, about a girl named Alice Rumphius. Her grandfather tells her about his travels around the world and his love of the sea. She decides that when she grows up, she too wants to travel the world to see far away places and return to live by the sea when she is old. Her grandfather tells her that there is a third thing she must do: make the world more beautiful. We discussed what some things were that we could do to make the world more beautiful. Some of the suggestions were to; cover the world in bridges, plant flowers and trees, be kind and care for others, and build a giant ski slide. At the end of the story when Miss Rumphius is older, she finally finds what she wants to do. She orders a bushel of lupine seeds and scatters them everywhere she walks, and in the spring the entire town is covered in lupines.
We continued to practice for our performance throughout the week. When the big night finally arrived, everyone was ready! We will miss those friends who are moving on. It is hard to say goodbye to everyone! We wish everyone the best as they move up to new schools. (Thank you to the Armstrong family for the performance photos).Thank you to everyone for such a wonderful year. We are so grateful to have such amazing, supportive families to work with. We adore your children and so love spending our days with them. Thank you for sharing them with us!
Farewells
June 9, 2018