Monday students took a field trip upstairs to check out the stained glass windows in the chapel. They looked at the beautiful pictures and chose their favorites, noticing the black metal connecting the colored glass pieces. The students used colored cellophane and black paper to create their own stained glass type windows, which look particularly lovely when the sun shines through.
During sign the children each found the first letter in their first name on our ASL alphabet caterpillar. They sang and signed some songs and Rose signed and read the Piggie and Gerald story The Thank You Book.
We continued our conversations around negative and positive thoughts. Makenna did superhero stretches then we read the story Your Thoughts Matter by Esther Pia Cordova, about Romy, a girl who has two invisible companions, Growi and Fixi. Fixi is unkind and says harsh things to Romy when she makes mistakes or is trying to do something new. Growi is encouraging and says kind things to help Romy feel better about giving new things a try and forgiving herself for mistakes. We learned that everyone has these types of friends and words in their heads, and everyone agreed they much preferred Growi, who was kind and encouraging, and who we would want to listen to.
There was a box of Sunnybrook T-shirts, and anyone who wanted one could have one to put on. They were all the same size to make sure it was equal, so everyone got the same shirt. They decided that they might work for Makenna or Lyn (well, too small for Lyn) but they were way too big for everyone else. Lyn and Makenna wear glasses, so everyone got to take a turn wearing glasses to make it equal, but the children decided that they didn’t help them see better, so even though it was equal, it wasn’t what they needed. We talked about equal vs fair, and that fair is when each person gets what that person needs, which is not always equal.
The ribbon sticks came out for some fancy dancing. Some Cuban music inspired some hip swaying and ribbon twirling moves that kept some children moving for quite a while!
Kindergarten students enjoyed reading, choosing their own math and literacy work, cutting, sorting, alphabetizing and reading rhyming words, and learning odd vs even numbers and counting by 2’s.
We celebrated a sixth birthday with the birthday girl who was born in the middle of winter in the month of February. After she quickly orbited the sun through the seasons she asked each child whether they would like a pink unicorn cupcake or a yellow one.
Friday scientists did some deep breathing to bring oxygen into our bodies, but once it is in our lungs, how does it get to our brains and our toes and our fingers and our muscles? We placed our hands on our chests to feel our heartbeats, then found our pulse on our wrists and necks. The children took turns tossing a heart beanbag onto a heart with a picture of a different exercise, then we all did the exercises together. When we were all done exercising we felt that our hearts were beating faster and our breathing was a bit heavier. We talked about how the heart pumps the blood out to the lungs where it collects oxygen then comes back to the heart to be pushed out into the body and back through arteries and veins. We looked at a model heart, the size of a human fist, and we all made a fist to see how big our hearts are. We watched a couple of brief videos about the heart and the circulatory system, then took turns “pumping” the blood with our heart “pumping” bottles.
