I have enjoyed having time to meet with you and watch your amazing children share their work. It has been neat to see the children take on the new role of "meeting" persona and tell you all about what they have been up to. If you still haven 't had your family's meeting, please let me know when it would work for you.
Many of you may have heard that Isabella has moved to Phoenix, AZ. We said goodbye to her last Friday. The friends were so loving, making many messages, and have thought about her at different times this week too. She was a great member of our group, and she is missed. But this has given us many chances to talk about how we deal with these feelings that come from things that life throws us. It's all a part of life, right?
Here are two of our recent videos to check out:
Last week we watched a video about the Venus fly trap. It was interesting. As a teacher I like to gauge with other educators my decisions. I asked around to see how others felt about watching an ant trapped and going to be eaten by this crazy plant. The teachers thought it would be fine and add to the discussion level. Since we've been creating so many stories about an ant character named Enzy, I was worried the children would identify with the ant and have feelings. Then the kids were so interested, no one seemed traumatized by watching. The kids' abilities always amaze me. Here it is if you'd like to watch:
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/venus-fly-trap-owns-the-ant/48c0ebd0240ad3013f1848c0ebd0240ad3013f18-290636432534?q=venus%20fly%20trap%20video
Today we watched a video about other kinds of ants, since there has been so many more friends interested in creating more stories about ants, inspired by the Enzy character. The children were very interested in the motivations behind the grasshopper and the ants. Also, the nectaries and the pods feeding the babies were great because recently the stories of Enzy have been more about Enzy as a baby ant. Interesting to see how our investigations of real life effect the creative process as budding authors.
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/animals/bugs-animals/ants-and-termites/ant_acaciatree.html
Today we also went on a mini walk to sit below a tree to investigate what tree branches and trunks look like. It was inspired by one of the Enzy drawings and our revisiting meeting discussion where friends were giving feedback that the rectangular shape that was supposed to be a branch looked more like a boat shape. In our afternoon journaling time our challenge was to draw what we were really seeing, not just a fantasy drawing. The friends began to see the value of adding detail and of taking care to make each line meaningful. I put the journals outside our door so that you could check them out. The friends seemed very proud of their work today. Since a tree is such a large thing, we talked about how choosing to do only part of it allows for you to go into more detail and make it special. It was nice to see how hard each friend was working!
The muffin party count down is in full swing. Each afternoon when we do the calendar the friends like to notice how close we are. We have all the baking signed up for. I would like to ask the bakers to give us copies of your recipes, too. This might be a great extension project to talk about what muffins we tasted and liked, and look into what ingredients made us like them so much.
Today the friends agreed that we will have three graphs to collect the info from the taste test. One will show our favorites, one will show our "not favorite" and one will be a collection of descriptive words about each of the eight flavors. I am excited to find out what we learned and to talk about it. We might have many discussions about personal preferences that come out of this!
Thank you for all your support and excitement! Remember that Thursday is our Picture day, as well as the Muffin Party!!! As our October Maurice Sendak Poem says, "Whoopie!".
Enjoy your day, Jennifer
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