Building ourselves, Building the world

Just Me and My Shadow,

Strolling down the Avenue!

Ground Hog Day gave us an opportunity to talk about light and shadow... and literally, see where we stood! Our beloved Beacon friends ran outside with us at the moment the sun did shine to help trace around our shadows. Our plan was to do this several times, at different times of day, to see how the measurements of our shadows changed... but there was too much cloud cover to make comparisons possible. We'll revisit this science/math project in a sunnier season! Thank you, Beacons, for your sunny smiles of enthusiasm and encouragement! Thanks, Cathy, for dancing between the light and shadows this week!

A Sneak Peek into Literacy Under Construction!

Painting and drawing are some of the first forms of "written" communication--- think of the ancient and eloquent cave paintings left by First Peoples, for us to admire and learn from. This was an exciting day for the child in the background, as he made his first independent effort at writing his own name! (See below on top left of paper.)

Similarly, sculpting, rolling, shaping, gives a dough form a life of its own. Another great activity to strengthen and coordinate the hand to prepare for writing!

Carefully constructed, intricate and time consuming work communicates information about self, feelings and the world!

Sequencing self-correcting story pictures teaches us the structure of beginning storytelling, with clear beginnings and endings as well as aiding in vocabulary development . We also learn about forming sets: every pair, put together so the puzzle pieces fit, is a set.

With the Sound Cylinders, we learn to discern between varying sound levels and qualities. There is only one red cylinder that sounds exactly the same as its blue counterpart.

It takes lots of attentive listening to find the matching pairs!

At last, discovering the matching sets and pairing them down the middle...

Wow, I really concentrated!

An extension of this activity might involve grading the paired sounds (from loudest to softest.)

Sounds, sounds, sounds are all around us...

Letter sounds are the smallest units of phonemic awareness, upon which spoken and written language are built. We enjoy learning about sounds, at first orally with spoken word and singing games, rhymes, story books, literature circles, etc. Later, we explore the forms combined with the phonetic sounds of individual letters, still keeping it playful and always fun.

Below: "Can you put the m-m-m by the maps? The f-f-f by the fish? The c-c-c by the cars? Jump up and down 10 times, do a somersault, and touch your nose 3 times. Now go find the m-m-m."

No "drill and kill" of the love of learning at Seabury School! Learning is fun!

There are so many ways to develop the dexterity to manipulate writing tools. Handling implements and tools, such as basters and tongs, are a great place to start; Tracing is wonderful for the child who is already practicing with a pencil. With Valentine's Day upcoming, heart tracing motivates many of us!

Heart to heart happiness...

Putting sounds together, blending them, decoding, recalling... many gradually developed skills unite as we begin to read. We love starting with word families, in this case "am," such as jam, Pam, ham, ram, Sam, tam, etc. As reading individual words becomes more familiar and comfortable, we'll make and illustrate our own story books using the words we are learning to read!

And then we enjoy bringing our own books home to read... we love surprising our families!

Building a safer world

Since we heard about the earthquake in Haiti, the Bear Cubs have truly taken it in with their whole beings. Raising money, learning about tectonic plates and exploring how easily blocks can fall when the "plates" below are moving, have caused us to do an analysis of our outdoor playhouse. The Bear Cubs decided that we would practice our building skills, just in case we were called to Haiti to help rebuild the country. We are busy with the "tools of the trade," joining hearts and hands to build a world of hope...

Healing our heart's home, one hammering heartbeat at a time!

Judith