6 years, 1 month/3 years, 11 months.

Nerds gotta nerd.  These guys read quietly and independently at the library after school for about 45 minutes today.

6 years, 1 months/3 years, 11 months.

Tiger cubs at the Bronx zoo!

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Acting like animals":

Hi Mamas and Papas,

We began our week talking about our feeling chart and thinking about
how we move from happy to sad feelings and back again. Children gave
examples: when someone shares it helps me feel happy, when my friend
says unkind words I feel sad, when I cuddle I feel happy, and when I
have a boo boo a bandaid feels better. We also read From Head To Toe
and people took turns to go in the circle and act like wild animals.
The class guessed what animal they were acting out. It was wild. There
were gentle and wild wing flapping, kicking of heels, howling,
scratching, roaring, and a little bit of spinning round. Who knew we
had such acting ability?

During our last tumbling class with Alexis people were seen rolling
over and over and over on the mats. In the classroom we let the
children do a retelling of The Three Little Pigs. They knew the story
like the backs of their hands. Then we acted it out. The children
chose whether they wanted to be the peddler, the mama pig, the three
little pigs, or the big bad wolf. One person chose to be an audience
member. Guess who your child chose? We reminded people not to really
eat the pigs and most acted accordingly. Someone had the idea of using
our family tree as the apple tree in the story. In the end we all
enjoyed a nice pot of wolf stew.

The children retold The Three Bears too, and afterwards we acted it
out. We had eight bears, six Goldilocks, and one audience member. The
acting was superb with deep voices, middle sized voices, and squeaky
little bear voices. Goldilocks fell out of chairs and slept soundly
when the Bears returned.

Five sleepers on Wednesday.

We wrote a list of animals to act out in the big room during a game of
stop and go. The children came up with fast and slow animals,
fluttering and slithering animals. They acted out all of the above as
well as singing the animal sounds. We ran like a cheetah (the
favorite), back and forth and back and forth across the big room. When
it was time to be a sloth, one person just couldn't shake their
cheetah feet.

We are continuing to add to our Acts of Kindness list. We talk some
about the Golden Rule. Everyone agrees they like when friends invite
them to play, share, and take turns.

Next week, animals that fly.

Have a wild weekend,
Therese

6 years, 1 month/3 years, 11 months.

Poor baby finally got the bug that has been plaguing the rest of us for weeks.

6 years, 1 month/3 years, 10 months.

The stars finally aligned for a great day of sledding!  The kids are the perfect age for sledding--happy to go independently or with other people, able to pull their sleds up the hill by themselves, and tough enough to handle crashes as long as there is a thermos of hot chocolate in the wings for disasters.

After a busy morning of sledding, we were off to PS 282 for Graham's indoor soccer game.  L to R, Graham, Elias, Linus.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Can dogs read?":

Hi y'all,

This week we reread our list of how to treat animals. We read Anna's
email of how to behave when Colt visits our classroom; the lists were
almost exactly alike. Anna is Stellan's aunt. We read a book about
Colt the reading dog and made a list of questions for him. We read
another classroom book about helping animal friends.

On Wednesday we revised our list into two parts: things we know about
dogs and things we want to know. We reread Any Kind of Dog, a story
about a boy who really wants a dog but his mother says it's too much
trouble. We talked about why dogs wear collars and how to find a
missing dog.

Colt arrived and immediately wanted to sit in people's laps. He was
amazingly gentle and friendly. The children responded similarly. Most
wanted Colt to sit in their laps. Everyone who wanted got to pet Colt
bunches. We read our list of questions to Anna and Colt but the
children answered almost every question themselves! Why do dogs bark?
Why do dogs have fur? Why do dogs wear collars? Why do dog toys
squeak? Anna read two books about dogs while the children listened
intently.

We have had plenty of time to play in the big room allowing for castle
and rocket ship building in the block area, sleeping in the rocket
ships- which are sometimes cribs, airplane rides in the jungle gym,
and tricycling galore.

Friday we read Nuts To You! about a squirrel who came into someone's
house but was lured out with nuts. We sorted, labeled, cracked, and
ate, four kinds of nuts. Then we crumpled brown paper to use as
pretend nuts. They were hidden in the big room and all the little
squirrels had to hunt for their supper. It was pretty exciting. We
read about squirrels hibernating and later in another book, we found
out that bears like to hunt and eat squirrels.

Next week we will act out some stories.

Have a great weekend,
Therese

6 years, 1 month/3 years, 10 months.

Connor's motto is to let no snowbank lie undisturbed!

6 years, 1 month/3 years, 10 months.

Two sick and housebound boys took a break from their busy schedule of movie watching with dry cereal and juice boxes to take a nap.

6 years, 1 month/3 years, 10 months.

Jumping jacks, indoor soccer, and movie afternoon.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Bears, pigs, and billy goats":

Dear Parents,

We began our week reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Actually, we
began by making porridge, then while it was cooling we read. We made a
list comparing the bears in Goldilocks to real bears. Real bears don't
wear fancy clothes, know how to make porridge, or sit in chairs. Real
bears live in the forest in caves, although someone did point out that
the three bears' house was in the forest too. When we finally went to
eat our porridge we felt that it was cold. Some children agreed that
Goldilocks would not have eaten it, but we did. After snacks we read
another version of the story. Someone said, "It's the same story." It
was, but the the children noticed the pictures were more like a
cartoon in the second book. We had a honey bear to add honey to
people's porridge.

Beanie and Tilly brought in three other versions of Goldilocks. The
children noticed that in one book the bears ate soup instead of
porridge, while another was almost exactly the same as one of ours.

We played animal bingo. Each card has animals in four different
habitats. After one round we realized some cards were missing. Some of
the children helped make new cards by drawing the missing animals:
horse, pig, wolf, giraffe, buffalo, and rhino.

We read The Three Little Pigs and worked with red Mexican clay from
the earth. After much rolling, pinching, pounding, and squeezing with
our strong fingers, hands, and arms, we created many different
sculptures. Some sculptures created were: a penguin, a mountain, a
triangle, an island, a police jet, a camera, a "load-oda" ("something
that animals try to eat another animal"), a car, a pancake, a
snowplow, a police fighter, a ball, a tower, and a "hiber-tighter"
("it helps people who need sooooooo much help!"). We could all use one
of those.

In the yard, our first spring baby worm was found. There was much
excitement and talk about what to feed him and where to build his new
and improved house.

We read two versions of The Three Billy Goats Gruff and went right to
work building bridges. We first worked in pairs building with soft
blocks. Everyone built crossable bridges. Then we worked with strips
of paper to see whether we could figure out ways of folding or rolling
the paper to form bridges. Then we handed out tape to stick them to
larger pieces of paper. They are hanging in the cubby area.

We reviewed our baby chick rule list in preparation for a pet visit to
our classroom next week. We revised the list to How to Treat Animals.
People agreed if we yell it would scare an animal away.

On Friday we played a game of cat and mouse. Everyone agreed that we
would not really scratch or eat the mice. The game was like Duck Duck
Goose. Afterwards when we played in the big room most people played a
family game. The family had two puppies. One was a safety dog and one
was a scared dog.

Friday everybody but two fell asleep.

Next week we will have a real dog visit the classroom.

Stay warm,
Therese

6 years/3 years, 10 months.

Graham is a very lucky kid to have such wonderful friends.

6 years/3 years, 10 months.

Is that Graham or BB-8?  Hard to tell.  Thank you Nana!

6 years/3 years, 10 months.

Someone save Daddy!  Hats by Grammy!

6 years/3 years, 10 months.

Chuko ramen!  Connor loved it.  Graham, not so much.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Earth animals":

Hello everyone,

We began our week with the Daily News. During circle anyone who wants
to can share a tidbit of news with the class which we will write down
and post. The first one was informative with many sharing about their
traveling adventures.

We read Cookie's Week about a mischievous cat and then made a list of
pets we know. The list consisted of cats, dogs, frogs, fish, birds,
bunnies, spiders, guinea pigs, and bugs. Some animals were mentioned
but everyone agreed are not usually kept as pets were alligators,
bats, and owls. Someone said the alligator was too big and would eat
you out of house and home. Another added, besides, it might bite you.

We read two books about the Earth. They both confirmed what we already
knew: animals can only live on one planet in our solar system.
Everyone got a chance to use their sense of touch to feel something in
the Feely Box and think about what animal it felt like. After feeling,
one person wanted to know if there was a real animal inside and if we
were going to get it out. The other children said it wasn't real
because we couldn't hear it making any sounds or scratching. We
guessed two days in a row feeling and thinking about completely
different types of animals.

In the yard we have been continuing to run, sometimes being chased,
swing, swing, swing, and dig in the sandbox. People are making sand
pies, cakes, and cupcakes. We have added some trucks to the mix too.

Quiet time has been quiet. Tuesday half the people fell asleep.

We made scrambled eggs and reminisced about our baby chicks. We talked
about what the difference is in an egg we can eat and one that has a
baby chick in it. We compared our egg shells to the baby  chicks' egg
shells we had saved. We called Farmer Eric to see if we could face
time with our baby chicks to see how they're doing now. (His idea)
Still waiting a call back. Must be a busy farm. We used a hand held
manually operated compound machine to scramble our eggs. We counted
how many simple machine were on our old fashioned mixer. The children
were able to identify many. Excitedly.

Tumbling with Alexis went well. Yay! While some tumbled in the big
room, others read books about animals in the classroom. We acted like
animals, domestic and wild. We oinked, slithered, mooed, had trunks,
made long necks using arms, and got small into little shells.

Friday our spaceship turned into an airplane with a family traveling
to California from London. Many babies and lots of carry-ons boarded
the plane too. The soft blocks were boxes of chocolates being
exchanged for money and then hidden in a baby cats' den in what used
to be our jungle gym. One little monkey kept borrowing boxes of
chocolates and running to the top of his tree aka jungle gym. There
was plenty of other activity but much too fast to interpret. Friends
were overheard sharing tricycles, taking turns, and negotiating games.

We took turns in circle sorting the plastic animals into groups. There
were only two unidentifiable animals in our box. The children debated
if one was a wildebeest or a bison. We read a book about feelings and
played a mirror game. First everyone copied one person and then we
played in pairs. We talked about what our reflections looked like in
the mirror and compared that to our shadows on the carpet. We asked
what makes our shadow? Everyone got a turn to look at their own
reflection in a mirror before playing in the big room.

Next week we compare real animals with folk and fairytale animals.

It was a lovely week,
Therese