6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

Waiting for the bus en route to a play date at Stellan and Axel's place.  

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

 Fallen leaf season in Prospect Park!

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

While Will kicked off the Old First Nursery School tree sale (4 more weeks and both our financial and time commitments to OFNS will be done!), the boys and I took advantage of a beautiful day to go to the Central Park Zoo and explore the park.

R.I.P. Marlon Brando - 2005ish - November 24, 2017

Marlon went to the great sunbeam in the sky today.  After seeming in a lot of pain yesterday, he seemed to feel better and spent the morning sleeping in the sun and lying on the table while we tried to eat around him.  Despite all of his troubles, he was affectionate and purring until the very end.  We hope he could feel how much we love him.

We are heartbroken to lose him.  He was such a special cat whose greatest love was to be with our family.  He sat in the middle of open books and magazines, puzzles, card games, and magnetile structures, looking to get petted; was impossible to get off the table during meals; head butted as an effective strategy to get attention; stole spots on the couch the moment they were vacated; made friends with every serviceman and visitor who came to the door; and put up with all sorts of harassment from visiting children.  He spent a decade sneezing on our furniture, barfing on the carpet, and pooping in the tub and still managed to win us over with his wonderful personality.  He loved chin scratches and ear scratches, getting brushed, batting at string, and curling up to watch a movie together.  We miss you so much already, Marlon.

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

Happy Thanksgiving!  Will cooked a delicious turkey on the smoker and everything else turned out well.  Thank you Nana, Uncle David and Aunt Meghan for driving up to share the day (not to mention your stuffing, drinks, and Christmas preparation items) with us!

We told the boys about Marlon.  Graham is sad but not distraught.  Connor doesn't really understand. Both keep asking for a cat for Christmas.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "We are family tree":

Hi everyone,

Monday we added spikes to our fruit. The children used hand-eye
coordination and fine motor skills to poke pipe cleaners through holes
in the fruit, and twist. Then they squeezed glue and added their
family photos. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.

In preparation for our feast we washed, peeled, and boiled sweet
potatoes. One person said they knew the pot was hot because you could
see steam. When they were cooked, the children took turns adding a
tiny bit of brown sugar, butter, and cinnamon. Everyone got a to use
the electric hand mixer.

The next day we guessed how many cranberries were in the bag for our
cranberry sauce. Guesses ranged from 5 to a billion. We counted,
washed, and boiled the berries after adding water and sugar. We also
made butter from heavy cream. We filled four containers, turned on the
timer, and shook, shook, shook ‘em up. People were great about passing
it to a friend when they felt too tired to shake any longer.

In the morning, before the feast, we read My Many Colored Days and
passed our feelings jar as each person said a color that represents
their feeling. The responses: yellow for excitement because of the
feast, purple for mad, blue for sad because of a fall on the stoop,
pale pink for happy because of the feast, and more.

The family feast went off without a hitch. We sang Way Down Yonder By
The Sweet Gum Tree as each family hung their fruit on the tree.
Afterwards, we ate a delicious feast.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Therese

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 7 months.

Baby's first trip to the ER!  Connor tripped while running down our block and his forehead (luckily above the hairline) hit the corner of a stoop, splitting his tissue down to the bone.  We assessed the situation at home (once I got the bulk of the blood cleared away and took a look with the iPhone flashlight, it was obvious we needed professional help), grabbed the iPad and snacks, and we rushed to the Methodist ER where we waited a couple hours for a plastic surgeon to stitch him up.

Connor was a perfect patient--focused on "Sing," "Daniel Tiger" and "Yo Gabba Gabba" and Graham was a very supportive big brother.  At home, he desperately wanted to help Connor and in the hospital, he got worried and told me that he was sorry he got mad at Connor sometimes and just wanted him to live.

After we were done at the ER, we got a pizza (and ate the whole thing!  a first for our family) and took a cab home.  After we got out of the cab, Connor pointed out the corner that got him.  Upon closer examination, we found an entire lock of his hair embedded in it!  Something for the memory box for sure.

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 6 months.

Graham has been teaching Connor some of the things he is learning at his piano lessons.  This is a go-fish type game meant to teach the names of the notes.

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 6 months.

We received heart-breaking news this week that sweet Marlon has an inoperable and very aggressive tumor in his mouth.  It probably originated from his chronic nasal inflammation.  He is barely eating (his favorite pastime) and has been secluding himself in our bedroom by the radiator, far from his usual extreme underfoot behavior.  Present wrapping drew him out today, though.  There is nothing he loves more than rolling all over the wrapping paper, changing the task at hand from "wrapping presents" to "rubbing Marlon's belly."

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "A sweet gum family tree grows":

Dear you all,

Monday we did the Feely Box again. The guesses were: a porcupine,
something spiky, a ball, a sea anemone, and something that fell off of
a tree. It was the spiky fruit that fell off of a sweet gum tree.

We also had leaves from three trees. The children identified which
leaves came from the sweet gum tree by comparing them to a picture in
Have You Seen Trees? We talked about how the leaves were alike and
different. They noticed how many points each leaf had, the different
sizes, shapes, and colors. They also noticed that they all have veins
and stems.

Before eating snacks the children took turns sorting the leaves into
three piles. Identifying and sorting: science and math skills.

We examined the spiky thing that fell from the sweet gum tree in our
neighborhood. We asked the children to look for them on the way to and
from school. Someone brought in a few small pine cones, the same ones
we had on our science table.

The children worked in pairs twisting long pieces of brown paper for
the branches of our sweet gum family tree.

Eight sleepers on Monday. And Wednesday. One person asked to go lay down early.

Family pictures, family pictures, family pictures, please. We are
short three families. As opposed to three short families.

We read Little Blue and Little Yellow, and the children worked in
pairs mixing blue and yellow. Some painted one sheet of paper while
others couldn’t paint enough. The next day while Frank showed everyone
the banana pose, we practiced using scissors to cut the paper into
leaves for our family tree.

Friday morning we glued our leaves to the branches. We painted the
fruit for our tree. We punched holes in plates for the spikes on our
sweet gum fruit. It took about a week. It was like a tree making
factory. The class worked furiously.

We looked at everyone’s family photos and talked about where they were
in the picture and in what season it was taken. Some were inside,
outside, in winter, in summer, on a boat, at Coney Island, near corn
fields, by fences, and at home.

Next week, we complete our tree fruits and prepare food for our feast.
The family feast will happen on Wednesday at 11:15 am. Each family
will place their family fruit on the tree. We will eat, drink, and be
merry.

Have a lovely weekend,
Therese

6 years, 9 months/4 years, 6 months.

Last game of the season/medal day at soccer!  Graham's team (l to r): Archer, Lily, Honor, Graham, Kieren, Henry, Ellen.  Both boys were very pleased with their medals.  They had a great time this season and learned a ton.  Thank you to Ben for coaching both teams despite reluctant participation from his kids!  Graham and Connor are going to take an indoor soccer class this winter to keep their skills/mileage up.

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "It's Mine!"

Hi everyone,

We started our week reading Leo Leonni's It's Mine! The children said
the three frogs in the book were not sharing or being kind. We noticed
when they were not sharing, some were frowning. However, when they
shared at the end of the book, everyone was all smiles. We see
similarities in our classroom.

The Greedy Python by Eric Carle gave us another example of someone not
wanting to share and the consequences of their behavior. We also have
been reading The Grouchy Ladybug.

We read Have You Seen Trees? and wrote down a list of trees we knew.
While half the class posed with Frank in yoga, we voted on one tree to
create for our family tree. Reminder: bring family photos!! (Insert
smiley faces here) We drew pictures of trees. We noticed that most
trees have the same color trunks.

We sang Byum Byum By Bubblegum in honor of the tree that won by a
landslide: the sweet gum tree. We blew big pretend bubbles and popped
them. The children do realize there is no gum on the gum tree. Some
children said they had chewed gum while others looked puzzled. One
person shouted, “You don’t swallow it!” We talked about where the gum
and syrup come from, and what a baby tree is called.

We started creating our family tree. We added brown paint to brown
paper using animal feet stamps. Some children used scissors to
strengthen hand muscles while cutting pieces of felt and brown paper
to use as the bark. We squeezed as much glue as possible before adding
our bark to the tee trunk.

We read I Love Fall! and thought about the leaves on our tree outside.
The children said it is mostly still green with a little bit of
yellow. We asked what our Lincoln Logs are made of? After answering
wood, we noticed many other things in our classroom and the big room
that are made of wood too: tables, chairs, bench, floor, walls and
balcony in big room, our boat, carriage, and our big blocks.


Family photos, please! Did I say that already?

Brrrrrrrrr,

Therese

6 years, 8 months/4 years, 6 months.

Scenes from story time at OFNS.

6 years, 8 months/4 years, 6 months.

Action-packed day today!  Both boys had early soccer games (Connor had a break-out game and scored a pile of goals...then again, one of his opponents was still learning the no-hands rule so it might not have been a fair fight) which left us with time to take the boys to their second Broadway show--"School of Rock"!

Graham was really disappointed we couldn't get tickets to "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (TKTS only had singles which didn't seem like a great idea) but was blown away by the kids in "School of Rock," who sing and play their own instruments.  He was especially captivated by "If Only You Would Listen" (a song about kids wishing their parents would listen to them).

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "Mr. Bones has a heart":

Dear parents,

We began our week reading about our amazing bodies, inside and out. We
looked at pictures of where our hearts are and got to listen with a
stethoscope to each other's beating heart. We ran around the big room
and listened again to see if there was any change. We introduced our
doctor kit to the classroom and found out that many of us didn't feel
well, and needed shots. Thank goodness for all the doctors in the
house.

On Halloween we drew pumpkin faces to get ideas for carving our
pumpkin. We talked about the different shapes of eyes, noses, and
mouths. After the pumpkin was carved, the children helped scoop its
insides out.  We lit a candle, sang some Halloween songs, and read
some not too spooky books. Some of us could hardly wait to get in the
big room to run and act out our costume characters. We realized every
day is like Halloween around here. We had orange snacks and pumpkin
bread.

We read more books about our body and examined Mr. Bones. We felt our
own bodies for bones we saw on our classroom skeletons. We felt our
spines in our backs and sat up straight and tall.

While half the class was in yoga, we read about how our lungs are
similar to balloons. We blew up a few balloons to demonstrate. We
played a game of trying to keep the balloons in our circle and off the
ground. It was fun and filled with laughter.

Pastor Meeter took us on a tour of Old First Church. We went up and
down many stairs, we saw stained glass windows, two chandeliers, two
organs, Pastor Meeter's cassock, and his office. He also played both
organs for us. He told us air makes the pipes work and we could hear
it hissing. Someone said it sounded like water.

Friday we had a small class. Six people were out, of those, five were
not feeling well. One more person went home early who said their head
hurt.

We assembled our Me books and read them during circle. The children
are excited to bring them home next week.

We read I Was So Mad by Mercer Mayer. We reviewed our list of what to
do when we feel angry and added take a deep breath. We looked at our
feeling chart and people gave more examples of what makes us feel sad
or excited. We noticed the person in the book went from angry to
happy. What helped to change their feelings? The children answered,
friends. We thought about how to change our feelings when we feel sad
or mad. The children agreed friends help.

We did our first one minute meditation. We closed our eyes, sat
quietly, and thought about our breathing.

Please, oh please, bring a family photo (4x6 is a fine size) for our
family tree.

Next week, we continue talking about friends and begin our family tree.

Have a chilly weekend,

Therese