6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

Good thing Will has these guys around to help him build his Christmas presents.

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

We biked/jogged around Prospect Park on a crisp sunny day.  The boys made it the whole way...except for the giant hill which is for walking as far as we are concerned.

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

Playdate with Ellis/Bryce/Evryn.  FYI in case anyone is looking for a good way to extract a barely-loose tooth--eat a rice krispie treat in below-freezing temperatures.  Worked for Graham!

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "More Guitar!":

Dear everyone,

The children all got to choose a box to use for their guitar. We
painted inside and out. We added glitter glue and glitter glitter.
Everyone chose different colored rubber bands to add for the strings.
We took turns plucking and describing what happened to the strings.
The children said they were wobbly, blurry, bouncy, fiery, wiggly,
twirly, salty, and colorful. “They look like two strings when they
pluck,” someone noticed. We talked about the word vibration. We reread
Ben’s Trumpet and saw how the drumsticks in the illustrations looked
like many sticks indicating vibration.

We counted how many cans we had to choose from for our drums. Everyone
chose a color of duct tape to decorate their drum, and cut the tape to
cover the cans. Afterwards we took turns beating patterns on our drums
and copied each other. Some children played small sounds with one
finger while others banged with whole hands loudly.

Next week we will make the much anticipated papier mache maracas.

Half the class slept on Wednesday. Quiet time remains quiet.

Have a healthy weekend!  

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

No cavities!  Graham and Connor are taking a soccer class together, which is great in terms of scheduling and not so great in terms of sibling rivalry.  

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

Graham is learning a lot of important things in school.  This is part of his current non-fiction study.  

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 9 months.

Party-venue scoping at Kids 'n Action.  We didn't think we could be responsible for watching a dozen 6/7 year-olds here, but still had a fun afternoon.

6 years, 11 months/4 years, 8 months.

Dogman: the morning comics of our day.  

Therese's e-mail of the week, entitled "How much wood?":

Dear parents,

The children worked all week with wood. They stacked, glued, stacked,
and glued some more. We used Christmas tree stumps, alphabet blocks,
spools, and other small pieces of wood. On the third day, we painted
the sculptures with metallic paint.

Friday we did the Hokey Pokey at the start of circle. We listened to
New York, New York and danced our way to snack time. We listened to
different kinds of music, jazz and acoustic Arabian, during snack time
and heard guitars, trumpets, and maracas. We read Rap A Tap Tap and
Ben’s Trumpet to get ready for the music unit starting next week.

In the big room we played babies and fire, and ran, ran, ran many laps
saving babies.

A few children decided they had boo-boos on their fingers and walked
around with a tissue to soak up the pretend blood from the cuts. Maybe
inspired by a bloody hangnail a few days ago.

We listened to a few stories at lunch, and everyone had good listening
ears and chewing mouths.  We read and sang the Itsy Bitsy Spider
before quiet time with quiet voices, everyone loved the long story
version of the song. By popular demand, we finished We Built A
Climber. A few kids remembered exactly where we left off the day
before.

Thanks for the boxes. We have plenty!

Have a fantastic weekend,
Therese and Anna