Week 7.1: Orin and Pippa's Final Project

Today Orin and Pippa presented to the rest of Earth Group on a topic of their choice.  Orin loves racing cars with his brother Isaac.  Orin expressed his love of competition by making two cars out of magnatiles and racing them with Lysander's assistance.

It took Orin less than 6 minutes to make both cars- fast, fast, fast....

Both cars are the same, and it's the driver that wins not the car

Orin refitted one of the cars with wings,  and as such, the flying car was victorious

Reflecting on this experience, Orin decided that the best part of his presentation was racing with Lysander.  He said it's easy to build cars with magna-tiles and that he could teach anyone.  Lastly, he would have liked more time to race the cars.

Pippa was inspired to share a princess dance with the group as she saw a program with Cinderella dancing.  Pippa feels cool and happy when she dances.  But spinning wasn't all the Pippa did: we saw leg kicks, shimmy to the left and right, arms outstretched to the sky and down to the ground, and toe points.  Upon reflection, there were two things that Pippa would change about her performance:  she would wear a dress and perform for the entire class.

Week 6.2: Wheeee, spinning on the big wheel ...

On Tuesday, as a group we explored what it feel to spin on the big wheel at the playground.  I was quite surprised when the children made up their own game:

Frog in the Middle

Can't get it out

Take a big stick in

And stir it all about

One child stay in the middle and chose another to join them.  Then those two children spun around in circles as the other children spun the bog wheel around.  When the song stopped, the wheel stopped as the children co-operated ...

 I then asked the children to express how they felt through finger painting.  And here is what they said:

Alexis liked being in the middle more than pushing.  She had fun and was happy.

Jeffery felt strong, he said he could push the big wheel all by himself.

Lysander was excited, his heart was beating fast and he was happy.

Orin felt really hot outside and he liked running around very fast and he felt happy

Pippa felt dizzy but liked singing and spinning

Tai liked really strong while pushing the big wheel

Pauline felt happy all over

Week 6.1: If you could write a story about anything ...

Today we read the book From Pictures to Words: a book about making a book by Janet Stevens.  We used it as inspiration for the children to create their own stories.  Once they illustrated their stories, I wrote down the story.  I read each story to the class during storytime.  This is a sample of what they created and how they felt about it.

Alexis wrote a story starring the letter A, which played "Ring Around the Rosie" with other letter A's

Tai wrote a story about a superhero defeating a monster so that a child can sleep

Lysander wrote a story about circle guy transforming into a king after he slays a shark

The children were very excited to have the class listen to their stories and ask them questions.  In the afternoon, Pippa read her story to Mila, and then they took turns retelling the story.

Week 5.4: Pippa's Flight of the Bumblebee ....

Last week the children performed a "pollination" ritual to Flight of the Bumblebee music.  In our previous grouptime, the children decided to make bumble bee fighter jets and flowers from apple trees.  The bee children practiced flying energetically to the music.  Their facial expressions showed their delight in meeting their flower friends and showing how they felt to make a connection with the flowers.  The flowers received pollen, and turned into apples and the bees were able to make honey from the flower nectar and deposit it into the honey jar.

The exchange of pollen and nectar, a friendship is born

Honey bees putting honey on the honey jar

The grand denouement: the bees fly away

The children enjoyed the music and making the flowers and bee jets.  While the boys were very eager to get to the end of the play so that they could fly their planes.  I couldn't help but notice how the children expressed themselves:  the flowers stood quietly, still and patiently waited for the bees, so that they could reveal their apples. The bees moved quickly, with a sense of purpose.