Hello St. Croix families,
Happy New Year! We trust you all had a wonderful break with
lots of fun family time and giggles throughout the day. From what we have heard,
all the children had a super break.
First, I would like to share about the forced bulbs – the
paper whites/narcissus flowers. Every
year of my 21 years of teaching, from Early Childhood (3-6) to Upper
Elementary (4th-6th grade), I have forced bulbs with
children in the month of December. Of course, each level has its various
science lessons but all levels have the BEAUTIFUL sense of wonder that comes
from watching nature unfold in front of one’s eyes. This year, without any
exaggeration whatsoever, the children were more moved by the growth and
flowering of their bulb than I have seen in a long time. It was a sheer joy to
see them tend to their bulb each day; observe it, draw it, measure it and be
filled with anticipation as the buds emerged. It was as fun for them as it was
for us! :0 We hope you were able to see just a twinkle of that joyfulness when
the bulbs bloomed in full at home. Most of the children reported upon their return
this past week, that they their predictions were incorrect and that the flowers
burst forth sooner than they had expected. This year so far, we have done many
lessons with the sense of smell and we are hopeful that these flowers, once
bloomed, treated the children with their constant, potent scent. PLEASE hold on to the bulb! This week, we
will be having lessons on what to do with a finished forced bulb and how to
prepare it for planting in the Spring at their home.
The children have returned taller, eager and filled with
news of missing teeth, family visits and happiness to be rejoined with their friends.
If three words were to summarize our short week, they would be: “building,” “washing”
and “a sense of accomplishment.” “Building,“ because the new work we have on
our Practical Life shelf, a small Erector set (also known as Meccano), is very
popular with all. At first, they didn’t see it but once one child had
discovered it, they all wanted to set their hands onto these metal pieces with
nuts, bolts, allen and open end wrenches etc. for building things. The next
word that characterizes our first few days back is “washing” because not only
do we have a new water transfer and wringing work with a huge sponge, but also we
have a new routine of washing our snack and lunch dishes after recess. They
have loved doing this work; it is building team work, problem solving and
cooperation since we don’t have a sink in the classroom yet! We are creative
though. Also, under “washing” is the still–ever-popular personal care work for cleaning
and cutting one’s nails (hands and feet as we discovered this week). The final
word of this week is “a sense of accomplishment” because, with our return and with
the new year, the first group activity we did was to renew and review our Five
Basic Needs: Survival, Power, Belonging, Fun and Freedom. We had done this
activity in the first few days of school, back in September when we were
developing our Classroom Charter. Now, as we renewed and reviewed our needs,
their sense of Power (which is also known as a sense of personal mastery)
became vividly clear to them. The children realized now how much they know /
feel powerful about as compared to previously. They wrote and drew pictures of
tying shoes, doing math facts, sewing, telling time etc. This gave them a
tremendous sense of accomplishment to see how they had become so much more
powerful than earlier in the year. And, this time when they created their Circle
of Needs, they wrote words to
describe instead of just pictures, as in September and many children realized
that they could actually write in cursive the Five Basic Needs instead of
having to rely on one of us write the words, as we had done in September.
Finally, we closed the week with another version of the
Third Great Lesson, The Coming of Humans since so many were absent when we had originally
presented the lesson. Those who had been present helped me give the lesson;
this being excellent preparation for next year when, as 2nd graders,
they will help with all these Great Lessons. We will be having our final two
Great Lessons this upcoming week: The Story of Numbers and the Story of
Writing. After learning how special humans are as compared to other mammals, we
continue the Great Stories to teach them about the contributions that humans
have made to civilization in the areas of language/communication and math. This
lesson reiterates the notion of the one’s Cosmic Task, which we tell the
children all living things have. We already introduced this concept when we
talked about the Comic Task of the living bulb; its task is to produce a
flower. As humans, we all have a Cosmic task and our life is to discover what
that task is. At this age, between 6 and 12 years old, children actually think
quite a bit about their future and about their origins. They want to know how they
came to be on earth and what they will be as adults. So our final two Great Lessons/Stories will be a revisiting of
the concept of the Cosmic Task as we talk about the contribution of other
humans who have come before us. Lastly, this will be coupled with lessons on the
Fundamental Needs of Humans as we continue to discover our unique role/task
within our universal community of humans.
A short but heavenly week!
Some of the pics are from the last days of December.
