Exploring Color

In The first 6 weeks of school, the main priority in the classroom is building our classroom community. We stick to our schedule which allows the children to assume what is to come next in their day, relieving anxieties of the unknown. This week we’ve also introduced specials and met Laura our librarian for story time, Sara in mucin class, and Darcy in P.E. For the next few weeks we will continue to learn about each other and deepen our comfort levels while in school.

It’s no doubt that play is at the center of focuses, both student and teachers alike. Children have jumped into play in the morning, building bonds with one another and building on their skills with the materials we have in the room. These first few weeks of school is always a fun time to explore some concepts they already know, and this week we started by exploring the colors red and orange! Over the next few weeks we’ll continue to explore primary and secondary colors and the fun science of color mixing!

The beautiful weather has also allowed us so much time outdoors! In the beginning of the year Hannah and I introduced our “1000 hours outside” tracker to the children. The average child consumes 1200 hours of screen time a year, and in this day and age sometimes it feels like screens are impossible to escape. As we know media and screen time can serve a purpose, like right now, I am able to share your child’s week with you, but that doesn’t go without each of us spending time looking at a screen… 1000 hours outdoors mission is to combat screen time with time outdoors! We’ve been tracking (as best we can) our hours and so far have reached 10 hours outside while here at school! We’ll continue to track our progress throughout the year!

Lastly, we received a special delivery on Friday! Some little critters arrived with some paperwork. We sat down at morning meeting and unboxed our package and read about what these critters could possibly be?! The box was labeled: caution live insects, so we had some guesses as to what could be inside. Our guesses included: ants, stink bugs, fire ants, butterflies, flies and spiders! After taking a look for ourselves at these critters and reading the paperwork we discovered they are monarch caterpillar larvae!

We took a walk to collect milkweed for the insects, and set up their habitat in the classroom. Our classroom library was also stocked with books about these new creatures! Over the next few weeks we will dive into our first science study, learning about the lifecycle, migration and conservation awareness of the monarch butterfly!

Our muddy boots club took a walk to find all the classroom trees; Aspen, Hemlocks and our own Oak tree!

Have a lovely long weekend!