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Painting with lavender

4/9/2020

An offering for the children of Room 9

While pruning the lavender bushes in her front yard, the teacher in Room 9 became intrigued by the dried buds on the end of the limbs. She noticed there were so many buds it was impossible to count - and some had seeds hanging from them.

Since lavender is naturally purple in hue, the idea of painting with a completely unnatural color scheme was intriguing. Red, orange, pink, and blue tempera paints were mixed with water to offer a saturated look. Watercolors would offer a muted look.

Using a large paintbrush makes it easy to cover the buds, while a small brush would offer an additional challenge towards intricacy. Use whatever you have handy at home - it will offer a beautiful process, no matter what!

Enjoy exploring materials together, collaboratively as a family or follow your child's lead.

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An Inventory of Familiar Sounds

4/9/2020

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An offering for the infants in Room 2

As the Room 2 teachers continue to ponder the relationship between humans and sound, they have been talking together about the emotional nature of hearing familiar and routinely heard sounds. They are imagining the infants in their home environments, experiencing sounds and further developing associations for them. They heard an example of an infant who can hear the garage door when their parent comes home, and responds by crawling in anticipation toward the door where they enter the house.

At school, the teachers and children have listened with the infants to the gurgle of the bottle warmer, a sign that their bottle is on its way. They have observed infants quickly relax at the sound of the noise machines being turned on for a nap, and one who even kicks and dances to the sound of the spray bottle after a diaper change.

What sounds are signals to the infants at home? How do the infants demonstrate that they have a relationship to a sound? What times are these relationships strongest, perhaps shared times, like meals? If you are taking walks or having time outside... are there sounds that are particular to the neighborhood (ex. construction) or the time of year (ex. birds singing) that infants are paying close attention to?

Attending to the sounds in the environment can be helpful in keeping us grounded and finding peace in difficult times, and infants are models at helping adults remember to tune into the present.

The teachers of Room 2 invite the families to share what sorts of sound relationships families see with their infants at home to compile an inventory of familiar "home" sounds of the Room 2 infants!

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Relationships with trees

4/9/2020

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An offering from Mentor Teacher Laura Freund

The children of Room 11 have spent the past year and a half forming a relationship with the tree at the bus stop across the street. Laura has been missing the tree as well as the children and offered this video to extend the experience at home.

What can you graph at your house? You can try a color walk and graph all the colors you see. Or use a graph to figure out what food is your family's favorite!

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A message from our pets

4/7/2020

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We have received a message from our beloved pets who are holding down the fort at school!
Click through the pictures to see what our little animal friends are up to.

Thank you to our Assistant Director, Marisa Wheeler, for taking dictation!

What messages do your children want to send back?
Do you have pets or stuffies who might like to correspond?

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Zumba

4/7/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 16 from Mentor Teacher Kayla Klinzing

Mentor Teacher Kayla was a former Zumba instructor. She created this video to continue dance parties with her class. In addition to offering an experience to engage in together, this also offers the children a glimpse into Kayla's life.

This is a great dance to follow along with inside or outside - just be sure to have a level dancing surface and plenty of space.

Questions to extend the experience
Can you move your body like she does?
Can you add your own moves?
Does it feel different to dance inside vs out?
What other music inspires you to move?

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Material Possibilities: Toilet Paper Rolls

4/6/2020

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An offering from Mentor Teacher Laura Freund

What other ideas can you come up with for toilet paper rolls? Make a puppet? Or family of rolls? Cut up and make jewelry? See how many you can stack at once?

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Empathy with Toddlers

4/6/2020

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An offering for the children and families of Room 5 from Resident Teacher Maria L.

Maria shared that prior to the school's closure, the teachers of Room 5 had been documenting, through videos, photos, and notes, the ways the children in their class interacted with baby dolls. Questions that were guiding their work included:

How do baby dolls impact the children's play?
How did the children demonstrate gentleness, kindness, and caring to the baby dolls?
How are teacher actions and parents actions contributing to the way they treat baby dolls?
- Do they provide a model for the children when they sing to the babies, hug them, and feed them?
How do children's empathetic and prosocial behaviors with baby dolls impact their relationships with their families peers, and teachers?

Possibilities to guide play at home:

Include a baby doll (or stuffie or other lovie) in daily routines
Ask your child what book baby or stuffie might like to read
Take photos of baby throughout the day and talk about the day with your child (and baby)
Set up a "surprise" (baby dolls or stuffies having a party or eating lunch) for your child to discover

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Invitations around climbing

4/6/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 3

While at school, some of the research questions the children and teachers of Room 3 were researching included:

What are the children interested in climbing on and why?
What concepts are the children exploring through climbing?
How does sound/texture/color influence what the children are climbing on?
What are children learning about cause and effect through their body movements?

The teachers offered these questions to guide and extend experiences at home:

What can be can be rearranged at home to offer different climbing structures for your children?
- Examples include rearranging various blocks at home, using boxes to create a climbing structure, or simply going outside and finding a new spot to explore!
What are you all noticing about how your child's body movements are changing at home?
What are they climbing at home?

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Making Homemade Finger Paint

4/3/2020

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An offering for the children of Room 10 from Mentor Teacher Mollie Lyne

First have everything ready :
* Pot for cooking
* 1/2 cup flour
* 1 cup of water
* 1/4 cup cold water
* food coloring
* bowls
* spoons

Medium heat on the stove

Put the flour and water in the pot.

Mix it together in the pot on the stove. Make sure to continue stirring to get the lumps out and to make sure it does not burn!
As it starts to stick together, it should start to become a ball and come away from the pot.

Add a 1/4 cup of cold water- slowly- to make it more of a consistency you are happy with. You can add more cold water until it feels good to you.

After it is a good consistency-
Split it into how many bowls you want (this is when you add the colors) - Mollie chose two bowls

Then add the food coloring of your choice.

Start mixing together.
Add more cold water if needed.
When it is done, you are ready to go FINGER PAINT!

Mollie and her roommates chose to set their paper outside, but you can do it anywhere:
* Large paper on a table in the house
* Large paper on the floor
* Small pieces of paper
* large paper outside

Mollie shared that there are many different strategies to use when painting
*paint with one hand
*paint with both hands
*group your fingers to make different shapes

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Sleeping Bunnies

4/3/2020

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Sleeping bunnies is one of our favorite songs at Boulder Journey School. It has been sung across all of our classrooms for years!

Mentor Teacher Lauren Berry and her sister (Boulder Journey School Teacher Education Program Alum) Paige sing Sleeping Bunnies for everyone.