The Beginning of the End (of Preschool)

Documentation for the week of May 15-19, 2017 

Stumps did not Stump the Rainbow Class!

There was a very interesting situation that occurred on the stumps this week. It was truly impressive to watch the children negotiate and problem solve through it! At first, most of the Rainbow Class was hopping from stump to stump in a circle. Oree and Bayla were experimenting with jumping over one stump to the next one in the circle. They were very nervous about it, but also brave! Ariel F. and Lucy have mastered this skill, and were also attempting to skip stumps as they jumped. Imie, Hillel, and Leah were jumping from one stump to another without skipping. The challenge in this work was to make sure that the stump that one child was hoping to jump to was open for them without another child already standing there. This was difficult with so many friends on the stumps at one time! Everyone was able to use calm voices and ask their friends nicely to move so that they could reach their individual goals.

Several friends then chose to run away and play Elsa and Ana- a game they had previously started playing and forgotten about. Hillel and Eliya both wanted to be Olaf. They each tried to convince the other to be Christoph, but neither of them wanted to be. Leah and Oree took over and created a guessing game to decide who would be Olaf. Hillel won the game. Eliya tried again to convince Hillel to let him be Olaf. Leah suggested that there could be two Olafs since there was more than one Ana and Elsa. Both boys disagreed. They decided to play another guessing game. Leah led the game this time, and Eliya one. Once all of the roles were decided, they went into their imaginary play.

Lucy, Imie, and Ariel F. chose to stay on the stumps. They were able to negotiate their way around with fewer people much more easily. Then something interesting happened: Oree and Bayla returned to the stumps and wanted to sit on them. Since they had been jumping earlier, they understood that the children who were jumping needed a stump to be open if they were going to jump to it. Without much discussion at all, Oree and Bayla continued to move from one stump to another and sit so that their friends could continue their jumping work. This went on for several minutes. At the same time, Imie was afraid to jump from a certain stump, because the space in between was larger so she kept jumping all the way around the circle in one direction and then returned around the circle in the other direction. Lucy and Ariel F. were continuing to jump in one direction, but they were skipping some stumps and not skipping others. 

The children's ability to work through this challenge with such ease shows how much they have grown. They were able to plan, predict, and execute their personal work while having a vast awareness of the friends around them. The children respected each other and each other's work. There were times that the children grew frustrated, but they did not lash out or give up. They took breaths, calmed their bodies down, and used their words kindly when they asked a friend to move. 

Human Piles and Human Pyramids

On Tuesday afternoon the children were getting a bit rowdy. They were singing and dancing while holding hands. At one point they chose to pile on top of each other near the library mirror. They were having lots of fun until two friends got hurt in the human pile.

Morah Tara suggested that instead of a pile, they could try to create a human pyramid! They looked at a picture of a human pyramid together, and started to mimic the picture. This moved into an exploration of body types. Our friends who were very tall and strong needed to be on the bottom while our friends who were smaller needed to be on top. The children spoke to each other about what their bodies were like in relation to each other, and decided where each friend should be in the pyramid. Hillel really wanted to be on the top and Lucy really wanted to be on the bottom, but they realized that that wouldn't be safe for everyone's bodies. We built a few human pyramids after that!

End-of-the-Year Artwork

We began to work on an art project for the children to take home at the end of the year. On Monday we painted canvases and let them dry. 

Next we gave the children papers with boxes on them. Each box had the name of a child in our class underneath it. The children worked to draw a picture or write a message to each of their friends in our class. After that, they cut the boxes out and found a bowl with that child's name on it. 

Next week we will use mod podge to put the papers along with a class photo onto the canvases! We thought that this would be a great project for the end of the year, because it allows the children to express themselves, provide a caring gift to each of their classmates, and have something to hang on their wall at home to remember the Rainbow Class!