Hemlock Class

In the Hemlock Room, It is such a pleasure to see children settling into their routine, more readily engaging in new works. We started off this month by learning about corn, parts of a corn and how corn grows. We talked about turkeys and Parts of a turkey. They are enjoying making a Parts of a Corn and Turkey books. Tweezing kernels off an ear of Indian corn has become the favorite.  They are even going to use the kernels to make their paper corn.

We discussed about why some animals are busy preparing a hibernaculum to take a long deep sleep called hibernation. They were excited to learn why they take a deep sleep.

The story about Early pilgrims, why did they move out of their country, their journey in the Mayflower, and their life in a new country. We also talked about what are we thankful for.

The children happily participated in preparing cornbread and learned to make butter to enjoy in class.  As a part of the Thanksgiving tradition we had a Happy Thanksgiving meal with the children and recited the child’s Thanksgiving poem, which they practiced for quite some time.

New works like metal polishing, rice grinding, cinnamon grinding have been shown.  Many new thanksgiving theme songs and poems have been introduced.

We have been practicing some brain gym exercises and different breathing exercise to calm ourselves down.

Buckeye Class

This November we had our first conferences of the year.  It was wonderful getting to speak with most parents in person about your children and get a feel for how the children are doing from the parent’s perspective.

At circle we are talking about the peace bottles.  Each colored bottle represents a different virtue of peace.

         Red – Truth

         Orange – Personal Best

         Yellow – Peace

         Green – Friendship

         Blue – Kind Words

         Purple – Joy

Each day we focused on a different virtue and throughout the school year, if a conflict arises, we can think back to our peace bottles and remember to honor the virtues. We also brought out the peace rose.  The peace rose is something we keep on the shelf and the children can take it out if they need to have a conversation with another child to resolve a conflict.  The children take turns talking as they pass the rose back and forth.

Another circle topic this month was thankfulness.  We asked the children about what they are thankful for in their lives and they later got the chance to write it on a small leaf and hang it on our “thankfulness tree”.

We will also be having a thanksgiving feast at the end of the month.  We read the book Stone Soup which is about a community of people adding things they like to a soup so they can all enjoy it. Each child gets the opportunity to bring in a vegetable of their choice to add to our own stone soup that we will cook and eat together.  We also made butter by putting heavy whipping cream in a jar and shaking it.

We are continuing the nature walks that we began last month.  Every child is able to go on a nature walk every other week.  It is exciting to see how the forest changes as the weather gets colder.