Gather

What an amazing first week we had! The children are making fast friendships and jumped right into the open-ended materials concept.

Transitions can be tricky, even for us grown-ups, so if you're seeing any additional challenges happening at home, just know that it's very normal, and even expected. There are a whole new set of routines for the children to learn, friendship highs and lows to navigate, and stimulation at an amount and duration they may not have had for quite some time given the COVID pandemic. Anyone would be tired after 4 hours of that and with tired, comes melting down when you’re small (and sometimes when we are big too).

This week, we've been spending time getting to know one another and gaining a sense of place. We spoke in circle on the first day about what we think of when we think of 'school'. Some responses were: "Having Fun", "Playing so hard", "It's where we learn", "If you fall a teacher will help you", and "You learn from your mistakes". We read a book called Our Class is a Family, by Shannon Olsen and Sandie Sonke, about how our school community becomes a family, and how school is for making mistakes, and learning, and helping our friends, so that they also want to help us, when we need it.

We spent a few mornings visiting a question in our Big Book asking, ‘What do chickens need to be happy and healthy?’. Some ideas from the children were: "A house", "Milk", "Water", "Space, a safe place from humans", "To be held", "A nest", "A chicken coop", "Food, like chicken food and corn", "Don't keep them in a concrete box with no light", and "A nest and when it's too small, it needs a bigger nest". We also read a book about a child who is the best at catching chickens in her whole village. We'll be exploring this idea much more in the coming weeks as we prepare for Hatch Day (9/15).

We spent a bit of time indoors to check on our incubating chicken eggs, and also to peek inside the eggs via a process called candling. Many of our eggs are dark colored, so they are more difficult to candle, but I found one we could see inside. In a week, we'll do the ‘old-school’ viability test, which is a float in warm water to look for movement and how they float to determine if they’ve developed or not.

Next week, we will begin some closer hikes, and will stick close to school for a few more weeks before beginning some field trips. We'll be heading out after our morning meeting and bringing with us: a snack, water bottle, journal and sit pad.