Week 3 - Treasures and turn-taking
We braced for lots of rain but this week brought lovely and slightly cooler weather. A former AFK family gifted the school a beautiful mud kitchen which lives permanently at our main play site. The children were so surprised and thrilled to discover it Wednesday morning. Orora transformed bowls from the mud kitchen into percussion instruments, which made the most magical tones throughout the play site one day!
Much like the logo of AFK, lots of special sticks made appearances this week. Sylvan had a glowing staff, Juniper had a rainbow stick she colored and used multiple times, Leo had a stick that was a bubble blower and Huck used a stick as a special “patch”. Other imaginative play revolved around the stump that was formerly the ice cream shop. It became a rock shop this week where Caroline, Silvia, Bea and others categorized and sold rocks to classmates. Amora has an office across the trail, where she and friends have added layers of imaginative complexity and visual beauty over many days.
We introduced a class treasure box this week. There has been so much interest in gathering beautiful forest treasures and this new practice gives it some structure. Nate and Theo carefully located and extracted a large snail shell from a “cave” they found. Liddy lovingly passed out “swirls” (shelf fungus) growing on the side of her submarine (white oak). We will also use items added to the treasure box to create a seasonal phenology wheel.
There was lots of taking care of each other and community building this week. When one child bumped his head Jamie went to the wagon and got him an ice pack. At the beginning of one day, Liddy brought a classmate her favorite magnifying glass. Building on their interest in helping, children had even more opportunities to help with care of the group this week, especially at snack and lunch. Jamie loves to pass out water bottles at snack time. Juniper and Alma especially loved helping with lunch prep and Sylvan loved trying to identify names on lunch boxes from their first letters. It’s wonderful to see these kinds of helping roles develop naturally, rather than assigning jobs as we might see in a traditional preschool classroom.
Fine motor skills were developed with Nate’s complex tiny rock game and large motor skills were developed by a new love shared by many children of balancing on the whole length of a LONG downed tree.
We had lots of natural lessons on turn-taking. Children made a game of sliding down a hill. There was a lot of experimentation on how and when to start the race. Another day, one child was waiting for a turn with a beloved item, an Educator told a story about how waiting is hard but we can do hard things. When her classmate brought her the toy later her eyes lit up with delight. We should all be so proud of the hard things we do each and every day!