Dear Honeybee Families,
We had a full and diverse week last week as we wrapped up our solar system painting collages, celebrated Valentines Day, and counted our way through the 100th day of school. We also spent some dedicated time talking about our feelings. We incorporate social emotional learning every day, but we took a deep dive into how we feel and what we do when we have these feelings. We’ll continue on this journey in the coming weeks. We are going to keep feeling our feelings and figure out how to make ourselves feel better and how to understand our friend’s feelings. We are all in different places on this journey, and I want the Honeybees to understand that. We model that we are all learning, and that we can all give each other a soft landing and a bit of understanding. In the words of current Friendly Fox Madeleine, “Him is learning.’
We were really amazing identifying feelings and even acknowledging that sometimes we have two feelings. Sometimes one feeling can give us another feeling. Oh, my heart.
Thank you for the sweet Valentine celebration on Tuesday and Wednesday. I loved our decorated bags, and the Friday kids were excited to make them for the children who were not there that day. Thanks for the Valentines your children gave us! Thank you to the mystery family who treated all the teachers to a delicious Valentine themed lunch from Gillies. Big thanks to Kristin who set a LOVELY table and made us all feel so special.
Thanks also to the Glenn Family for giving us an opportunity to help earthquake victims. Laurel hauled several huge loads of donations to Virginia Tech.
The next day was the 100th day of this school year, and we counted in all sorts of ways. Some of us count to 100 and some of us are counting to ten. Did you see us counting by tens during circle time? We found that there were 100 fingers in the circle…. and 100 toes. We did 100 butterfly movements…. that was a workout! We played with the Bluebirds 100 pop-it boards for a fun sensory experience. We ate 100 pieces of popcorn…. and that took 2 bags.
I just finished some professional development about extending project based learning into passion based learning. Are you ready to join me in a project that could culminate in a student led passion project museum in May? Each child would be identifying their passion and and creating a presentation for the rest of the Honeybee class. We would incorporate math, science, literacy, art. and social studies into the framework of our individual passions? Parents could also come in and incorporate their own passions into our learning.
Next week we are going to focus on a book a day, beginning with A Snowy Day by Jack Ezra Keats. It might not snow this year, but I have a special art project to go along with this simple yet beautiful story. On Wednesday we are going to read The Mitten by Jan Brett and play with a giant mitten I sewed a few years ago. We might “sew” a mitten and stuff it with animals as we sequence the story. On Thursday I’d like to play with the story of The Three Little Pigs. On Friday we’ll read Jack and the Beanstalk and sprout some seeds in our sunny windowsills.
