It Takes a Village

When Violet's sweet grandmother showed up unexpectedly at our schoolhouse the other morning to place these potted plants in the empty holders, I was overcome with gratitude!



This tender gesture and random act of kindness is what makes our community so special.  

Everybody Has Something Wonderful to Offer

I have the pleasure of seeing this every day at our schoolhouse.

Sewing

First finger knitting, and now sewing. Yep, the children started very basic sewing. They were so excited! After assembling their sewing kits and discussing sewing safety, the children began learning how to thread their needles (not easy)  and finished with an introduced to a running stitch. Sounds easy for us as adults, but it takes major focus and fine motor skills to accomplish this feat at such a young age.
Things they know to remember:


Have patience.
Always know where your needle is.
You can always try again.
Have patience.

A Word About Early Literacy

Self Portraits

Continuing with our Art classes, there's something about self-portraits that are always my favorite!


Before, and After

Valentine Love

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

-Elbert Hubbard

I have to say how wonderful I thought it was that all the Valentines the children brought in were handmade.

Camera Snippets

A couple weeks ago, Lora introduced finger knitting. The children really enjoyed it! One, in particular, cannot get enough of it. I'm sure her family now has collections of headbands and scarves galore. :)









Assembled our own popsicle books for our Arctic Animals books



Looking for their shadows during a nature walk.





"A chocolate road!" -Lucca



The interesting things we can find exploring all the acreage around the schoolhouse.



Lora brought in new rubber bands for our large geoboard.





Learning about consonant blends



Writing consonant blends. These are words that the children write using the "finger spelling" method in Project Read.



Steve helping the children make paper mache lanterns.





Drying on the rack almost ready for popping and tea lights.



Yoga, Geoboard exploration and finger knitting. Great ways to end our day together.

Mel's week

I love my time at the school, but it always goes by so fast. As a mom, it was really cool to see the changes the kids have made in just a few months since the last time I was the parent volunteer. I feel very fortunate to be able to spend this time with the kids and be a part of their day.

I started out with the Appoloosa kids learning how to make seed bombs.

Its started to rain so we went inside and started beading a garden sun catcher.


The Palomino group finished the sun catchers quickly so the kids wanted to make stuff out of construction paper. Alaira and Damon were into making shields and swords, which several of the kids joined in and we also made construction paper belts to hold the swords, I also improvised and we made helmets out of paper plates to go with the armor.





Damon and his big guns with his trusty side kick Eddie.

The Mod Squad

Sophias creation with construction paper.


It was still raining so we gathered together and started reading about the Arctic.

The kids then made snowflakes.




Still raining so we finished the day with games and puzzles.



Day 2
We finished the garden sun catchers and then a continuation of Clair's still life drawings. This week I had them use black paper with the oil crayons for a different effect.








Joint drawing by Liam and Eddie of a giant dinosaur.

A peek in the classroom.

More Arctic stories and learning a song from one of the books.

The pirate flags the kids made with Clair.


Yoga with Miss Ruxi




Day 3
We made masks to go with our Arctic play.


Lunchtime - with the masks on of course.

More seed bombs.


Nature hike.

Found a chicken coop, Sophia declared they had flown the coop.