We Are Family Tree

Dear Parents,

We started our week working on the fruit of our tree. We used cut paper plates for our pine cones. The children said pine cones are brown, so we painted them brown. We examined a real pine cone and looked with our sense of sight at the pattern. We felt it with our sense of touch. 

We talked about patterns. The children shouted out color patterns, “Green, white, green, white!” We clapped a pattern with our hands, we talked about the four seasons being a pattern and adding up to one year, and patterns that we follow in school: put our coats away, line up for the bathroom, wash our hands, etc. We looked at the pine cones and found their patterns.

During circle we looked at all of our family photos and noticed that families had taken pictures by trees, by the ocean, one in Times Square, two by a hotel, and one had a castle in the background. We noted that one of our families had grown by one since the picture was taken. Everyone was excited when we looked at their photo.

After hanging the branches of our tree one person shouted, “That’s so cool!”

Yoga with Tanya has been focused, with children excitedly showing us poses upon their return. After yoga, we went outside to take a class picture under our tree. We have been watching and waiting for the leaves to turn from green to yellow for our fall picture. They turned.

On Friday, we made butter from heavy cream. We predicted how long it would take to shake the cream into butter. The guesses were: one shake, five shakes, ten, eleven, twelve shakes, and one minute. We put on some disco and danced while taking turns shaking up, down, and all around. It took about sixteen minutes and five disco songs. Y'all can taste the butter at our feast!

Reminder: our family feast begins at 11am on Wednesday. We will hang our fruits on the tree first, and eat, drink and be merry second. 

Have a buttery weekend,

Therese

Tree Trunk and Branches

Dear Parents,

We started our week looking for a picture of a pine tree in one of our books. We asked the class what shape it resembled. One person said, “It has three sides, like a triangle!” Another said, “It looks like a Christmas tree.” We talked about pine trees staying green all year. We found two pictures of forests full of pine trees in our books. We created the trunk of our family pine tree by scrunching up a giant sheet of brown paper.

We asked what pine trees have instead of leaves. "Pine needles," answered the children. Everyone helped cut green sheets of paper into tiny pieces for our pine needles. Someone said that pine trees have at least nineteen pine needles. We cut many more than that.

We worked our hand muscles, squeezing glue onto our branches that we made out of the same scrunched brown paper as the trunk. One person said as we glued tiny pieces of green paper, "This is taking a long time." We asked the class how long it takes for a real tree to grow.

During circle we compared the leaves from three different trees. We talked about what was the same: they're all leaves and they all fell off a tree. What was different: they were different colors, different shapes, different sizes, and their stems were different. One person wondered if the trees had fallen over. The trees were fine, but the leaves had fallen.

On Friday we cut even more pine needles to add to our branches. We used green ribbons, felt, and lots more glue. 

During circle we read Black Is Brown Is Tan. The book is written in a singing poetic style. We asked the class what they thought the book was about. They answered: colors, mamas, daddies, brothers, sisters, grandparents, dogs, humans, and love. All true. 

Wednesday November 27 will be a half day and our Family Feast. Our feast will begin at 11:00am. Parents are invited!

Have a piney weekend,

Therese