Ease and Flow, Play, Extra Outside Time, Harvest

Ease and Flow

The children seem to be welcoming Molly with open arms, and we are having a sweet time together. The long walks on Mondays and Tuesday (which the children take up with joy and composure--with some grumblings of hunger and fatigue toward the end) blend into an outdoor snack time and really beautiful, sustained play in the woods. Children are choosing a variety of playmates. They are challenging themselves physically, communing with nature with fairy house building and berry picking, and enjoying an occasional mutually satisfying game of chase.

Our long playground days of Wednesday and Thursday have been satisfying as well. Last week I pruned some of the alder trees to promote their health, and children have been building and decorating forts and houses with the branches. A number of children help prepare the snack, have been sewing up their painting folders (and I've been sorting our first paintings from last week), and help care for the chickens.


Play

At Grandmother Rock, I found myself telling a small group of children, "And now we will do something we've never done before," and a child responded, "O, yes, I remember that!" Rather than just telling the story, children act out the story as I narrate. I had very simple costumes that we could transport to the woods. A child can always refuse to play a part. On this day, the children chosen seemed to find delight and satisfaction in portraying Sea-Girl, the 3rd Daughter of the Dragon King, a goose, a parrot, a pea-cock, and eagle, a farmer, and the water. I'll keep track and give a variety a chance to play a role.

This transformation of a story into a play was something my mentor did when I first taught Waldorf kindergarten, and master storyteller Nancy Mellon insisted that I use this technique (in a very polite and emphatic way), and that I should stay with a story in this way for a long time. She told me, for example, of the benefits of staying with The Wolf and the 7 Little Kids for 3 months between January and Easter, most of it as a play (this would likely be too intense for our current mix of children). It was true, the children loved rotating through all the roles of little goats, shopkeeper, miller, and baker. I was always the wolf. And we did stay with this story a long time. We'll plan on a couple of weeks with my current story and then see where we are.


Extra Outside Time

While we will have great opportunities for indoor work and play, current opportunities are keeping us outside a great deal. On Wednesdays, we play with the Sunflower children for an hour on the playground at 9am and then with the Butterfly nursery children at 11am. Somewhere in between we enjoy our snack. Mixing with both classes seems stimulating and brings out wonderful things in our children, and this seems really important to foster. I am moving the painting day to Thursday at present.

We will also likely be watching Michaelmas rehearsals, which may keep us outside more often this week (even on painting day).

Next week the 3rd grade is building a Sukkah, a traditional Jewish harvest shelter. I sense this will be a great activity for us to observe, perhaps even help with. Next Monday we will visit the work, and if it seems fruitful, we will likely join the 3rd graders often next week to help, watch, delight, and enliven.


HARVEST

On this Wednesday, we will have our early childhood harvest festival. Please bring, if possible, harvest items (flowers, squashes, bulbs, and the like) to the EC hallway. The kindergartens will work together to decorate a harvest altar. Our Golden Forest class will tend a fire in the clay oven, and we will bake an apple snack to share with the Sunflower and Butterfly classes toward the end of the day. The two kindergartens will join together for seasonal games to end the morning.

These decorations will find a 2nd life as part of the Golden Knight's decoration of the 10 acres to welcome families parking there for Friday's festival.


With appreciation for all your support,

William