SHOW AND TELL
Bring some interesting paper for our torn-paper project
Understand why we have weather
The value we’ll be studying is justice and how Martin Luther King fought to have equal just for all people.
For science, we’ll study warm air and cold air.
Outside, we’ll play the weather game.
The songs we’ll be singing are Frosty the Snowman, You Are My Sunshine, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, Singing in the Rain, It’s Raining/It’s Pouring, and Oh What a Beautiful Morning.
For creative dramatics, we’ll dance in the rain.
Our art activities will be torn paper, frosty shapes, pinwheels, and straw blowing.
For motor development, we’ll work on strength with chin ups, push ups, and deep-knee bends. For motor planning, we’ll have a chimp race, blow cotton balls, and play hip hop.
BRAVE NEW WORLD
It has been proposed* that our society is coming out of a “crisis” time and going into one of growth and brightness. By the same thinking, it’s possible our babies could become crusaders of a new society in which the world is increasingly interconnected and less inclined to destructive wars. So what, you say? It still leaves us with too much work to do at the office, a leak in the roof, and two birthday parties to go to this weekend. However, when we are aware of possibilities, we can begin to deliberately move toward the positive society in which we want to live. So consider Stephen Covey’s advice of beginning with the end in mind.
The goal would be to define what I want my family’s end to be. The good news is that when we make conscious choices about the habits we will cultivate for our family, it helps make all the dozens of decisions we make every day stay in line with where we want our families to end up. If I want an uncluttered life, it makes it easier to say no to the concert this weekend. If I want close relationships with my friends and family, it makes cleanup after the family gathering so much easier. What about the bedtime story or fun in the bathtub? It’s a piece of cake with no guilt because it meshes with my life goals.
Meadows and Meadows in their Limits to Growth book have a wonderful list of big social goals that with some personalization can be chunked down into personal goals. Try these from the book:
- Reasons for living and thinking well of ourselves that do not involve the accumulation of things
- Flexibility, innovation, and intellectual challenge that continually enlarge human knowledge
- Human culture that lives in harmony, even joy, with ecosystems
- Abundant, uncontaminated food from regenerative agriculture that builds soils and uses natural mechanisms to restore nutrients and control pests
- Efficient, renewable energy systems
- Closed-loop material systems that produce emissions and products that can be returned to a natural state
- Leaders (like us and our bosses, not just politics) who are honest, respectful, intelligent, and humble; more interested in serving the group than in maintaining the status quo or getting ahead
- Work that dignifies as well as provides material sufficiency
- Social values of community, equity, beauty, sufficiency, and sustainability
These are all such big ideas that it takes some work to make them fit my life. But if I can verbalize the specifics of these goals for myself and my family, I’m well on my way to being able to look back and say that I truly lived my whole life in the way that I intended.
On the Calendar
Stone Soup/ Stone Snack Day – On Friday January 31, we’ll want everyone to contribute a little something for our stone soup. It’s from a folktale about soldiers returning from the war that stopped in a village and asked for something to eat. The villagers all proclaimed their poverty and refused to offer food. With compassion, the soldiers prepared to feed the villagers with stone soup. One by one, the villagers offered some carrots here, a few potatoes there, and finally a fine feast was prepared for the whole village. We’ll put a twist on this and call it Stone Snack Day every child should bring something to contribute to the morning snack and we’ll put everyone’s small contribution in a big bowl and mix everything together.
CLASSROOM NEWS
Luka is in discovery mode, he enjoys turning over baskets and pushing items off the shelves and hearing them fall to the floor, indirectly he is learning order as he finds the work always in the same place and is often encouraged to put the work back where it was. Luke is expressing himself with words, while on the playground Luke would pick up an item and hold it up to the teacher, the teacher would reply “stick,” later that day Luke picked up a broken branch from a tree ran up to the teacher and said “stick” In a moment of praise the teacher says “yea!” and surprisingly Luke shouts out “yea!”, these are some of the first words spoken while at school. Kenneth is working on his fine motor skills and his attention span as he works with the insert tray where he uses his finger tips to move the many small pieces. This work helps to develop dexterity and helps prepare him to hold a pencil.
* The Forth Turning, Strauss and Howe
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