Ice Is Nice

We’ve had fun this week pretending to be squirrels caching “acorns” (snap cubes) out in the woods, and seeing if we can remember they are. On Wednesday we found a Christmas tree on our way to the woods that had been thrown over a snow bank, and boy did we have fun trying to figure out how to make it stand up straight. Lots of teamwork, problem solving, and rope.

In the classroom we’ve introduced “peace wands” that are used when two kids are having a conflict. One person is the “star listener” and the other person “speaks from the heart” in order to work through the problem. Ask your child if they’ve gotten a chance to use the peace wands to help solve a social problem yet. The results have been fantastic! Your children are turning into quite excellent problem-solvers.

We’ve also introduced a new routine to morning meeting - our “estimation jar.” Children get a chance to estimate how many objects are in the jar, then we count the objects to see how close the estimates are. We started this week with rocks. If you have a little collection you’d like to send that could be put in estimation jar we’d be happy to use it. Ideally we’d have between 5 and 10 objects.