Kindness

From the very beginning, children are innately curious about their peers and eager to interact with each other. Though that desire to interact does vary a bit with temperament, it does exist within every person. As their skills and capabilities develop in all domains, peer interactions become more complex and extended, and the potential for these interactions to become negative does exist. But if we believe that even those negative interactions stem from positive feelings of curiosity, caring, and wanting to relate to others, then we can teach children how to be socially successful. A big piece of social success is learning what kindness is and how to practice it.

As it turns out, there is a Kindness Curriculum. It is a set of activities designed to support the "A to G's" of kindness, and while it's not something we have implemented at MVS, I think that those "A to G" concepts are helpful in guiding how we support children during teachable moments. Here they are:

Attention: We can choose what we focus on and where we direct our attention, for both internal thoughts and feelings as well as external sensations and stimuli.

Breath and Body: We can use breath to calm our bodies and cultivate a little peace and quiet.

Caring: We learn to think about how others are feeling and how we can express kindness to them.

Depending on other people: Everyone supports and is supported by others, and we can cultivate gratitude for the many ways that others support us.

Emotions: We learn what different emotions feel like and look like, and learn how to read emotional expression in others.

Forgiveness: Everyone makes mistakes; sometimes the best choice is to forgive others and ourselves. We can always try to do things differently next time.

Gratitude: We can recognize kind acts that others do for us and express our thanks, both to others and within ourselves.

I hope you find these ideas useful in guiding your children toward kindness. Thanks for reading!

Megan

Kitchen Update
The infant rooms enjoyed a hummus, pita and veggie snack for the first time this week, and by the end of it there was not a scrap of hummus to be found on their plates. That's good stuff! They also loved an appetizer of cottage cheese mixed with chopped cucumber as well as a birthday snack of popsicles made from coconut milk and mixed berries. We take pride in making sure that the food we offer is not only healthy and delicious but also presented well. We believe food tastes better when someone takes the time to carefully arrange it for you. Don't you appreciate it when you go out for dinner and the food looks beautiful on your plate? We feel that children deserve this as well.

Roasted carrots with ginger, and maple syrup.

Happy Birthday!

Classroom Updates
Infant I
All of you likely noticed something new in our classroom this week: the big climber with a tunnel, steps, and slide moved in! Children and teachers alike have been exploring and enjoying this change; one child basically spent the week working on crawling up and down the steps (he made lots of progress!) while others worked on getting comfortable with the slide and learning how to control their bodies as they go down. Our less-mobile infants spent some time up on the platform, too, bobbing their heads around in the mirror corner or just taking in the view from a couple feet up. We teachers love that we can sit by the climber and be just about eye-level with non-mobile infants on the platform. Other highlights of our week included muddy, mitten-less play outside and discovering that several of our children really love cottage cheese!

Infant II
This week our focus has been on washing our hands to the ABCs to make sure they are clean, using words to communicate needs with peers, taking more time to allow children get dressed and undressed independently, and inviting the older children to sit on the toilet. Our new climber has also been a huge hit! At first the children were a little unsure of how exactly to get up and down the new structure, but with some practice they're now more confident in their climbing abilities. The climber has not only challenged and improved their gross motor skills, but it's also been a rich social space. The children like to gather on top and below to jump, talk, and play together.

Toddlers
We had a nice week in our classroom with lots of energy, spirit and active play. This week we have begun splitting the classroom into two groups in the morning to give some children extra time for energetic outside play while creating a calmer, slower transition outside for others. Individualizing our routines in this way seems to be working well. Warmer weather in the beginning of the week fostered a renewed interest in the sandbox. We observed lots of digging, scooping, creating sand sculptures and moving sand from place to place. We have also noticed an increase in interactive play recently, with classmates truly playing in a back and forth, engaged manner with each other. There has also been lots of role-playing (Mom and baby, taking care of babies, Dad and baby–lots of hands-on nurturing). This week in social and emotional skills we have worked on speaking kindly and respectfully to peers and adults. We have also continued working on having nice manners at the table during meals, specifically not talking with our moths full and keeping our elbows off the table. The children will even remind their peers at the table of the rules; we are making real progress.

Preschool I
Families, Team Shannon has emailed you with an invitation to TS GOLD, our software for collecting and assessing our observations and documentation of children’s learning experiences at MVS. Additionally, Shannon E-F has created a brief questionnaire to check in about the effectiveness of the children’s journals as a communication tool. Help us out and take a moment to participate! Link: https://goo.gl/forms/jixii8qBfGPohcmA2
Our class longs for the days during which outdoor shoes and a light jacket will be sufficient for outside play. They're so close, we can almost taste them! In the meantime, we're reminding the children that, although we don't have any power over the changes in weather, we do have the power to dress ourselves independently and appropriately. Our newly painted classroom and rearrangement of the space has dramatically refreshed our play. The children have extended the amount of time they can be stationary, allowing for intense focus on our tasks. Reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff has begun to develop into a child-led group activity. When requested, the book and materials are laid out at a table. Children have the opportunity to negotiate amongst themselves who will play which character through the story. The narrator, usually the child turning the pages, and the pictures provide cues for their lines. When the last page has been turned, everyone chimes in with, “So snip, snap, snout... This tale’s told out!” Now that the story is so familiar to the children, next week we may push their thinking a bit outside of the box—what would have been a kinder way for the biggest Billy Goat Gruff to cross the bridge? We’ve also taken a step beyond enacting the story with the toys and introduced the idea of taking on the characters with our own bodies. The children even came up with their own ideas about how the goats and troll would move around the classroom! We discussed “putting on” and “taking off our actor shoes.” Anticipating that other children may not like being roared at by the troll, we also discussed how if someone says that they don’t like being roared at, we must stop, take off the actor shoes, and say, “I’m sorry, I was just pretending. Are you okay? What do you want to play instead?”

Preschool II
Sadly this was Jacob's last week with us. Thank you, Jacob, for all of the grand adventures, for pushing us to be our best, and for always reflecting your belief in us. We wish you the best in your next adventure! Next week Team PS2 is looking forward to spending more time with CG.

PreK
Spring fever hit hard this week in PreK and in order to make the best of it, we spent most of the week outside! The weather was fantastic for playing here on our playground and for hikes out along the Woof Trail. Twice this week we were able to bring snack with us to eat peacefully while listening to the birds and other forest creatures. On the playground we heard that there was buried treasure in the hill. We dug and dug and sure enough–a sparkly blue ball was buried deep in the hill. We've spent plenty of time since then digging deeper... and deeper!
JF: "We are going to go underground."
HS: "I want to go under the Earth and dig all the way home."
AS: "I want to dig all the way underground through the lava till we get to where the penguins live."
BS wanted to dig "under the trees" where she thought she "might see bugs."
AS told classmates, "We can only do it if more people help all of us. We can all work on them together." Many agreed, but some had other plans, and AH shared, "I'm not going to play in this hole because I don't want my hands to get dirty."