"When in doubt, they err on the side of giving their child freedom."
As you all know, the winter Olympics started yesterday. I love the Olympics. I get giddy when the opening ceremonies start. I recently came across an article in the New York Times titled "What Parents Can Learn From a Town that Produced 11 Olympians". Of course, I was intrigued. I was even more excited to learn that the town they were referring to was Norwich, Vermont. Who knew? Since 1984, there have been 11 athletes that have gone to the Olympics (both summer and winter), for varying sports.
The article supports a philosophy similar to our own beliefs at MVS. As a small Vermont town, Norwich really supports its community. They are invested in getting outdoors, being active, and offering children opportunities to be independent. These are a few ways in which the people of Norwich support children:
The town doesn't just focus on one sport or making sports the focus of a child's life. There is a healthy balance of risk, responsibility, and exposure to different activities. It seems like the community of Norwich might have found the right balance of support and independence.
Go USA!
News and Reminders
We celebrated Carly's 5 year anniversay at MVS this past week. Thank you, Carly, for being an important part of MVS over the years.
Classroom Updates
Infant I
This week many of us have been pushing the limits of our gross motor abilities, from getting our knees up under us to crawl to almost–almost!–rolling all the way over to finally mastering how to walk on the snow. We have loved exploring that soft, powdery stuff outside and have been seen crawling around to inspect it up close and putting our whole faces right into it. Lots of us also enjoyed long morning naps this week, perhaps recovering from all of that physical activity.
Infant II
We continued to have a lot of energy this week, we've also had many kind social interactions. We are becoming more open to playing collaboratively and less possessively with our toys. We also continue to love interacting with the younger infants in the mornings. The children enjoyed eating the fresh snow both off the ground and from their mittens. They spent time climbing up the small hills we made from shoveling and like to shout out "up high!" Inside the children love climbing and they like to stand on the stools in the classroom to see over things. On Thursday we got to watch people climb up the tall ladder to shovel the roof off. This was exciting for everyone; even the older children were amazed!
Toddlers
We had a great week in the Toddler Room! So much energy! Luckily, we had an amazing snow fall so our kids were ecstatic to shovel, shovel, shovel–our new absolute favorite activity. We worked hard on shoveling and moving snow from place to place, and we particularly enjoyed gathering soft, powdery snow in our mittens. These are all great gross motor skills that our children are working on. We are also working on waiting for our turn with the shovels and many of us are doing well at managing our feelings while we wait. Kind social interactions in the classroom have also been a concentrated focus this week. We continue to encourage children to use language to express their thoughts and needs and to speak clearly with their classmates.
Preschool I
The children gave Shannon E.-F. an incredible "Welcome back!!" with lots of hugs! One child asked, "How was Maine? Did you have fun on your honeyboon?" (Yes, she did!) One big highlight of the week was building a snow man with all of the fresh snow. After experimenting and discovering the snow was not sticky enough to roll like Little Bear did in "A Snowman for Little Bear," we figured out we could pile up snow with shovels and pat it down with our bodies and hands. The most exciting part was adding the carrot nose. First the children figured out a way to share the carrot by passing it around. "Don't eat it!" they reminded each other. We then discovered where to put the nose. "Under the eyes!" someone suggested. "It needs a hat!" someone else said. The children also took turns putting the nose on the snowman. Hopefully we'll get more snow so we can continue this line of thinking!
Preschool II
Snow and space were the "S" words of the week along with shoveling, sledding, sliding, and sharing. We continued our chalkboard letters, transforming P's to R's and O's to Q's, and made snake like S's. One of our interests this week has been the letter baskets and making our own words, copying words from our library books, and sounding them out. Creativity shined as we invented many snow clearing devices including a wheelbarrow on skis, crates on sleds, and shovels--pushed and dragged. We also worked on new songs for circle. We listened to, learned, and then sang Raffi's "The Sharing Song" followed by an impromptu dance party on Thursday to Raffi's next song "Hello Mr. Sun". Our student-led interest this week was space, stars, and planets. We discussed how Earth is a Goldilocks planet that's not too hot and not too cold, while the other planets closer to the sun are much too hot and others are much too cold for humans to live on. We finished the week by looking how Earth's orbit in space affects the seasons and it spins both daily and yearly.
PreK
This week in PreK we've been exploring the ideas of imagine-create-improve. This is a preschool version of the inquiry cycle tat ECHO uses in the Stem Kits that we borrow. Basically we encourage the children, within the play space they are in, to imagine (What will you build, draw, invent?) then we observe and narrate as they create. We talk about what is working and what they'd like to do differently to improve. We imagine the improvements and encourage continuous movement through the cycle. One area where we've been very successful is blocks. It's been a week of interesting plans, tests, experiments and predictions about length, height, angles and speed as we create ramps, tunnels and towers. We've also been thinking of ways that we can record information through drawings and graphs. This week we've been reading three versions of the folktale The Mitten. We'll be comparing them, acting them out and imagining some other fun activities based on the books.
As you all know, the winter Olympics started yesterday. I love the Olympics. I get giddy when the opening ceremonies start. I recently came across an article in the New York Times titled "What Parents Can Learn From a Town that Produced 11 Olympians". Of course, I was intrigued. I was even more excited to learn that the town they were referring to was Norwich, Vermont. Who knew? Since 1984, there have been 11 athletes that have gone to the Olympics (both summer and winter), for varying sports.
The article supports a philosophy similar to our own beliefs at MVS. As a small Vermont town, Norwich really supports its community. They are invested in getting outdoors, being active, and offering children opportunities to be independent. These are a few ways in which the people of Norwich support children:
- Treat your neighbor's child as your own
- Let kids own their activities
- Frame sports as fun
The town doesn't just focus on one sport or making sports the focus of a child's life. There is a healthy balance of risk, responsibility, and exposure to different activities. It seems like the community of Norwich might have found the right balance of support and independence.
Go USA!
News and Reminders
We celebrated Carly's 5 year anniversay at MVS this past week. Thank you, Carly, for being an important part of MVS over the years.
Classroom Updates
Infant I
This week many of us have been pushing the limits of our gross motor abilities, from getting our knees up under us to crawl to almost–almost!–rolling all the way over to finally mastering how to walk on the snow. We have loved exploring that soft, powdery stuff outside and have been seen crawling around to inspect it up close and putting our whole faces right into it. Lots of us also enjoyed long morning naps this week, perhaps recovering from all of that physical activity.
 |
| There's a Banana under that scarf |
Infant II
We continued to have a lot of energy this week, we've also had many kind social interactions. We are becoming more open to playing collaboratively and less possessively with our toys. We also continue to love interacting with the younger infants in the mornings. The children enjoyed eating the fresh snow both off the ground and from their mittens. They spent time climbing up the small hills we made from shoveling and like to shout out "up high!" Inside the children love climbing and they like to stand on the stools in the classroom to see over things. On Thursday we got to watch people climb up the tall ladder to shovel the roof off. This was exciting for everyone; even the older children were amazed!
We had a great week in the Toddler Room! So much energy! Luckily, we had an amazing snow fall so our kids were ecstatic to shovel, shovel, shovel–our new absolute favorite activity. We worked hard on shoveling and moving snow from place to place, and we particularly enjoyed gathering soft, powdery snow in our mittens. These are all great gross motor skills that our children are working on. We are also working on waiting for our turn with the shovels and many of us are doing well at managing our feelings while we wait. Kind social interactions in the classroom have also been a concentrated focus this week. We continue to encourage children to use language to express their thoughts and needs and to speak clearly with their classmates.
Preschool I
The children gave Shannon E.-F. an incredible "Welcome back!!" with lots of hugs! One child asked, "How was Maine? Did you have fun on your honeyboon?" (Yes, she did!) One big highlight of the week was building a snow man with all of the fresh snow. After experimenting and discovering the snow was not sticky enough to roll like Little Bear did in "A Snowman for Little Bear," we figured out we could pile up snow with shovels and pat it down with our bodies and hands. The most exciting part was adding the carrot nose. First the children figured out a way to share the carrot by passing it around. "Don't eat it!" they reminded each other. We then discovered where to put the nose. "Under the eyes!" someone suggested. "It needs a hat!" someone else said. The children also took turns putting the nose on the snowman. Hopefully we'll get more snow so we can continue this line of thinking!
Preschool II
Snow and space were the "S" words of the week along with shoveling, sledding, sliding, and sharing. We continued our chalkboard letters, transforming P's to R's and O's to Q's, and made snake like S's. One of our interests this week has been the letter baskets and making our own words, copying words from our library books, and sounding them out. Creativity shined as we invented many snow clearing devices including a wheelbarrow on skis, crates on sleds, and shovels--pushed and dragged. We also worked on new songs for circle. We listened to, learned, and then sang Raffi's "The Sharing Song" followed by an impromptu dance party on Thursday to Raffi's next song "Hello Mr. Sun". Our student-led interest this week was space, stars, and planets. We discussed how Earth is a Goldilocks planet that's not too hot and not too cold, while the other planets closer to the sun are much too hot and others are much too cold for humans to live on. We finished the week by looking how Earth's orbit in space affects the seasons and it spins both daily and yearly.
PreK
This week in PreK we've been exploring the ideas of imagine-create-improve. This is a preschool version of the inquiry cycle tat ECHO uses in the Stem Kits that we borrow. Basically we encourage the children, within the play space they are in, to imagine (What will you build, draw, invent?) then we observe and narrate as they create. We talk about what is working and what they'd like to do differently to improve. We imagine the improvements and encourage continuous movement through the cycle. One area where we've been very successful is blocks. It's been a week of interesting plans, tests, experiments and predictions about length, height, angles and speed as we create ramps, tunnels and towers. We've also been thinking of ways that we can record information through drawings and graphs. This week we've been reading three versions of the folktale The Mitten. We'll be comparing them, acting them out and imagining some other fun activities based on the books.
 |
| Spraying "snow angels" |
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