Weekly Update: January 9-12
It has been an eventful week, with visitors and new faces! The children met Stephanie and baby Lila, who were a delightful addition to the group, and we had a lovely OT visit us on Thursday to share calming and grounding techniques with everyone. A favorite from the OT visit was the “blue tunnel,” a tube of stretchy fabric that children could crawl through or huddle inside, pretending they were a caterpillar in a cocoon.
The children were fascinated with baby Lila and appropriately gentle. She is a very happy little baby, just 4 months old. The youngest children were especially interested in watching Lila work on rolling over and tracking moving objects with her eyes, and I saw some truly heartwarming joy burst in when they realized how much they had accomplished since they themselves were babies. It was wonderful having both Stephanie and Lila here. Unfortunately we’ve hit a little hiccup with state paperwork processing, so we’ll have to wait a few weeks 
before they can continue as part of the school group (just waiting for some bureaucratic wheels to turn), but we’ll be very happy to welcome them back when that happens.
Overall it was a calm week with deep, long periods of free play and equally deep, long periods of child-directed work. Making juice blends with orange, pomegranate, lime and banana has been very popular; this is a complex work involving peeling and slicing fruit, juicing, muddling, passing muddled fruit through a sieve, pouring, and sharing. The social component of this work is huge! Children work together on the project, negotiate who is doing what, help each other when they get stuck, and decide how to share the juice when it is finished. I am delighted by all the growth I am seeing!
I noticed independent work this week on potato and carrot peeling, vegetable chopping, lacing blocks, dressing frames, sewing, and drawing and cutting out the phases of the moon (based on our phases of the moon puzzle). After I gave a lesson on the bolt board (screwdriver work using clockwise/counterclockwise language), I saw multiple children working on that independently as well. We played the sound game several times this week because it finally really clicked with the children and then some of them started to request it! We played it twice in a single day on Thursday. I received a request for a lesson on the sandpaper letters, so we did a little bit of work linking sounds to symbol as well.
We also had Nutmeg inside for a day, and the children got to observe her eating lots of timothy hay and relaxing in the nap room.
The children are really enjoying this circle and story (now transformed into a puppet show), and I keep hearing them singing the circle songs throughout the day. On Wednesday while I was setting up for the puppet show, some of them spontaneously started to sing the last song of our circle, which is also in our story: “Over the Rainbow Bridge We Go.” Watching them singing together while smiling and looking at each other made me think, “Yes, this is why I do this work!” Creating an environment in which that kind of integrated, collective joy can spontaneously emerge is rewarding beyond words. In those moments (and there are many), I can feel the soul nourishment flowing into all of us.
Our January story and circle songs are now available via the link at the top of the page. Much love to all!
Videos
children singing “over the rainbow bridge we go”
Photo Gallery
