Our Hearts Doth Burst with Pride!!!

Do you recognize this tower?? This is the bell tower of our neighbor, University Presbyterian Church. If you stand in Room 341 (Mrs. Banks' snack room) near the painting easels, you will see this tower. That is exactly what our friend, Olivia, did one day. She looked out the window, and was inspired to paint this picture.....
Mighty accurate rendition, wouldn't you agree???

Kudos Olivia for your inspired work of art!

In another classroom down the hall, the T-Th Pre-3's were challenged to put together this foam puzzle of a rocket ship. Having put this puzzle together many times, our friend Gisela (2-1/2), painted this amazing picture of a pink rocketship!! Can you see it?! Genius I tell you!!

Welcoming a visitor!

To the delight of many, Mrs. Banks' brought a visitor, albeit somewhat uninivited, to her classroom today, via the bunch of flowers she had brought in for flower arranging.

Meet Sara Johnson, the baby slug!!

Why the name "Sara," you may ask? Because it sounded like a good name according to Annie, who took it upon herself to give our little visitor an identity. Naomi, who was right there when our guest was first discovered, was very concerned about Sara's survival, and overall happiness. Naomi wanted to set Sara free as soon as possible, but others in the class persuaded Naomi to let others see and experience Sara first before setting her out on her own in the great wide world of the playground! Naomi agreed to this, and Sara was given a temporary habitat, consisting of a blue tub, lined with papertowels, upon which Sara gifted us with a beautiful sluggie, slimy trail, and a jar lid of water. She was then toted to Mrs. Jaques classroom, where her habitiat was gifted with some leaves. After making the rounds of the morning classrooms, Sara was gently freed into the planter in the playground. She was a delightful distraction on this rainy day, and a thoroughly pleasant guest. May she live a long and productive life!

Thanks Puzzlemakers!!

Isn't this a beautiful wooden puzzle?

Making wooden puzzles from pictures that spoke to her was the brain child of Mrs. McArthur. After seeing some of the pictures that Mrs. McArthur had collected, and looking for a project that would engage her project-minded son, Mrs. Coleman created her own after-school program by combining these two needs. The following puzzle, and some others in the school, are the beautiful result.

After weeks of careful instruction and supervision, Philip has earned the privelege to "drive" the scroll saw, and help with the actual creation of these masterpieces. His instructor and supervisor (and creator of the correct sized puzzle patterns) is Philip's grandfather, John. We at the Children's School are very appreciative of these careful, dedicated artisans!

Staff Continues Work on Preparedness

It is the goal of your Children's School Staff to be prepared to care for your children in the case of emergency. What we have learned this year is a little more about what that means. Briefly it means you have supplies: food to eat, bandaids for ow-ies, lights for the dark, tools for communication, and lots of other things; you need a plan - something that covers not only where do you go, but who's in charge of what, and even what proceedures are used to release those children in your charge. It could be viewed as an overwhelming task, but the Staff has made great strides this year in all of these areas.

As you may remember, at the beginning of the school year, you were asked to participate in our preparedness by contributing to our food and first aid supplies. Here is picture of what we have done with those supplies.

In addition to the supplies, we have had 3 workshops for the staff to start to rough out our "plan." We have tackled issues such as, lines of communication, first steps following a disaster, dividing up on teams to deal with search and rescue, communicating with the other programs in the building, as well as the outside world, and most recently, what do we do to take care of ourselves and each other during those hours of post-incident activity.

Mrs. Jaques has been invaluable in tackling this last issue, and to the end of comfort and creative activity in a small, potentially dark, space has introduced the Staff to the above environment (A in-house camping experience): soft blanket to gather around, and even touch; hankerchiefs to be touched, smelled and even folded into dolls(!); chocolate (did you know that it is said to have calming qualities!!); a friendly lantern to do shadow puppets with, and keep us in the light; and any other object that could be used to ward off feelings of lonliness and powerlessness, known affectionately at The Children's School as "The Magic."

Is there more work to be done? Absolutely! There are details to work out, rituals to practice, paperwork to follow up with, personal preparedness plans to work on, and an on-going "updating" that goes on with every new school year. It can feel overwhelming, but the Staff are committed to working on this plan, this sense of being prepared. If you would like to know more about what we are doing to be prepared, contact any Children's School Staff member. If you would like to know more about preparing in your home environment, visit 3days3ways.org.

Heifer Project Update(s)

What's a good Heifer Project update without a couple of good pictures? Here are some pictures of animals that our friends Ethan and Ellis Andrews would send if they could:
Ellis would send a variety of animals if she could. Represented here are a leopard, a bird and a salmon (good PNW girl that she is!!)

Ethan, in no uncertain terms, would send everyone a zebra!



And my personal favorite -- the spotted cow, complete with label and arrow -- from my friend Ellis!!




“What animal would you send to a farm in need with our Heifer Project money?”

This was the questions posed to some of our friends in Mrs. Jaques M-W-F class during their time in music, and here are some of their answers:

Luke: chickens; they would give the people eggs.
Nikola: cow; they could give milk.
Zev: goat; Discussion revealed that goats can give milk and cheese.
Sophie: pig; Here we learned that pigs can provide bacon or a pork chops.
Mary Ellen: horses. Mary Ellen loves horses, and we learned that horses can do a lot of work; and you can ride it for transportation.
Julia: a cow for milk.

There was quite the lively discussion going on during this brief music time. It’s exciting to discover all the wonderful uses for animals on a farm. Mrs. McArthur helped out the class by pointing out that the poop or dung (a new word for some of our friends) from cows and chickens can be used to fertilize the gardens – good for growing stuff!
Teacher Cinda helped the kids know that goat’s milk can be made into something else, something we can spread on crackers and sandwiches ... When the kids tried to fill in this blank, they guessed “peanut butter? Jelly?” We all learned that what Teacher Cinda was getting to was cheese – cheese from goats??

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!!

Chinese New Year, which starts with the first New Moon of the year, started this year in February! That gave us a good chance to be prepared for this marvelous celebratory time of year. Keep reading and you will be delighted to see some wonderful examples of how the Children's School helps our friends use this holiday to learn about a fascinating place in the world!


This is a table in one of classrooms which shows several different items to spark an interest in maybe asking some questions. Can you see the chinese money? The shirt? The fan? Wouldn't that spark your interest?

Red is a very important color to celebrate this holiday with. In the examples above, friends in Mrs. Banks' M-F class, red is the starting color used to create these marvelous nametags. Elsa even used cuttings from a Chinese newspaper to decorate her nametag with!
What a fun opportunity to talk about these intriguing animals. Cloth Pandas, and later Pandas in rice, make a wonderful sensory experience.
Oh! And look what our friends in the Pre-K were challenged to do! To draw Chinese characters! Aren't they fabulous!!
And what is this? Why Chinese puzzles of course! They are commonly known as Tangrams, or Brain Puzzles. The story behind them goes something like this -- A tile worker in China has an accident and drops the tile. It breaks into several pieces. His goal was to put the pieces back into the shape of the tile, but in the meantime, the pieces put together in other ways created a myriad of other things: fish, dog, penguin or bird. With these puzzles, of which our school has several versions, our friends can experiment with this mosaic making experience!

What didn't I capture via photos? Oh my goodness - so much! Eating rice and soy sauce or Chinese noodles and fortune cookies! Doing the lion and dragon dances in music with small cymbals and triangles, and low bows at the end! Reading the story of Ping, and then painting our favorite scenes. Listening to traditional Chinese folk music while working in our classrooms. And painting fish!!

But Chinese New Year has passed. The songs have changed, as have our stories, puzzles and art projects. Look for our friends to create things with a transportation theme, build puzzles with rockets, cars and trucks! Sing wheels on the bus, and other songs about movement! And they continue their work with the Heifer Project. Whew!! How do they fit it all in?

Eggshells and Appliances Needed!!!

Ok, so here is a strange request! We need empty eggshells and lots of 'em!! So the call goes out there to all great cooks, and egg-lovers - now would be a great time to eat up, and cook up! Break an egg, ladies and gentlemen!! The school will use these egg shells to allow the children the opportunity to first color them, then to smash them, and then to play in them. We have only a few weeks before we'd like to use these shells, so we are counting on your help!

You can learn a great deal by giving children the opportunity to create through CONstruction, but did you know you can learn an equal amount by allowing the opportunity to DEconstruct! That's right, Take Apart is just around the corner!!
And what are these? Examples of some wonderful things to donate to our "take apart" project coming up soon. Have a phone around the house that doesn't work anymore, an alarm clock, a cd player, a cell phone, a VCR, a rice cooker?? Well, bring them on over, because these are great things (often with many wonderful SCREWS) to let the kids investigate by taking them apart!!

Heifer Project Update!

I recieved another wonderful update on our on-going quest to collect enough quarters to buy an animal for the Heifer Project. This report comes to me from Katie -- friend of Ethan (M-F Class) and Ellis (Children's School Alumnus, 2006). Katie reports that she suggested to Ethan that he might want to give a look around his house for a quarter or two to bring to school and put into our wonderful clear quarter collector tubes. Well, Ethan may not have been "lit on fire" with this particular suggestion, but his older sister, Ellis, who was with us last year as a Pre-K student, remembered this project, and took on the role of lead quarter finder. She took Ethan with her from room to room looking in the "coin collection" places of the Andrews household, including her own collection of coins in her room. Through their enthusiastic efforts, Ellis and Ethan successfully collected $4.00 in quarters to bring to school to put in our quarter tubes!
Hooray for Ethan and Ellis Andrews, and to their support, Katie!! Tune in next week for more news on the project's success!

RED AND PINK EVERYWHERE!!

Many preparations were undertaken to make our week of Valentine's Day parties something special. In the Pre-3 classes decorating hearts was the order of the day, and how amazingly wonderful and individual they all turned out to be!! This bulletin board of hearts was in the Pre-3 classroom, which also serves as the snack room for Mrs. Jaques' MWF class, so these decorations were WIDELY appreciated!!

In the picture below, you can see the special care taken by Mrs. Banks' M-F students to decorate their snack room with hand-decorated table runners, and cupids, and Valentine napkins!!

Ms. Tierney's Pre-K class displayed a little more sophistication with their stunning tissue paper water color hearts, seen here decorating their name tags. Such delicate, and careful work by our sophisticated Pre-K friends!!

And here is a gift from Mrs. McArthur -- the Children's School Cafe, set up and decorated just especially for the occasion!! The table decoration even had a (battery-operated) candle in its centerpiece! How chic!! Thank you Mrs. McArthur for adding this lovely detail to our day!


What occasion at the Children's School would be complete if it did not involve play dough at some level?? Well, in this case, our friend Tyler in Mrs. Banks' M-F class, made us a whole plate of playdough hearts, arranged here so wonderfully, I could not help but take a picture of them to share with all of our friendly readers!! Thank you Tyler!!


And finally the piece de la resistance of Valentine's Day -- Fishing for Valentines!! Although I cannot show you pictures of my friends who did the actual fishing, I can show you their lovely assistants. And it will have to suffice for me to report to you that magic really does exist and if you are not a believer, you needed only see the faces of our friends who patiently waited for their turn to throw in their "hook" and see what bounty (of Valentine Love) they may recieve for their efforts! Thanks to all the loving parents who worked with our friends to share expressions of love and kindsness through the gift of a Valentine. Your efforts were so very much recieved with joy, excitement and event the smallest hint of delighted surprise!

Can you see the very tip of the fishing pole peeking up over the top of the barrier? Ms. Tierney has successfully loaded the fisherman's bag with Valentine "fish." She tugs on the line to signal it's time to haul in the load.




Mrs. Jaques was busy with her students at the opposite end of the school, here busily trying to load the fishing pole before the anxious and excited fisherman on the other side yanks back his or her bite!!

Heifer Project Update

Well, the Heifer Project with our friends at The Children's School is off to a strong start. In Mrs. Banks M-F class, our very thoughtful friend, Annie decided to take advantage of the gathering of family members at their Sunday Superbowl Party! With all those adults hanging around with change jingling in their pockets, Annie decided that would be a splendid time to take up a quarter collection on behalf of children around the world. She drew a picture of a goat (just like Beatrice!) and boldly requested her family members give up their quarters for the cause!! You go Annie!!

Dinos! Dinos! and more Dinos!

Look what we're doing at The Children's School!! We are visiting with our friends, the dinosaurs! This means that we are playing dinosaur games, digging for dinosaur bones, reading dinosaur books, singing dinosaur songs and telling dinosaur stories.





This is a dinosaur game created by Mrs. McArthur, and is great fun to play. Our friends in Mrs. Banks' M-F Class take turns playing this game, and then create their own versions!!







Here are 2 examples. What creativity by these children!!

For the archiologists in our midst there is the cornmeal and bones!! What fun to do a little diggin' around!


We even paint with our dinosaur bones!! This is an example of "bone-hopping" -- using the bones as stamps to create some name tags for our friends in the MWF class.




Using this felt board and a little imagination, the Stars Group in the M-F Class (with a little help from Mrs. Coleman and Ms. Tierney) came up with the following story:



"A long, long, long time ago, before there were people, there were giants that roamed the earth. There were purple mountains and a volcano. One day, T-Rex was out looking for coconuts to eat, when he meets Baby Stegasaurus. Baby Stegasaurus was looking for his mommy. T-Rex wants to help. So they go off looking for Mommy. When they find Mommy, she says "I love you!" When she sees T-Rex, she says "Thank you for helping." Pteradactyl flys over and sees a party going on. She flys down and says "I wanna join the party!" They offer her some coconuts. Terry (Pteryadactyl) says, "No thank you. Got any fish??" Trini Triceratops comes to the party and bends the tree down to get more coconuts. Al Apotasaurus comes by. They ask him to put his tail down. Brontasaurus helps the friends get up on Al's neck so thy can slide down. "Wheeeeee!!" But then it starts to rain. The dinos don't like rain, so they all go home. "Bye!!" The End."

Stay Tuned, Everyone! Valentine's Day, songs about mail, pink and red, and lots of hearts are next!!

MWF Children Take Home a Friend

Meet PJ the Bear!

The children in our MWF class have recently been introduced to a very good friend of the school, Mr. PJ the Bear. PJ comes to visit every so often with the intention of getting to know some of our friends better by going on a little trip with a friend to their house. Our friends who take PJ home are then invited to write a little journal entry, maybe even with a picture, to tell us all what PJ's visit was like.

Here is an example from our friend, Mr. Luke:

"Today, I went to the "dump" with my dad and my sister, Nikki, and we took PJ with us. He got to ride in my backpack in my daddy's big truck. The dump is by Green Lake. When we got there, my daddy threw all the old pieces of our house into a big hole. PJ watched from my back pack. He was happy that he wasn't going in the hole, too. The End."

PJ is a long-time friend of The Children's School, and is very excited when he gets to go home with a friend that maybe is the sister or brother of a friend he met only a year or two before! PJ looks forward to making as many visits as he can this year. Maybe he'll be coming to your house soon!

Think Globally; Act Locally!!! (Heifer Project is Back!)

The Heifer Project is returning to Children's School! Aren't familiar with the Heifer Project? Well, briefly, Heifer International helps communities around the world help themselves through the use of animals -- cows, water buffalo, goats, bees, ducks, chickens -- whatever works best for that particular community. The family (or families) involved manage the animal(s) provided by Heifer International to provide nurishment for their own family, as well as a source of additional income by selling the product the family cannot use (milk, honey, eggs). It's really quite profound. Our school helps by collecting quarters. We will be placing quarter cylinders in the hallway in the next week. Each cylinder holds $125 worth of quarters. When both cylinders are filled, we take a straw vote with our students to choose which animal we would like to buy/donate to a community that would benefit from such a resource. While we are busy collecting quarters, we will read books, have conversations, play games, and even write stories about the Heifer Project. STAY TUNED, AND SAVE YOUR QUARTERS!!

Registration Has Started!!!

Registration for families already enrolled in our school is currently underway. Starting last Friday, Jan. 19th, these materials were put into the classroom boxes for pick up. If you have a child currently in our program, and have any questions about where you think your child will best fit for the next year, please don't hesitate to ask your teachers. We are hear to listen and want your child to have the very best experience we can offer.

1/17 - WED. WE'RE OPEN FOR LB & PRE-K

Seattle Public Schools are running 2 hours late today, so our building will not open until 11am.
There will be no morning classes; but we will be open for Lunch Bunch and our Pre-K class will meet this afternoon.
Welcome Back!

SCHOOL CLOSED ON TUESDAY

No School for Tuesday, January 16th.
The weather once again keeps us from attending school.
We will begin to make up all these missed days in February. Our school WILL BE OPEN on February 20 thru the 23rd, weather permitting of course!

NO SCHOOL FOR FRIDAY! No Teachers' Workshop

Ice on the roads have made driving dicey. The Seattle Schools are starting 2 hours late, and we, in accordance to our policy, are cancelling our morning classes and Lunch Bunch. Please stay close to home, and stay safe. We will see you next week.

Teachers' Workshop is cancelled for today. Our workshop on Emergency Preparedness has been rescheduled for next Friday, starting at noon. We'll look forward to getting together then.

SCHOOL CLOSED!!

NO SCHOOL FOR THURSDAY, JAN. 11TH.
Due to snow and ice conditions, Seattle Public Schools have closed as of approximately 4:45am this morning. Consequently, our building will be closed, and our program. Stay home. Stay safe. Stay warm!!

Check here tomorrow for an update!

YOGA IS FOR EVERYONE!!

Here's our friend Raggedy Ann showing us how to do the "Wheel Barrow" on one of our new yoga mats! Yoga is for everyone!!

When doing a position for the first time, Teacher BJ is right there to help the kids make sure their bodies are in the right position!

Here Teacher BJ shows Raggedy Ann how to do another Children's School favorite -- The Turtle!!

Teacher BJ often takes as many as 7 children at a time to go into yoga class. Each child has their own designated space using these brightly colored yoga mats, purchased at Target.

Don't forget that you can get your own copy of The Children's School Family Yoga Book, available now in the hallway, right next to the tuition basket. These would make fabulous gifts for family members, or how about as a stocking stuffer for your child who will recognize this resource and possibly start their own yoga class at home!! Any donation you can make toward this very popular program at the school would be very much appreciated. (For example, printing costs for books was $2.00/book.)

Let's Paint!!

Pre-K Lunch Bunch Paints with Watercolors

This is another example of the "magic" of our school! These are 2x3 business cards with a blank side that have been donated to the school for the purpose of doing watercolor painting on. The children are given selected colors to work with, and then asked to paint whatever strikes their fancy. The small space encourages "careful" work with a small brush! It's exciting, and as you can see, very beautiful.