AFC PINE AM

We celebrated our last day before break with A LOT of fun activities including:  sitting by a bonfire, making and decorating cookies, playing with our friends from Dogwood, and hearing a book read by Grandma Marty!  Have a great and safe break. Thank you for the sweet gifts, we are so happy to have each and every one of you in our class!  So much love,  Ms. Jill, Ms. Kim, & Ms. Margie

First thing this morning, the Pine friends ventured into the collaboratory where E, C, & E wanted to build an obstacle course.  "We need to make it really big! It has monsters!" C's suggestion sparked a different way in which they could build an obstacle course. Instead of just lying the blocks next to one another on the ground, they started putting smaller blocks down first as stilts.  "We have to build it up like this so the monsters won't get us." E found different blocks and came across a long cylinder shaped block.  "Here this one should work." E took a step on the blue block and fell backwards landing on her butt.  "Oh, that's too unstable!" She began readjusting the smaller blocks and replaced the cylinder with a square.  E sighed with relief and then began building the obstacle course with the two boys. 

It's always an exciting and fun time at Ambrose when we are visited by the Bristol Bravos! Today they sang the whole center different holiday songs and even played some instruments! Such a fun morning to kick off the holiday season. 

Today the Pine kids were visited by some special guests armed with musical instruments. With only 7 and a half days of school left, Ambrose has been counting down with special surprises each day. This particular Wednesday the kids enjoyed some Christmas music.   While sitting on the carpet the kids were able to listen to an instrumental version of "Jingle Bells" before the Pine kids joined in on singing.  "The were playing guitars!" "There were two guitars but no singers." "There was a different instrument too." "It's called a violin!" "We got to sing the song!" "I don't really know the words, but I know Jingle Bells." We are so lucky to have such talented staff in Ambrose! 

While walking down the hallway back to the Pine classroom, E noticed snowflakes hanging from the ceiling in the front office.  "Look, they made snowflakes! We need to decorate!" "We can make snowflakes for our room." "Yeah let's put them where the pine cones are." "I think we can use cotton balls to show the snow." "And paper! Let's cut them too." In our short walk down the hallway the kids came up with a plan to replace our pine cones hanging in our room with snowflakes. We immediately got to work.  The kids worked diligently as they dobbed, folded, and cut out snowflakes to decorate our room. Each child seemed to take a different approach.  B decided he needed to cut out his snowflake first before making it blue, where as C wanted to dob before he cut.  "C is decorating it and then cutting it and I am painting it after I cut it." "Yeah it's not the same." "I...

After a week off from working on the submarine, the Pine kids got back to it.  "We need to color on it!" "Yeah, we can draw it rainbow." "Let's make it rainbow!" The kids grabbed different colored crayons and got to work by quickly scribbling back and forth.  "Wait, we aren't making it a rainbow. We should just draw whatever we want on it." "We need the windows too!" "Let's do the windows tomorrow." The kids continued to talk about what the submarine needed and made a plan in which they needed to complete each task.  "I think we need to cut the windows out tomorrow." "We can all draw our own stuff." "I am going to make a rainbow." "I am going to start on the inside, it needs to be colored too!" The submarine project has really started to take shape as the kids discuss while they work. They come up with ideas on how to construct it,...

 B walked past the mirror and caught his reflection. He took a step forward, paused, then turned back to look at himself in the mirror. B started laughing. He pointed at his reflection, turned to see who was looking, and then started laughing.T, who was standing close by, started giggling too.  B looked over at T and started laughing harder. The two boys started giggling with one another. This created a whole game of looking in the mirror and erupting in laughter. Such a positive way to start the morning! 

T walked over to the table full of playdoh and took a seat. He grabbed a huge hunk of playdoh and started squeezing it between his fingers and smashing it between his palms. He smiled as the dough oozed between the cracks of his fingers.  T played in the dough with just his hands for awhile before he noticed the basket of tools sitting in front of him. His face lit up when he saw the different cookie cutters.  "Tree!" He picked up the tree and smashed it straight into the playdoh.  L picked up the star and began singing quietly to herself  "Twinkle twinkle little star..." and then pushed it into her mound of dough. She laughed as she stamped the stencil into the playdoh repeatedly, noticing how the stars began to overlap one another creating a different pattern with the star shape.  The two continued to work across the table from one another passing tools to one another, joining in on songs like "twinkle twinkle little sta...

While walking through the forest, E noticed a long branch hanging from a tree.  "Look, it's hanging down. It goes all the way up there, but I can reach it down here!" She gave it a tug and realized it was stuck.  B turned around and watched how the branch swung back and forth when E would let go of it. That seemed to give him and some others an idea.   B grabbed the branch between his hands, jumped up while holding on tight, and lifted his legs.  No luck. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to swing on the branch.  "You have to be strong to swing on it!" E stepped up, grabbed the branch, jumped up, and swung gracefully above the forest floor.  "E is swinging upside down! He is so strong! I think I can swing like that too if I take off these big gloves." The boys took turns swinging above the ground. They giggled as they would swing and fall or land gracefully on both feet. Do you just need to...

Welcome back Pine friends! Everyone seemed quite excited to get back to working on a project we started before break began. When presented with yellow paint, the kids knew exactly what they wanted to do with the box.  "We get to paint the submarine yellow!" "Yeah, so many submarines are yellow. Like 1000 submarines are yellow." F & V started painting the sides of the box a bright yellow, moving around the chairs.  It was interesting to watch as they moved around the table, avoiding the chairs and just standing next to the table to paint. It seemed to give them a better vantage point to paint the parts of the box that were still brown.  B grabbed a brush and started painting, but noticed he wasn't able to reach the top of the box when he was sitting in the chair.  "I think if I go up on the chair like this I can reach the top." B adjusted himself on the chair so that he was kneeling.  "There, look, I can do it like this...