AFC PINE AM

E sat down at the playdoh and started smashing it onto the table top. She rolled it out with the rolling pin and ran her hand across the smooth surface. E picked up a pair of scissors and started scraping the top of the dough.  "The playdoh is the same color as a tornado. That's what I am making. It swirls around and around like this." E made a swirling pattern into the playdoh and described how it twisted and turned just like a tornado that was playing over the projector.  "How does a tornado stop? Do you know what they sound like?" She thought for a minute and tried to answer her own question.  "I don't know what it sounds like, but it is really loud. Like you can hear it." E scraped up her playdoh and started squishing it between her hands. She carefully rolled it between her palms to make two long tubes of playdoh.  "I need to roll it to make it go around!" E quickly smashed the creation.  ...

After playing in the forest the Pine kids talked about how tired they were. We quickly met as a whole class and chatted about what we could do to calm our bodies down and relax from our time at the forest.  "We can do some yoga!" "Yeah, look I am a rainbow!" The other kids looked over at V and immediately started doing the same pose she was.  "I think this is called down dog." "But it also looks like a rainbow!" That gave the kids an idea. Since we have been talking about weather was there a way to represent the weather with our bodies?  "Lets make it snow!" Everyone began doing what B & E were doing. In the quick video above you can see the kids wiggling their fingers slowly to the floor. "Let's make it go fast!" "Like a blizzard!" All at once the kids started wiggling their fingers faster and hitting the floor. They started jumping up and down wiggling their finger...

Our study with weather continued today as the kids started drawing what they thought the weather would look like.  "I'm making the rain by mixing all of the colors! It's a storm! The blue is the clouds. They are so big." "I drew happy and sad rain drops. They are made up of molecules!" "This is the best planet because it has hot, cold, and warm. It's planet earth. You'll freeze to death on Uranus, you need like 100 sweaters! Mars is really hot. There are volcanoes!" F was hard at work drawing a sun. He chose yellow and began making big circles across the shiny foil.  "This is the rain. I am making the dots because it's thunder. It's next to the rain and the clouds. I couldn't find white to make the clouds so I made them blue because it's raining." After drawing for awhile a few asked if there was another way we could show the rain. Because it wasn't raining outside, ...

The Pine kids noticed something a little different about this morning than previous mornings.  "It was so dark this morning!" "It was also cold." "I think it's going to rain!" "The clouds are kind of grey and white." "That means it's going to rain!" "Can I show you what lightning looks like?" B drew two different lightning strikes. "First they are small, and then they get really big!" "Lightning is yellow!" "You can't hear it." "You can hear thunder!" "You can see it too!" We then wondered what does thunder look like?  During capers we posed the question  "Can You Draw the Weather?" "We need blue for the rain, and purple for the thunder, and yellow for lightning!" C began drawing his rain. He made large strokes of blue down his paper. "This is a big rain!" F started makin...

Now that the weather has cooled down, the Pine friends find our forest time much more enjoyable. The forest comes with many challenges... the paths are narrow, trees have fallen over, and the trees have made it dense and thick. Despite the physical obstacles, the Pine friends figured out different ways to get around.  B wandered down the path caked with fallen leaves & mud. He pointed towards the large log and said, "Up!" \ B was determined to make it to the other side of the log.  B walked over and looked above and below the log wondering how he was going to get to the other side. Just then, E walked over and ran into the same predicament... how will they get to the other side.  Both E & B peaked over the top of the fallen log they realized it would be difficult to get on top.  "It's high! I want to go over." E made his way over to the other side of the log where he noticed some lower branches. E stepped...