lcg 9/20 soren

Dear Maple Families,

What a busy class we had this week! After some play/chat time, we gathered with the singing game "Glory to the Mountain" and settled into our opening circle. Anne taught us a Michaelmas verse and told the story of St. George and the Dragon, as well as talking about the bright sword of Michael. We all imagined dragons and talked about what color they were and how they moved. She had a tricky riddle for us: I can play, but I can't walk. Then she taught us a new song and we all went "Swinging along the open road".

From dragons, we turned into cats and moved our bodies along to a story about a barn cat arching and flexing its back, then walking with its back as straight as a table. This provided an intro to our form drawing for the week, a horizontal line with a "hill curve" above and a "valley curve" below. We will be doing a lot this year with symmetry in our forms.

Out came the beanbags then, and we did some "pattern tossing", then worked on moving them around the circle as we counted, passing them on the even numbers. We will be working on counting by twos, threes and fours to lay the groundwork for learning multiplication.

Anne told a little story about a violet growing in the woods, learning from the gnomes and fairies about her name, her color and what she should be doing. We talked about other "naming words" (nouns), "color words" (adjectives) and "doing words" (verbs) and the children created their own sentences about dragons. They wrote them in their main lesson books and illustrated their sentences with beautiful pictures of dragons.

At snack we introduced the "talking stick". This is helping us learn how to take turns talking and listening to each other. Of course the jokes abounded, as they always do at our snack blanket. After snack we joined the other classes in the Fellowship Hall to practice a Michaelmas song that the Red Oaks had taught us. Each class sang a different part, and when we put them all together, it filled the room with sound. We will be singing it at the Fall Festival this weekend.

We had just enough time to learn a song about "Michael, with your sword so bright" on the recorder before we closed our day with "Shalom Chaverim" and "Merry we have Met", then burst upon the playground like Maple fireworks.

We ran out of time for handwork this week, but will be beginning next week. Please have your child bring his or her knitting needles as well as any projects they may be working on. We hope to see you at the Fall Festival this weekend!

Take care,
Sue and Anne