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Starlight & Twilight June Happenings

Starlight / Twilight

Starlight

The first year of formalized Storytimes planned for both Starlight and Twilight have made our hearts smile big and wide, and Starlight’s more newly implemented “Visits with Paddington” have exceeded our expectations!!

Mr. (Paddington) Brown has taken week-end road trips to the state of New York twice, attended family gatherings and activities with friends, planted gardens and has more recently added French Onion soup, linguini with marinara sauce, ice creams and cookies to his ever expanding list of favorite foods!!

“Sharing Treasures” is gaining momentum, and, as a result, we have marveled at music boxes, handled heart shaped rocks and examined paper houses.

“Red Nose Day” was introduced this year, and, we thank Sunshine and Rainbow for planning and sharing a friendship snack, Starburst for “painting noses”, all classrooms for their participation and families for whatever contributions they chose to make in its honor.

Our hallway display board is taking on the look of Summer fun and includes a hand crafted “ocean” border, a potato and paint stamped school of fish and photos of our friends.

As the afternoons continue to get warmer, we have begun to, again, enjoy seasonally-inspired ice pops, embellish the grounds with chalk and play and read by the tree that adorns our front lawn.

Twilight

Watering the gardens is a responsibility the Twilight children take very seriously. Each afternoon the children check the gardens to determine if they need watering.  The children then help drag the hose to the garden and take turns holding the nozzle to make sure all of our flowers and vegetables are well hydrated.

Matthew Greco watering

When everyone is satisfied with the watering of the gardens, I take over the hose to “make it rain”.  The children think it is great fun to have the “rain” fall down upon them; it also helps them cool off! As the summer progresses and our garden grows, the children will then help harvest, the cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, and zucchini; taking part in all phases of the gardening process.

Moonbeam June Blog

Moon Beam

This month in Moonbeam we are learning about spring, growth and lifecycles. Our Moonbeam gardeners have been having fun in the sensory table. It is full of organic soil and gardening tools such as- shovels, rakes and plant pots. As an experiment, we added some dry beans for the children to examine and play with.  We were interested to see if anything would happen to them. We were very surprised to see them sprout and try to grow roots, shots and leaves. It was a great hands on opportunity for the children to examine the different parts of a plant in close up. Outside, the children really enjoyed working together to plant cucumber plants in “Peggy’s Garden”. Everyone worked really hard to weed our area and very carefully put in the plants. Many children got excited to make a connection between this activity and their home gardens. Through taking care of our plants we are learning about the similarities and differences between living things.

We are looking forward to receiving our caterpillars which we will take care of and observe how they change into butterflies. Moonbeamer’s are learning new songs about the lifecycle of butterflies, and of course we are reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” and making lots of art work to help reinforce all the new concepts that the children are learning.

In addition, we were very fortunate to have a visit from Hunter; Oren’s dad. He brought in his banjo and entertained us all with classic songs such as “Old MacDonald” and “Hokey Pokey” The children loved it and they were especially pleased to get an opportunity to touch and play the banjo at the end.

We took a walk to Pierce Pond to enjoy the beautiful spring weather, and played with balls, bubbles and hugged some trees! We even found some frogs that the children were able to hold them in their hands, before watching them hop away.

Have a great summer!

June Sunshine Scoop & Starburst Happenings

Sunshine & StarBurst

Sunshine Scoop

The Sunshine class has been enjoying the metamorphosis of caterpillars into Painted Lady butterflies. We started with very tiny capterpillars and watched them complete each stage of the growth cycle. Our little entomologists all went outside at the end and released our winged creatures. It was a truly amazing process from start to finish. Also, our Sunshine artists created their own painted butterflies with liqud watercolors and tempra paint!

Our art classes at deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park continue to be big hit and awe inspiring. Walking around the gorgeous park has been a catalyst for us to produce our own art, based on some of the sculptures we have seen there. In one instance we duplicated iron circles rolling down a hill.  This led to all kinds of experimentation about the force of gravity.

The Magic Garden communtiy participated in a great year end celebration for all and send off for the soon to be “graduates”. Sunshiners enjoyed “bouncy houses”, water play, chalk drawing, bike riding and a slew of other amusements.

As the summer fast approaches we will be spending the days outside and have many great activities planned. We will have our own Olympics, as well as specific themed days such as “backward clothing day”, every day will be an adventure!

Starburst Happenings

As mentioned in May’s Blog entry, we were looking forward to our deCordova Art Experiences.  We have had two visits to the deCordova Sculpture Park as part of our art investigations. The children created a sketchbook based on their observations of the Sculpture Park on their first visit.  On the following visit, the children created music on Paul Matisse’s “the Musical Fence”. Upon returning to Magic Garden, each child made a clay pot bell, which they can use to create their own music. On our third visit, the children will have the opportunity to explore DeWitt Godfrey’s “Lincoln” cylinder sculpture before returning to Magic Garden to further investigate cylinders and then paint a cylinder that will become a part of a much larger community sculpture. Our last visit to deCordova will be the last Thursday in June and the children will have the opportunity to explore Sol LeWitt’s concrete structure “Tower(DC)”, as well as Ursula von Rydingsvard’s cedar sculpture “ence pence”. The children will have the opportunity to explore blocks and other building materials both before and after our walk to deCordova, and then be given glue and pieces of wood to create their own unique sculpture or structure to bring home.

This will be our last blog for the summer season;  we wish everyone a healthy, happy summer.  Enjoy!