Pounding Posts, A Really Big Worm, and Matching Rectangular Prisms

Working In The Garden

A few of last year's strawberries survived being eaten by critters and the cold hard winter. We added fifty mor planted to these hardy few that survived.

The garlic also wintered nicely and is growing strong.

Keeping those weeds out is hard work.

Primary Students At Work In April

Caring for our classroom... Sewing a cloud pillow (we've been studying clouds all month)...

Punching out a cloud shape (great fine motor skill building)...

Working with the Bead Stair and finding mystery numbers...

Building his own hundred board grid...

Exploring the relationships of diameters...

Building words with the moveable alphabet...

Painting a cloud...

Plant science experiments with beans...

Creating art with beans and clay...

More bean art...

An extension on basic color matching to make it more challenging...

Spring Days...

Counting and building the teen numbers... Sorting foods and food groups...

Rolling a slab of clay...

Micheal, one of of substitute teachers, shares his musical talents...

Feeding Simon's (Toddler Room) baby goat...

Counting and weighing vegetables...

Two different ways of counting to one hundred, using the tiles/ hundred board and making an individual board with a string grid...

Counting and group spindles...

Marble painting...

Exploration in Clay

We have been exploring the properties of clay through building pinch pots, coil pots, and slab work. There are many ways to add textures to our work with a variety of tools and stamps. There is no limit to our creativity!

A great deal of patience is involved in completing a piece of pottery. After shaping the wet clay we let it dry for a day or two until it is considered "leather hard". At this point we can carve it and polish it. Then we must let it dry until the gray colored wet clay becomes "bone dry" and turns white. This can take a week or two depending on the humidity and temperature. The pots are very fragile at this point until they are fired in a kiln for the first time.

The Solla family of Cold Springs Studio (Cold Springs Road in Jacksonville) will be firing our work for us. Once it is fired we will glaze our pots and then they will be fired again.

Make Seed Balls, Not War!!

The friends at Namaste made seed balls using native wildflower seeds.

Here's how we did it--

We mixed together: 1 part seeds, 3 parts compost, 5 parts clay, and a little water. The consistency should be like play dough. Then, roll seed balls about the size of marbles and let dry.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 THROW!!!

Visit these links for more info on Seedballs:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103129515

http://greenmuseum.org/content/work_index/img_id-11__prev_size-0__artist_id-3__work_id-4.html

Concentration and Focus

When young children are engaged in meaningful work that challenges them they deomonstrate incredible concentration and focus.

Warm Days, Cold Nights Helps The Sap Flow