164 days

We have been keeping a tally of how many days of school we have had all year.

Each week we used an image related to what we had been studying. 

This week we have put up 

I asked my friends if they could guess why I chose a heart for this week.

Judah: Because you love us so much. 

Morah Katie: That is true.

As our wall clearly states, our year is coming to a close.
We had a short, busy week creating one of our final art projects.
It required some self reflection.

As the children took time for self observation, I took the time to observe the growth in the skills they acquired or refined over the year.

My friends had conversations about hair and eye color, 

Ari: I have tan hair and brown eyes. 

Evan: I have green eyes, I don't have brown eyes.

Judah: My hair looks kinda gray.

Morah Katie: Gray? 

Judah: Well maybe not gray, but not brown or black.

Augie: You see I have white on my eye but I don't need to draw it on the paper because the paper is white, but I'm not white like the paper I'm more peach like the peach pencil. So I'm not going to draw the white of my eye but I'll use some peach.

Olivia: I have long hair.

Abram: And it's black.

Olivia: Well it's brown black.

Abram: Mine is black.

I made note that many of my friends were cutting on their own, and holding pencils correctly and writing with careful precision.

 

I watched how eagerly my friends created their masterpieces, 

and reflected on the individual growth of each child over the past year.

Looking back, September seems very long ago.

My friends have grown so much and bloomed into beautiful, caring, young people.

Pentagons and hexagons and strawberries...

This week we were going to finish up shapes with the multisided polygons: 

pentagon, hexagon. heptagon, octagon, nonagon and decagon.

We didn't quite make it there.   

On Monday we did learn that a shape with five sides is a pentagon, and it looks like a home base for baseball.

Ari: You mean t-ball Morah Katie.

Morah Katie: Do I?

Ari: I think you do, it looks like the base at T-ball. 

Morah Katie: I can agree with that.

Jade: It looks like a dreidel.

Morah Katie: It does look like a dreidel.

I felt good about pentagons. 

And though I was sad for other shapes I was pleased to witness:

Clara and Nora storytelling with the help of some animals.

Maia and Aura busy developing fine motor skills.

Augie and Abram writing letters to their friends.

Nora and Evelyn creating their own story with the farm animals.

Renita and the children harvesting in the garden.

There was just enough strawberries on monday for everyone to enjoy one.

Some of my friends packed some green to take home, some just ate them on the playground.

The inspired architecture reached new heights this week.  

The self control used to walk around it was as impressive.

Later in the week we did find our way back to shapes.

 

With the help of some play dough and sticks we created shape structures to take home.

Judah: Oh good an experiment!

Morah Katie: It will be. I want to make a pentagon that will stand up, but I'm not sure it will. 
It seems to keep falling over.

Judah: You can put play dough underneath the bottom stick to make it stick to the plate.

We tried Judah's idea, unfortunately, the pentagon did not stand.

Morah Katie: I failed. Should I give up?

Kids: NO!

Morah Katie: I can try a triangle? 

And...my triangle stood up.

Clara: I am making a star. It has a lot of points.

Nora: I am making a triangle too but it is a flat one. 

Olivia: I am making spheres, round likes balls.

Clara: Olivia's spheres look like pile of rocks at the beach I've seen once.

 Evan: I am making a lot of shapes.

Morah Katie: You are. What are you making?

Evan: I made quadri...lateral.  (pause)  It's a parallelogram.

Morah Katie: I agree.  Does it have a name?

Evan: A RECTangle. And I made a triangle when I cut the other one in half.
Ari: Judah We just need to match all the shapes to this paper.

 
Judah: Oh we can do that and then use those blocks to build towers.

Whether it is using stencils to trace them or just going freehanded, 

Augie, Asher and Abram continue to have fun creating shapes.

It has been a great month of discovery.