Field Trip

Our Field Trip to St. Mary's City yesterday was wonderful! Today the director came into my classroom (I was at the library doing toddler storytime) and had the children each tell her something about the trip using only signs. She said it was amazing how creative they were in their body language! Then she closed her eyes and the children walked her through a visualization of the field trip, beginning to end. Then and only then did she have them do an art piece showing something they had seen on the trip. Torn and cut paper collage, watercolors, and oil pastels were the media they used. When I got back from the library there was some wonderful art awaiting me.

At storytime I did Caps for Sale (oral storytelling) with silks for the toddlers to wear while they were the monkeys, imitating my movements. Then we did free play with silks. I brought out the felt finger puppet animals and the little girl who was there -- there was only one -- absolutely LOVED finding the pocket to put her finger in! She is about 18 months so you would think she's too young for puppets but absolutely not. Then we laid all the silks over the table edge to make a fort and sat under the table and made up stories with the puppets. Sam especially loved having one animal go outside and behind the silk so you could only see its silhouette and the other animal had to find it. She was doing the "hiding" animal and she was quite good at it. In fact, after a while, she would change where the animal was hiding, switching silks, even putting the puppet behind her back for me to find it. We had a marvelous time.

I have been asked to return next week for another round of subbing downstairs so I am quite pleased. We have big plans for tomorrow -- hammering nails into a tree stump (roofing nails work best for this), breaking up a 1 lb. block of beeswax into chunks (also with a hammer -- this is for our candle dipping Monday), finishing our corn husk dolls, making a colonial cup and button toy, making tea bags with the dried herbs from our garden (Monday is a tea party), and clay work from the clay we dug on the school grounds. Next week I'd like to dip candles, do carding and spinning and felting wool, and make paper dolls in Colonial costumes.

Leah is 5 tomorrow and we have to send in "special snack". I'm completely out of money so we made granola with dried pineapple and raisins and will send that in with little paper cups. Leah helped make it so she's pleased as punch and hopefully no one will turn up their noses and say, why can't we have cake? I have a lovely handmade plate with an angel glazed on it that I bought at the gift shop, and a necklace for her. We'll do the Birthday book by Norah whoever it is and her birthday ring and crown and sing and blow out the candles and do a special birthday breakfast with waffles. It is weird to try to get in all this family time plus working 40 + hours a week. I don't know how people do it! Since I've been single the only time I worked this much was summer camp and I know you get your rhythm after a while but right now I am struggling to breathe.

Tomorrow night is Date Night. I have I think 12 children. I need to firm up those plans. Then Saturday AM is another toddler session where we will be dyeing wool felt by sprinkling Kool Aid powder on it and making little fishie finger puppets. This is a Suzanne Down idea (and she has an accompanying story called The Sea Garden) in an issue of Living Crafts magazine.

Off to write the Friday newsletter for my classroom, dig out the birthday crown and ring, and wrap Leah's gifts.