Pelle's New Suit Circle, Week 1

This was our first week working with this Circle composed by Nancy Blanning and inspired by Elsa Beskow's classic story, first published in 1890.

We continued with our Songs, Verses & Movement for classroom routines.

Circle Time Introduction

#1 - "Good Morning, Dear Earth" verse

#2 - "Morning Verse"
from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 13

#3 - "We Stretch Right Up to the Star of Our Birth" verse
from The Breathing Circle, page 56

#4 - "Beautiful Bird" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 18

#5 - "Windmills" pose
from Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, page 67

Monday

• read Pelle's New Suit by Elsa Beskow
• "Washing Raw Wool" from Earthways, page 144

Feeling the greasiness of raw wool (a fleece sheared by my sister-in-law from their sheep, Molly)... washing the lanolin out of the wool with warm water and baby shampoo... paper airplanes and Frisbees outside at recess.

Tuesday

• make simple wool sheep
• sheep puppetry with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

I placed a bit of pure lanolin on the palms of each child and let them feel its greasiness. Then I gave each child some plain white wool stuffing and they shaped it into a ball and patted it. The sticky lanolin helped the sheep to hold its form. They were so sweet! Then we all used our sheep to act out the "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti. Outside we had another beautiful warm day so we celebrated with bubbles and sidewalk chalk and a picnic lunch.

Thursday

• "Pelle's New Suit" Circle, pages 77-82
  from Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Therapeutic Support for Early Childhood, Volume 1 by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark
• "Carding" from Earthways, page 145
• lamb movement game with "Lambs" poem by Christina Rossetti
  from A Child's Seasonal Treasury, page 98

Carefully carding our clean washed wool... helping blend up delicious smoothies... examining the seed of the mango closely... turning the "Lambs" poem into a game... enjoying the movements and songs of our new Circle.

Today we chose to blend part of our fruit contributions into a lovely Fruit Smoothie and keep the rest of the diced fruit as a yummy Fruit Salad. We had four whole entire mangoes! Thank you! It was great fun for Zac to nibble all of the sweet juicy flesh off one mango seed so that we could see its surprising size and shape. Next week we will attempt to get it to germinate.

Here was our list of group contributions this week:

mango
strawberry
banana
frozen wild blueberries
almond milk

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