Welcome to the third edition of the Blue Room digest – every other week you can find pictures and updates on the latest happenings in Flexible Fox world! Here you will also find conversation starters, important “Housekeeping” tips and upcoming dates.
Our second park trip was a huge hit! We went to Minetta and had our very first Letter Hunt.
We launched our “Letter of the Week” this week and it’s the letter S! There will be more to come on literacy soon.
We had such a blast hosting so many grownups in the Blue Room on Thursday! It’s our hope that those who were able to attend came away knowing some more about all the hard work and joyful learning that your little Foxes are experiencing each day.
For those of you who were not able to attend, we encourage you to connect with your fellow Flexible Fox parents and ask them about their experiences at Back to School Night (here in the Blue Room we deeply believe in learning from our peers!!). Of course, we do have some big picture takeaways you can read here as well…
Morning Meetings are a time when we all come together as a group in the Blue Room and there are some key routines that are a consistent part of the meeting:
1) Mindful Moment: helps the class settle in to meeting; gets everyone on the same page; models important self-regulation skills
2) A Flexible Fox Story: tells us who is here at school today and who is not; invites the class to send love to the friends who are not present
3) Greeting: contributes to sense of belonging; children are learning each other’s names, practicing eye contact and using strong, proud voices
4) Morning Message: modeling early literacy skills (choral reading; concepts of print like directionality of text, upper/lowercase letters, punctuation, 1-1 correspondence); sense of community
5) Schedule: grounds children in the rhythms of our day; helps them know what’s next and what’s to come; it’s co-created – they can see themselves in the photos on the schedule cards
6) Calendar/Day Count: early exposure to math concepts like pattern and base 10 system; marks passage of time
7) Game: community building; fun and energizing; occasionally academic concepts (like rhyming) are embedded
Work Time is a large chunk of each day in which children have the opportunity to play (work) in self-directed ways that challenge them and build a variety of skills in a variety of domains. However, the most consistent skills children work through during this time are social/emotional: collaboration, navigating conflict, & self-regulation through disappointment/frustration.
Closing Meeting is an important “bookend” to our days at school. In this meeting we emphasize reflection and occasionally we will look ahead to what’s coming on the following day. We also always sing our Goodbye Song (perhaps you’ve heard your child singing it at home) to say farewell to each other at the very end.
In our grownup Closing Meeting on Back to School Night, I named that as folks who are new to Barrow, Ethan and I are so grateful for the warm welcome we’ve received. I gushed about how much we adore your children and how delighted we are to get to know and support their growth each day. I also talked about making mistakes, especially as a early-career teacher and being human – which turned out to be quite apropos given that I got sick the very next day and am sending out the newsletter a day late! Thanks for being Flexible!
We also offered up a Question Jar for parents to write questions they had for us – feel free to shoot us an email whenever questions come up and we can try to answer them or point you in the right direction!
Kids were delighted to see their parents’ work on display in their classrooms the morning after Back to School Night.
Ask A Flexible Fox!
What is the letter of the week? (ask them to show you the sound & motion)
What is your favorite thing to do at the park with the Flexible Foxes?
What did you enjoy doing during Work Time this week?
