Happy November!

Thank you all for joining us for our Fall Parent-Teacher conferences. It is always such a joy for us to have this touchpoint to more formally come together and chat all about your child here at school.

As the children have become increasingly comfortable with the routine of school, we have begun to introduce other parts of what a day at Barrow Street consists of. This includes specials, Marvelous Materials with Jahidah, and visits to gross motor spaces!

Specials

There are two specials that the Toddler class participates in during the year: music with Megan in the fall and movement with Kyleigh in the spring (we will touch on movement in January). Megan joins us in the classroom for music on Thursdays. For her initial visits, we had more informal sessions, allowing the children the option to join the gathering, or continue playing and listen from a distance as they became familiar. In recent weeks, we have worked towards supporting the children in transitioning out of Open Time, cleaning up materials, and gathering on the rug in a circle. This allows all the children to see Megan and what she may have brought that day, as well as begin to instill the idea of group gatherings being a foundational piece of belonging to a community. This will follow them as they grow older in other classrooms.

A typical music session is around 20 minutes, and the children have the opportunity to engage through active listening, exploring/experimenting with different instruments, and openly sharing their ideas through song requests. Megan also has two music squirrels, Butternut and Kabocha, who live inside the banjo that the children enjoy working with.

Marvelous Materials with Jahidah

Jahidah is one of Barrow’s curriculum specialists, and she joins us in the classroom once a week with a provocation. These provocations can include almost anything, and we as teachers are always eager to see what kinds of Marvelous Materials Jahidah will bring in for exploration! To provide context as to why you may not always see your child in her posts, we wanted to note that Jahidah joins us at a table during Open Time, which is a time of our day that allows the children autonomy in where they would like to play or what they would like to engage with. Some jump right in to engage/explore the materials, and others may benefit from a teacher’s invitation to the experience. Some children may also choose to observe from a distance, and other children may make a different choice around the room. Any and all of these we support, as this time of our day is structured for the children to make autonomous choices!

As you may have seen from her own StoryPark posts, her most recent provocations have been centered around the theme of birds and bird nests. Jahidah takes the children’s lead in this work, often placing the materials on a table and allowing time to explore through pinching, placing, poking, squeezing, and pulling materials. Check out her post (and upcoming posts) for zoomed-in snapshots of this exploratory work!

Gross Motor Spaces

We have three gross motor spaces that the children get to visit: the gym, the roof, and the track!

We visit the gym/track on Tuesdays, and the roof/track on Thursdays. In these spaces, the children get to explore all that their growing bodies are able to do through running, dancing, climbing, jumping, pushing, balancing, scooting, and riding on a variety of structures. There are also days when we share the gym or roof with other classrooms, allowing the children to use observation as a means of learning how to approach structures or materials.

Here in the classroom, we have schedule cards, allowing the children to see our plan for the day. For you all, we have included a quick snapshot of what our week looks like in regard to what days we visit these spaces or see these classroom visitors. Please note that this may shift day to day, but we have included this as a general overview.

Alongside this, we have been having a blast with lots of different materials in the classroom!

Ask Your Child

Did you see Megan for music? What songs did you sing?

Was today a gym or roof day?

Did Jahidah come to the White Room today? What did she bring?