Pine Class News
May 30
Trip
"Whoa, these are apartments like we have in Brooklyn."
"People park sideways like they do in Brooklyn."
"There are businesses on the bottom and maybe apartments above."
As we got farther from the train station, the are became more typically suburban. The children noticed some of the things that we've talked about as characteristics of suburbs. And they had an emotional reaction to these qualities - open space, greenery, quiet, safe spaces.
The best way we can keep this going, or get this started if it's not happening, could be to show children that we are readers too. Does your child see you reading? How can you share your reading life with your child?
How can we make open spaces and open blocks of time an invitation for children to structure their own use of time?
What opportunities can we find in Brooklyn to let children have similar independence and space?
Suburbs
In this case we used pencils for statements and colored pencils for questions. How can we use structures like color to facilitate confident, self-directed inquiry? How do we build bridges from teacher suggestions to independence?
Food and Mapping
Where else can we find opportunities to use math and data to encourage thinking about sustainability?
Math
Now, looking at this picture again, I can see the answer to another important question: if more cars fit parked on the diagonal, why don't we park cars on the diagonal in cities? Can you see the answer? Discuss this with your child, we missed that second question in school.
Baby!
Art
We just worked on etchings and printmaking. The MoMa is having an exhibit of Degas' printmaking experiments. Check it out!