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What a week! We started with our first real snow of the year, reveling in the winter wonderland that awaited us on the playground. We have been keeping warm with cooking projects as well as warming up our voices for all the singing we will be doing for Winter Celebration.
At Morning Meeting, we have continued to think about hibernation and dormancy. We wondered, where would we hibernate in winter? Would it be a real place or an imaginary place? Some ideas included a "nature bed, "a squirrel's nest," "a space that I'm comfortable," and even Randolph School! We also talked about how humans adapt in the winter, since we don't hibernate and shared what we like to do when it snows - whether that activity is indoors or outside. We have lots of fans of sledding, snowball throwing, and cooking/drinking hot foods.
We continue to think about and care for Love, the Fungi Friend's maple tree. We listened to Love carefully, imagining what Love was saying to us. We also thought about the question, "what would Love dream about?" as we prepare to put our maples to "sleep" (dormancy) for the winter. Our answers:
"Us! The Fungi Friends. Being Love's friends. Dreaming about a leaf pillow."
"I think it might dream about a birthday party."
"Us singing to Love."
"A blanket."
"Maple sap."
"The Fungi Friends!"
"Us chopping down some bark that was already off next to Love."
"Sleeping in a real bed."
"Dreaming about the fire spirit finding her in her sleep. A nightmare!"
We thought Love could use some more decorations and, as we were working, those decorations quickly morphed into dreamcatchers. We worried that Love might have some bad dreams, and the dreamcatchers would work to give Love only good dreams. We were also reminded of the book we read several weeks ago as a whole school after Links, called Dreamcatcher (Osofsky) and thought the children might be connected that book to our current work on hibernation and dormancy. We hope to have Love decorated and adorned by Winter Celebration!
This week, we made snowflake cookies and latkes, bringing some traditions from Katie's family into the classroom. For the cookies, we had children sign up for a cooking job at Morning Meeting, creating two groups of dough makers and two groups of rollers. We practiced washing our hands and wearing masks to keep our germs out of the food. We learned how to measure flour and how fast an electric mixer could go! After the dough was made, rolled out, and cut into snowflakes, we had several friends watching the oven and listening for the timer to make sure our cookies didn't burn. While the rest of the batches baked, our special guest reader Diane read The Christmas Cookie Sprinkle Snitcher. The cookies had cooled enough after lunch so that we could decorate them. We used a simple icing to help get our sprinkles to stick. Finally, we got to taste! After tasting, we wrote our name on a chart with the question "did you enjoy eating a snowflake cookie?", with a teacher adding notes about why we answered yes or no. Our easy recipe is linked here. The next day, we noticed that the Sprinkle Snitcher must have visited our classroom, because they mistook all our Morning Message "i"s for sprinkles and snatched them!
The next day, on Thursday, we were greeted with hearts instead of "o"s on our Morning Message and deduced that Love was sending us thanks for making Love dreamcatchers and decorations. Then, it was time to make latkes! We read Potato Pancakes All Around (Hirsch), a version of Stone Soup. Children helped with all the different jobs: peeling, grating (check out our cool grater to the left!), squeezing, mixing, and even cooking, as we kept careful watch so our latkes wouldn't burn. We enjoyed them alongside our lunches, with some defrosted homemade applesauce. What a delicious way to celebrate!
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