Downstairs:
Care & Cooking

This week, we delved into the concept of care...

...and even caring for our visitors, as we have welcomed several visiting students.

We also celebrated the arrival of some winter weather. During the icy precipitation on Monday, we "painted" with snow, using different materials dipped in white paint to make marks on blue paper. We helped our winter animal friends find comfort and coziness in the mitten, reenacting the story with finger puppets, hand puppets, and at the light table. And, of course, we reveled all opportunities to play in the snow, ice, and water, whether that was rolling snowballs, sculpting with ice, or making a big splash coming down the slide!

We teachers are well aware of Nancy's wonderful cooking skills, so we were delighted to have her lead us in this task. We mixed masa (corn flour), water, and salt to make the dough, mixing it with our hands! We continued to adjust ingredients until it was the consistency of play dough and didn't stick to our hands. This was a true sensory experience, as we got to feel and smell the dough as we worked. While the dough rested, we grated cheese and apples and prepared black beans. At Morning Meeting, we had thought about what each of us wanted in our own quesadilla, using a Venn Diagram (see above) to map our choices. Finally, the dough was ready! Each friend who wanted to had a turn to roll a ball and use a tortilla press to make their own tortilla, which Katie quickly cooked in the pan. Then, everyone got to fill their own tortillas with fillings of their choice, and it was cooked again. Some friends enjoyed the quesadillas so much that they were coming back to ask for seconds before we had even finished cooking everyone's first! This was another multi-step cooking project where we had to practice listening to directions as well as patience. We also listened to some traditional Mexican banda music while we cooked, and Nancy shared the book Round is a Tortilla: A Book of Shapes (Thong).

We also had three cameras on hand so children could document our day, to share with our schoolmates who were at the slopes. We will have the children's photos to share just as soon as we figure out how to hook up the "old school" cameras to our "new school" computers! Here are a few snaps of our Fungi Photogs in action: