"For it is the stringing together of ordinary moments that
ultimately gives shape and quality to human life over time.”

- Margie Cooper, The Hundred Languages 

Like our founders said in The Randolph School Story, living and learning (or in the case of the Downstairs, living, playing, and learning) are seen as intimately connected and intertwined. It follows, then, that each and every "ordinary moment" is actually full of learning potential, if we as adults are able to slow down and observe the child as the action unfolds. Focusing on ordinary moments allows us to move at a pace we have forgotten, the child's pace, where each moment is both fleeting and infinite. When we carefully observe, document, and study the ordinary moments that children experience, we honor the children's quest for knowledge through daily life. We are able to live our values, seeing the child as an independent person capable of constructing their own learning. Let's look at a few ordinary moments over the past few weeks, as well as an extraordinary trip to space.

Star Lab: An Extraordinary Experience

In the weeks before spring break, we were invited to visit Star Lab, an indoor planetarium that gives us the opportunity to stargaze during the day. As you may have read in a previous It Happened - or even experienced yourself during an evening visit! - Star Lab provides opportunities for social-emotional learning, storytelling and literacy, pattern recognition, and cultural competency. Hearing stories from different parts of the world that reflect how people over time and space have made sense of what they see as they look up has inspired our own stories, as our imaginations run wild with the possibilities. This "sneak peek" into space will provide a foundation as we transition into rocket building shortly.

“We believe that daily life is a special teacher
and that the environment that hosts this life is fundamental.” 

- Vea Vecchi, Reggio Emilia atelierista 

Ordinary Moments: Five Green and Speckled Frogs

On a chilly and rainy April day, the teachers observed the children getting colder as the morning went on and knew they needed to move their bodies to warm up. The teachers also noticed that the children were interested in some of the big logs lining the sandbox, testing out how slick and slippery the rain had made them. Using a familiar song, "Five Green and Speckled Frogs," Katie began to sing, an open invitation to anyone who wanted to join. We started each verse by counting the number of frogs (children) lined up on the log, then paused the song at the "jumping in" line to see how many frogs wanted to jump into the water (sandbox), counting the number remaining to finish the song.

Seven green and speckled frogs sat on a hollow log
Eating the most delicious bugs, yum, yum
Five jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool
Now there are two green speckled frogs, ribbit, ribbit

The song and game continued for the bulk of our morning choice time. Children could come and go as their interest waxed or waned, and there were also opportunities for children to take on different roles, as a frog or as a singer/storyteller. Sometimes children were both, singing and signing the song as they participated. This time together was as fun, engaging, and warmth-generating as it was a deeply rich and layered learning experience. Learning through play, in an engaging, active, and intrinsically motivating environment, is how children learn best, as the research shows.

Here's the skills that teachers noticed as they shared their observations and reviewed the documentation of this experience:

Math & Science Skills
- one-to-one correspondence (match each  number word to one object) with a teacher demonstrating
- cardinality (that the last number you say is the same as the total number in the set)
- subitizing (glancing at a set of objects and recognizing the pattern of "how many" without counting)
- exploration of force and gravity
Social-Emotional Skills
- flexibility, patience, and turn-taking
- individual choice
- attention span development
- community membership and participation
Fine and Gross Motor Skills
- jumping and balancing
- spatial awareness and body-in-space awareness
- finger dexterity and finger separation
- timing and impulse control
Storytelling and Literacy Skills
- rhyme and rhythm identification
- vocabulary development
- phonological awareness
- story comprehension

Ordinary Moments: Creek Visits

We have continued to visit the creek every Wednesday morning, highlighting a different focus each week, based on our observations of the children's interests, wonderings, and discoveries from the previous week and from our other daily explorations. Each visit has become ordinary in some wonderful ways - we are now so familiar with the walk down to the creek, various landmarks, and some of the sights, smells, and sounds. Of course, other parts of the habitat are changing from week to week. These regular visits provide the foundation from which to explore how a habitat changes over time, both on its own and with human intervention/visitors. During April, our visits included storytelling, art, and music with the B.E.A.M. teachers, color matching scavenger hunt, harvesting garlic mustard for pesto, and building nests with partners. We have also spotted a male and female duck pair that we have been keeping a close eye on to see if there will be any nests, eggs, or ducklings this spring. We even snuck in a "bonus" creek visit with our Hummingbird Buddies. We were so happy for warmer weather this week as we were able to finally explore the creek water with our hands as well as almost all of our other senses!

Overheard while exploring water:

Looking closely at nature, and then translating those noticings into another medium, is a key component of our nature-based curriculum as well as an important precursor to reading and writing skills. Our campus provides ample opportunities for this to be a fluid part of our day to day here at Randolph which also translates beyond and outside our campus. Drawing still lifes links back to the beginning of our school year. During the start of the year, we began one of our first Choice Times as a Duckling community drawing self- portraits. Both tasks require noticing what we see with our eyes and translating that three-dimensional object (ourselves or a flower) into two-dimensions. Each drawing of daffodils show the children's emerging attention to detail and growing representational drawing skills. 

Incubating Eggs

The Neighborhood friends have been bouncing with EGG-citement over our incubating eggs from our very own hens who live here at school. We’ve been having conversations and discussing the life cycle of a chicken, comparing it to our own beginning, as well as trees, bugs, and other natural phenomena that occur around us. The process of incubating and hatching eggs into living beings is a complicated topic but the children have been receptive and open to all potential outcomes that can happen. We are currently on day 17 and have 6 eggs incubating and are hopeful that they are all viable whilst knowing that things can take a turn quickly and stop growing (quitters) and so far there are no signs of yolkers (unfertilized eggs from the beginning). We have been candling the eggs to check and see the growth inside, noticing the veins, air sac and dark mass appearing inside the shell. Observational drawings, marking our daily egg count calendar and reading various fiction and nonfiction books about chickens are part of our EGG Lab experience, having calm, quiet energy as we enter the classroom so as not to disturb or bump the table they are incubating on. We worked on the different parts of an egg, using diagrams and crafting our own as small groups. Cracking open an egg from our chickens to notice and examine each part was a tangible experience for the children to witness what is needed to grow a chick.  Our math times have included chicken dice games and scrabble math with chicken vocab, journal prompts both silly (what would you do if you were a chicken?) and about proper care of chickens (what do baby chicks need to survive?) is on the horizon for us in the coming days. 

Chicken Run Expansion Project Success

The Hummingbirds have been very busy over the past several weeks! They have finished writing and sent out their Chicken Home Improvement grant proposal (which was awarded $700! Hazzah!) and Request For Proposals (we hope you’ve read it in the last It Happened post!), they built three-dimensional models of the chicken run, have learned about dahlia flowers and their seeds, and have “blasted into space” on several occasions all while exploring questions they had about space, nature, flight and flying creatures! (Phew, that’s a lot!) 

Though we outlined a lot of the grant and RFP writing work in the last It Happened post, there is still more than what we shared! Part of the gant proposal work was creating a budget showing materials we will need and costs we will incur. This meant we needed to make sure kiddos understood the value of money and how to work with it. We spent time learning about the different coins and dollar amounts, how to identify each one, as well as how to add them. 

We then brainstormed what materials we will need to build the run. The final list included things like wooden posts and planks, rolls of hardware cloth, cement, nails and screws. From there, kiddos were split into four groups to search four different hardware stores online to start figuring out the prices for each material from each store so we could compare prices and find the best values. The stores we looked at were Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ace Hardware and Tractor Supply. Hummingbirds worked together in their groups to fill out data tables that included the materials needed, the quantity needed, the price per item and then the total price. We then compared all the data for each store to determine the best value for each item. In the end, Home Depot had the best prices for most of the materials needed, so that was the information we used when we submitted our budget on the grant proposal.

Once the work of writing the grant proposal and RFP were completed, Hummingbirds dove right into the next step of building three dimensional models of what they envision the new run looking like. We decided to team up with The Woodpeckers for this project and worked with Nina during our BEAM time to create these models. Hummingbirds took their blueprint plans they had drawn out of their dream chicken runs that we had created at the very beginning of this project work. They then decided if they needed to adjust anything to make it something that can actually be built. Once their plan was finalized they had the choice of teaming up with an elder Woodpecker, or working solo to then build a three dimensional model of the run using supplies like cardboard, popsicle sticks and modeling clay. Team work, problem solving, and trial and error were used along the way to create these freestanding chicken run models. 

A Botany Lesson: Learning About Dahlias

Between all this chicken run work, we had the exciting opportunity for Jessica, mom to Hummingbird Natalie, to come in and teach us all about dahlia flowers! Jessica has been growing these amazing flowers for many years.  She taught us all about their unique qualities and characteristics, including that they are octoploids, as they have eight sets of chromosomes! Jessica then showed us how to sort the seeds out from last year’s dried flowers. Hummingbirds all got a dried flower to carefully open, and meticulously worked to pick through and separate the seeds from the chaff (the outer covering of the seeds). Once that was done, kiddos all had the opportunity to pick out their two “best” seeds, based on which looked the thickest and darkest in color. They chose their seeds and then carefully planted them in soil for us to keep on our windowsill. Once the plants are mature enough, we will transplant them into the flowerbeds right in front of the Carriage House, in the hopes that they will grow into beautiful flowering plants for us to enjoy early this fall. We have been checking on them daily and are very excited to say that many of them have now grown into quickly growing, bright green seedlings! We cannot wait to see what kind of blooms we get from them! 

Flight: Inquiring Hummingbirds Want to Know

Finally, Hummingbirds have been exploring all things space and flight related! Correlating with our time having Starlab here on campus, we started a Question Formulation Technique (QFT) with our kiddos. We began by giving the topic of “Space, Rockets, Nature & Flying Creatures” and having them ask whatever questions they had about anything relating to this theme. We wrote down exactly what they said, without any answers or comments being given. Next, we went through and labeled if the questions were open or closed ended questions, making sure to discuss the difference between the two and explaining how you can typically get more information out of an open ended question. Once they were labeled, we read them all aloud and then voted on which questions we were most interested in learning more about. 

Once we had narrowed down the questions, each kiddo selected one that they wanted to do research on. We got TONS of books from the library and The Hummingbirds got to work reading and exploring! Once they had gone through as many resources as possible, if they still were not able to find what they were looking for, we allowed them to use a “kid friendly” search engine (DuckDuckGo) on the internet. We discussed reliable sources and how to identify them. Students summarized the information they found onto a worksheet we made for them, which will eventually be turned into a big class book about all things “Space, Rockets, Nature & Flying Creatures”.

With the school year feeling like it is picking up speed as we approach these final weeks, we are so proud of all the work The Hummingbirds have accomplished, and know they will keep up the great work and stamina until the very end! 

P.S. - Ask your Hummingbird about the guacamole party!🥑

When it's time for the seminar itself, students are divided into three groups with rotating roles. The "Inner Circle" leads the discussion, using a Questioning Guide to help them ask thoughtful, open-ended questions and respond to one another using evidence from the texts. The first group in the "Outer Circle" supports their Inner Circle partners by passing helpful notes or reminders from their preparation. The second Outer Circle group acts as observers, completing an Observation Form to give constructive feedback on how their partner participated—looking at things like how well they listened, how often they contributed, and whether they supported their ideas with evidence.

After the seminar, students take time to reflect by completing a written reflection. This is their opportunity to think about what they learned, how they participated, and what they could do to grow in future discussions. It’s an important step in helping students take ownership of their learning and see the value of collaborative thinking.

These seminars are not only helping students understand the content more deeply, but also empowering them to become more confident, curious, and respectful communicators. It has been truly rewarding to see their progress and the way they challenge themselves and each other in these conversations.