Embracing the Season

October 18, 2024

The Ducklings (Downstairs 3s, 4s, 5s)

Fall is in the Air

Since our apple picking field trip, we have been exploring apples, pumpkins, and all aspects of the fall season in many different ways. Embracing this time of year with so much change around us, the children have experienced making potions with walnuts and marigolds, tending to our farmer’s market, cooking up pretend apple pies, sorting apples by color and size, hammering golf tees into pumpkins, tasting a variety of apples and voting on their favorite, and making "gruffalo" crumble! These seasonal opportunities are layered, rich and engaging as we use what the land provides us combined with the excitement and ideas the children bring with them. Gathering walnuts in construction vehicles and delivering them to our collection site, creating ovens to cook up apple pies, and using a variety of tools in our corn/bean sensory bin are just a few examples that provide children opportunities to explore, discover, share, experience, wonder, investigate, and use all their senses to create knowledge about the world we live in. Autumn at Randolph is truly a magical time, letting us watch each day how our surroundings change before our eyes as we notice who and what is getting ready for the colder months ahead. Keep scrolling to see photos of the Ducklings in action!

The Hughsonville Fire Department visited us to talk about fire safety, spray the fire hose, and explore the trucks and equipment. We even had the chance to give a firefighter a high five! Some children were excited to ask questions and try out the equipment, while others preferred to observe closely. We let each child choose how to participate in accordance with their comfort level. Make sure to scroll through the photos below to see how and what your Duckling explored!

Upstairs Neighborhood (5s, 6s, 7s)

Apples, Apples, Everywhere

What a busy few weeks the Upstairs Neighborhood has had! We started off picking apples together at Meadowbrook Farm which led us to a wide variety of questions. The children sorted apple erasers and apple-shaped attribute toys. They discovered many ways of sorting: by color, by size, or whether the apple has a leaf or a “worm.” We had apple word problems in which Jerome, Jules and Maria picked, ate or gave away amounts of apples. There are clue words in the math questions such as “altogether” or “How many were left?” When working on subtraction, kids were asked to notice whether the difference was a smaller amount than the number they began their calculations with. Finally, the kids were presented with a logic puzzle in the form of Apple Sudoku. Apples also were useful subjects in our journal writing. What are some descriptive words? Sweet, crunchy, sour, juicy. What kinds of treats can we make with apples? Caramel apple was a popular choice, as was cider! Lastly, we learned about the parts of the apple and played a What’s Missing game with real life apple parts: blossom end, seed chambers, and pips were a few of the parts. The children were even able to equate apple anatomy to human anatomy! The skin is for protecting the flesh. The core is what helps the apple keep its upright shape, like our core muscles and spine do for us. The kiddos drew their own diagrams of an apple and labeled the parts. And finally, Jules hosted a school-wide apple tasting and the USN are interpreting the data.

Who Are We?

The Grasshoppers, Beetles and Honeybees continued to explore their individual and collective identities. They learned about their namesake insects and worked together to write an acrostic poem for their group. They are also using their groups’ insects as inspiration for their Masquerade Parade mask-making work with Nina. The children and teachers participated in a family study in which they were asked to represent each family member with a circle on a strip of paper. Who did they consider family? Did they want to include some or none or all of their cousins? How about grandparents that don’t live with them? Do pets count as family members? Each student chose to include their own interpretation of family. When all the data was collected, we built a graph on the side of the Grasshoppers’ lean-to. The kiddos had to come up with an informative title for the graph, and then they were asked to “read” or interpret the information. Again, math lingo was used: compare, most, least, equal. The "About Me" binder continues to be a very popular book to share. The children love to tell about the photos of themselves, their families and their favorite activities.

Working with our Neighbors

As you heard, we had the firefighters from Hughsonville fire station come for their annual visit. The children participated in a lively discussion with the firefighters about fire safety at school and at home. Make sure your family has a fire plan and a meeting spot outdoors! They got to spray a fire hose, toured the fire engine and learned about all the tools on the ladder truck. We are writing and illustrating thank you notes to the firefighters and they will be delivered to the station house next week.

In the meantime, our community of Beetles, Grasshoppers and Honeybees continue to work together to take care of our communal spaces. They’ve collected trash on the field, found missing toys on the playground, and raked up piles of leaves. Soon we’ll be jumping into those piles and enjoying the changes that come with the season of Autumn.

The Hummingbirds(7s,8s,9s)

Where We Come From...

As we move into harvest season, and wrap up our Identity Study, The Hummingbirds were proud to have finished up their big Identity Project. If you were able to join us on Curriculum Night, you saw first hand their beautiful “I Come From” poems. In typical Randolph fashion, this project started out with one idea and then evolved based on things that were happening around us.

Originally the plan was for these projects to be a kind of guessing game where the kiddos would write clues that apply to themselves. However, during our Identity Study we read a book called Where We Come From by Diane Wilson, Sun Yung Shin, Shannon Gibney and John Coy. The book was written in a poetic manner that often started with the words “I come from…” As a class, we were inspired to try that out. We also noticed the illustrations in the book. They were silhouettes of people, filled with items that applied to who they were as a person. Again, more inspiration came!

Brainstorming I Come From... Poem Ideas

As ideas emerged and transformed from the original plan, it was decided that The Hummingbirds would write their own “I Come From” poems inside a silhouette shape of themselves and then would draw pictures around them that connect to their interests. Kiddos still wanted to keep the guessing game aspect of the project, so their work was turned into a “lift the flap” type display where their photograph was under their work; revealing who the author of each project was.

As you can imagine, this project had many steps from start to finish. For our newly rising Carriage House kiddos, this was the first time working through the five stages of the writing process. Our 2nd year Carriage House students took on the role of mentors, as they are very familiar with this process from last year. Students worked in their journals to brainstorm ideas of things they could include in their poems. Many chose to make a mind map, while others created an outline for this first step. From there they wrote their rough draft. Once their drafts were done, they were introduced to our Revising and Editing Checklist which they worked through independently, then with a peer, and finally with a teacher. Once they had done all three, they wrote their final draft inside the silhouette and added their detailed illustrations around it.

Click Through the Photos Below to See the Busy Writers Working Through the Writing Process

For children who have never worked through the five steps of the writing process, it is a big task for their first time. Our Hummingbirds completed this task with growth mindsets and never gave up, despite this new concept being a challenge! Our 2nd year Carriage House students were there to help support the process, each step of the way!

Hummingbirds were so excited to share these projects when they were done, they couldn’t wait until Curriculum Night to do so! We decided to share amongst each other as a class and to practice public speaking skills in doing so. This is a skill students will need as they continue to grow and move forward in school and beyond. Because this project was also a guessing game, Hummingbirds read a peer’s poem out loud, rather than their own. As a speaker, they practiced facing the audience while speaking and projecting their voices so that everyone could hear them. As audience members, they practiced being respectful listeners by looking at the speaker, and having still, quiet bodies. Speaking in front of a group is hard! Our Hummingbirds did a great job, and taking away from the pressure was the added fun of guessing who the poems belonged to!

The Finished Where We Come From Projects

Time to Share Our Work!

Harvest Season is Upon Us!

As we move into our next theme of Harvest, The Hummingbirds have not wasted any time getting started on a project for Harvest Feast! They have been practicing their skills of using the writing process to make acrostic poem placemats.

Together the class brainstormed different harvest related words. The list ranged from food words like potatoes, pies, pumpkins to words like thankful and Three Sisters. Once our list was complete they each chose a word to work through the five stages of drafting to publishing.

In creating these placemats, kiddos reflected on times when they were at restaurants that had placemats that contained games or coloring activities on them. They decided to include some sort of Harvest related activity for other students to complete the day of our feast. Again, they planned and drafted, made revisions and completed their final copy.

Hummingbirds are so excited to offer this contribution to our much loved Harvest Fest next month! Stay tuned for more harvest related work in the coming weeks!

The Woodpeckers(9s,10s,11s)

Timelines and History: Mathematical Thinking and People and Places Link

Woodpeckers are industrious creatures. Hardworking and determined they drill their holes looking for the meaty rewards within. That pretty much sums up the Woodpeckers of the Upper Carriage House these past few weeks. These hard working birds have been digging into some meaty topics with energy and focus.

Our inquiry into People and Places has brought us to the pivotal moment in history when European nations made lasting contact with Indigenous peoples in the Americas. To help us make sense of when these events occurred, we have been building our own timelines.

We began by using our unit blocks to help us create 3D timelines that the children could easily manipulate and interact with. Our building blocks help the students efficiently use scale so they can move on to using the timeline as a tool. Blocks also provide an effective means to apply the mathematical skills that have been showing up in our daily Tang Math lessons. The Woodpeckers worked to create a scale, measured and compared lengths and use multiplication, addition and subtraction.

If one block equals 25 years, how many years would 10 blocks represent? What about 15? 20? How many blocks would we need to build a timeline that spans 200 years? How many years after Henry Hudson encountered the Lenape people in Manhattan was the Revolutionary War? We had fun using our hands and our minds to tackle this compelling and illuminating Math/History challenge.

Synthesizing Multiple Sources

Once we had a firm handle on the time period we were exploring(1450-1650), we started digging into resources to research the specific events that led up to European countries establishing colonies in the Americas.

We have been using a variety of resources from the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian to build an understanding of the events from this time period. We have intentionally chosen sources that center Indigenous perspectives and confront hard truths about our country's history of colonialism. Embedded in this work is the critical understanding that sources contain bias. We want learners to question where information comes from and whether a narrative is complete or accurate.

We used a variety of resources such as articles, primary sources, maps, videos and interactive websites to help us understand when France, England, the Netherlands and Spain first encountered the Algonquin, Powhatan, Lenape and Taino peoples in the Americas. Our resources helped shed light on the vast and diverse cultures that were already present in the Americas prior to the arrival of European countries. The Woodpeckers synthesized multiple texts and sources to create their own artifacts for our timeline. Now we have a student created resource to reference as we continue to explore our country's formation and the events that led up to the Revolutionary War.

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