We can't believe that we are already halfway through the first month of our new year! Winter Celebration was such a special way to wrap up 2024, with magical snowflakes falling as we sang good-night to Beetle, Grandmother Maple, and all the other maple trees. We have had our appetites whetted by the first few (small) snow falls, and are hoping and wishing for more snow in the future! In the meantime, the cold temperatures provide plenty of other exploratory opportunities. We have been finding a balance between being cozy and adventurous, as we listen to our bodies' rhythms during this dark, quiet, cold time of year. Since we have returned to school, we are adjusting to being back together in community as well as finding our rhythm with a slightly tweaked schedule (see below). This week, we are sharing a "photo diary" so you can see some of the ways we've been spending our time together.

In January, The Ducklings have been...

...celebrating Slope Day and exploring slopes! To kick off ski and sledding season at Randolph, the whole school gathers to celebrate Slope Day, which has become an annual tradition. Indoors and outside, we are experimenting with rolling different materials down all kinds of slopes, from gentle to steep.

...visiting the creek to observe changes! As the three B.E.A.M. groups visited the creek over the course of a week, each group took photographs and made observations to share with the whole class. We noticed that the creek slowly became covered in ice, and were amazed and inspired by the beautiful crystal patterns. We have been playing with ice both indoors and outside, as each setting affords different interactions and investigations.

...finding every bit of snow and ice that exists! We have found "collections" of ice popping up in all different spaces of the playground, as children squirrel away each precious piece. The ice has become all sorts of things, from dinner ingredients to construction materials to even a surface for art.

...spending our "mitten off" time focusing on hand strength and fine motor skills, incorporating literacy and numeracy practice. We have offered open-ended materials to explore in different artistic ways, including creating our own "loose parts" snow creatures, to be revealed soon! We hope all this practice will make our hands and bodies strong for when we create with snow outdoors.

...familiarizing ourselves with the vocabulary and tools of maple sugaring season...which is quickly approaching!

Being out in nature brings about an awareness and compassion for the other creatures and entities with whom we share our planet. The children have been making feeders using apples, oranges, sunbutter, peanuts in shells, seeds, and Cheerios. Fine motor skills were utilized, as well as math concepts as they designed patterns for the feeders, like apple-apple-orange-apple-apple-orange. They also estimated and counted how many foods fit on their strings. The children made over 25 feeders and as a group decided where they wanted to hang them. Over by the studio there is a tree with low branches and we festooned it with treats for the critters. We are now calling it “The Feeder Tree.” We have plans to check back in daily to see who has been enjoying our gifts. We asked the children which animals they thought would eat these treats, which brought about discussion of which animals were carnivores or herbivores. There may be bobcats and coyotes in the area, but they likely won’t eat apples and Cheerios! They came up with quite a list including deer, birds, squirrels, mice, foxes, skunks, raccoons and chipmunks. 

There was an in depth conversation about how many days it would take for all the feeders to be eaten. The children used prior knowledge and reasoning skills to answer the question with “It depends.” It depends on the size of the animals that visit the Feeder Tree. Would they eat a lot more than smaller animals? It depends on if the animals are flying from above, or crawling along the ground. Would they see the treats?  It depends on how many animals might come to eat at one time. If only one or two animals find the tree, it may take many days to eat everything. Or if it’s a crowd of critters, all the treats could be gone by tomorrow! Only time will tell and we are invested in finding out what happens!

In addition to animals adapting to the cold environment, we Randolphians need to adapt too. We play running games, we count steps between lean-tos. We find sticks to start a fire and fan the fire to keep the flames going. And warming up with a hot drink is always a great way to build community!

We’re Ready to Hit the Slopes!

By the time you are reading this, we will have already had our first ski day at Catamount! However, our ski program doesn’t begin when we get to the mountain. In fact, it started in the classroom when we returned from winter break two weeks ago. Because this isn’t the first time any of The Hummingbirds have skied or snowboarded through the Randolph ski program, all of them have experiences from the last year or two to look back on. We had them reflect on where they left off last year ability wise and to set a realistic goal (or goals) for this year. They did some journal writing explaining what their goals were and additionally, how they plan to achieve them. It’s easy to say what you want to achieve, but setting a plan of action to actually achieve them is a bit more challenging! 

Often at this age when we mention setting ski/snowboard goals, the first thing that we hear from kiddos is, “I want to go down black diamonds!” While this is certainly an attainable goal for some of our more experienced students, it isn’t necessarily a realistic goal for our newer skiers. By telling them they had to write about a realistic goal, it made them really focus on their own abilities. Some are hoping to graduate from the bunny hill to the ski lift and green circle trails, while others wrote about working on their speed and stopping abilities, all really great goals to have and totally achievable! We can’t wait to see our Hummingbirds on the slopes working on achieving their goals and setting new ones throughout the season! 

Check out the ski goal examples below.  It was so hard to choose which goals to share, because every single Hummingbird was very thoughtful and worked hard on their writing!

In addition to setting goals, we worked on warming up our muscles to prepare for hitting the slopes. We spent some Flex Time learning and playing different ski and snowboarding stretches and exercises to get our bodies ready. All we needed was some sidewalk chalk and the large blacktop space. We drew the game boards on the blacktop for four different games: Flexi-flake, Slalom, Group Ski, and Snow Line. Once we learned how to play the games, the Hummingbirds gave each one a try. They even used the sidewalk chalk to create their own versions, including connecting the games together and creating a ski game obstacle course. It was a wonderful way to get excited and ready for heading to Catamount while also getting our blood flowing and staying warm in the frigid weather. Additionally, during our all-school Slope Day choice time, some Hummingbirds taught kids and teachers from the other groups how to play. Teaching others how to play the games inspired us to write down instructions for playing, including diagrams of what to draw on the pavement.

As you can see, the games are fun and simple, so have your Hummingbird teach you how to play and enjoy getting your blood pumping together at home! Thanks for taking time to read about some of our ski related work, and stay tuned for an update on beginning our Maple Projects!