What a wild week is has been! We’ve finished Z week in our alphabet curriculum and are not spending a couple of weeks reviewing the ABCs in general. It’s so much fun to revisit the letters we’ve already explored!
We kicked off ABC week by studying one of our favorite books: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom! This delightful rhyming story tells the tale of some mischievous lower-case letters that race one another to the top of a coconut tree, only to discover that there are way too many of them to fit! When the coconut tree comes crashing down, the capital-letter Mamas and Papas come running to rescue their bumped and bruised babies. We recreated our own Chicka Trees here at school! Each child painted his or her forearm brown and hand green. Next, the children gently pressed their arms onto a piece of paper. Once their hands were clean, they used letter stickers to adorn their beautiful and unique trees!
Tuesday’s adventure brought another visit from the famed pirate Capt. Jack Sparrow! Capt. Sparrow visited us during X week, and he was back again to leave letters, clues, and a map around the classroom. Working together, we found all of his clues, assembled them in alphabetical order, then found his buried treasure: golden chocolate coins! We also had several small group projects this week, each one geared to a specific interest and challenge level. While one group used pipe cleaners to make their own letters, another played Letter Memory, while another still sorted through Alpha-Bits cereal to organize the letters!
It was a crazy week in terms of staff here at HCS. We were so sad to have our very last music class with Jessica, Zoe’s mom. She’s filled our classroom (and our hearts!) with such wonderful songs that we sing them all week long! With Jessica’s expertise and passion, the Tugboats were able to explore new musical instruments, practice replicating and creating their own beats and rhythms, and sang to their hearts’ content. We will miss our weekly class with Jessica! The Tugboats also welcomed a new substitute here to HCS: Paula! While Peter is away for a few days around the weekend, Paula has joined us for some fun in the sun. Having just returned from a tour of the world as an educator with Semester at Sea, Paula has more stories and adventures than anyone I know! She brought in her Spinning Diablo and demonstrated for the kiddos how she uses two sticks and a string to spin the diablo very fast, then launches it high up in the sky. She launched the diablo higher than the YMCA this morning! After all that excitement and a good nap, we spent the afternoon preparing for our new teacher, Zahirah, who joins us next Monday. Things are really shaking up around here!