Dia de los Muertos

BJ and I joined forces again in the studio for our monthly celebration.  Our October theme was Dia de los Muertos, aka the Day of the Dead.  This lively Mexican holiday is celebrated from October 31 through November 2.  It is not a Mexican version of Halloween.  Rather, it's a social holiday that originated thousands of years ago amongst the Aztec, Toltec and other indigenous peoples.  Here death is considered a natural part of living. The dead are members of the community who return to earth for a temporary visit on Dia de los Muertos.  This fun-filled holiday is celebrated with altars, festivities, special foods and more.
To kick off our celebration, Bekke told a wonderful story about a helpful ghost called La Planchada to a rapt audience.

BJ and I joined forces in the studio with a celebratory altar...

art...

Conversations about loved ones we have lost...

And Mexican hot chocolate!

 Here is a photo op of the recipe you can follow... just add milk to the Abuelita mix, nutmeg, cinnamon sticks and star anise.  Yum!

To add a little Halloween flair, we also carved pumpkins and roasted seeds.
It was a wonderful day.  The altar pictured below will be up through next week if you'd like to stop by to see it or add a loved one of your own to our remembering wall.

For the LOVE of Trees

On Thursday of last week, I gave a presentation to the whole school entitled, For the Love of Trees.  I introduced the children to some of my very best friends in Denver... the TREES.  I shared the wonderful discovery that trees communicate!! But not like we do.  They communicate via chemicals and fungi networks in and around their root systems. WHOA! (If you want to learn more about the Wood Wide Web, you can watch this video here  or this informative ted talk. For a deeper dive pick up Perter Wohlleben's wonderful book The Hidden Life of Trees. )

The children were surprised.  Trees can talk?  Yep.  And you can talk to them.  Really?  Well I do!  I shared how I learned to talk to plants and trees as a little girl by listening with my heart.  Yep.  Sound hokey?  To adults maybe it does, but children often know what I'm talking about.  The heart feels love.  Love is a kind of chemical in the body and our heart is a big ole magnet. 

As a child of hippies, I was taught to "listen" to trees with my heart and senses.  I learned to discern if a plant needed water or nutrients by sight and touch and yes... feeling.  I learned to ask before picking a leaf and then listening with my heart to hear the reply.  If my heart grew warm with love I took that as a yes and if not, I didn't pick the leaf or fruit or flower.  

Many of the children were eager to give it a try.

After our presentation the children were invited into the studio to share their wonderings and ideas about trees.

I also introduced a large "tree" made of paper, cardboard and tape.  We will be adding papier mache' to it's surface in the weeks ahead.  In the Spring our little tree will be on display in the corner window of the Artisan Center along with your children's thoughts and creativity.  Stay tuned to watch this project unfold in the year ahead AND if you are inspired to learn or share more feel free to contact me!  I love to collaborate!

I hope you have  a beautiful and tree-filled weekend.  And if you are walking with your child, be sure to listen for a while to the song of the trees in your neck of the woods!

BONUS:Here is a video clip to my dear friend, a ponderosa pine along Apex hiking trail in Golden, CO.

Nature in Clay

Amy picked some leaves this morning as the snow began to fall and brought them into the studio to share with the children. 

We then offered the children a few ceramic underglazes to highlight the leaf impressions in clay.  We have used under-glazing on wet clay before.... another step into the unknown.  We look forward to firing the clay to see how the clay accepts the glaze. 

Collaborative Research: Peace Education

I'm excited about another studio/classroom collaboration that is happening this year! Our Ward-Hobbs morning teacher, Claire, has been interested in Peace Education for a long time.  We've decided to begin intentionally documenting how we promote and practice peace in the school.   This study will allow us to deepen our practice and understanding of peace education.  I will be posting about our collaboration throughout the year, so all of you can join our exploration.
To guide our inquiry, we generated a primary research questions.
How can we as teachers of young children promote peace?
And then broke that down into a few supporting questions to further clarify our research:

• How do we model peace in the classroom? 
• How do our movements, words, tone and the lessons we give promote non-violent conflict resolution and mindfulness?
• How do we demonstrate respect for each child and support them in recognizing and welcoming others as individuals within a group?
• How do we recognize and nurture signs of empathy and care as they arise?
• How might we model positive self-talk in a school environment and how might that benefit the children in our care?

Today Claire offered a Peace Assembly for the morning primary classes.  She began with a few deep breaths and a listening exercise with the singing bowl.

Next she invited the children to share what Peace means to them?

• Making friends
• Peace and quiet
• Being Kind
• Being friendly to your friends
• Making friends with others
• Loving people
• Hiking in the mountains and having a good time
• Being nice
• Having fun
• Being quiet
• Being glad
• Sharing
• When you like to give people hugs
• Hugs
• Kisses
• Love

Claire read the book, The Peace Book by Todd Parr.

And ended practicing Silence as a group.

Amy in the Studio

Amy is BACK!!!! She received a warm welcome from the children who eagerly dug into the mud with artistic fervor.

Amy will be joining us in the studio one week per month this year to work with all the children in the school!  YAY!  We are so lucky to have her!  If you aren't familiar with Amy's work click on this link to her website to find out a little bit about this wonderful artist and educator.

Collaborative Research: Redefining Public

The phone rings.  I answer.  My colleague Vida replies enthusiastically, "Angelina I have this question and I want to talk to you about it before I forget!"  
As educators working and learning alongside young children we regularly contemplate questions, interests and concerns any time, day or night.  I welcomed her call!
Vida continued, "Could a broader understanding of community compel us toward more sustainable practice and public policy?" 
Our conversation quickly became animated, fanned by our commitment toward sustainability in practice and education. We didn't have any tidy answers but we were committed to the questions so we decided to collaborate in a year of research to find out more. We discussed thoughts and ideas over several days before settling on a few questions to guide our inquiry.

1. What responsibility do we have to the public (community we have not seen)? 
2. What do we mean by "public"? (Keeping in mind that animals... including humans... make up a very small percentage of the biomass on our planet.)
3. How might we create a shared understanding of public that includes our global biomass and all things that support life?
4. How do these questions inform our classroom environments, lessons and explorations alongside children.

Formulating queries was the easy part.  Now, how to investigate them?  After some consideration we decided to simply keep doing what we do while paying close attention to how we do it.  We both agreed to track the children's responses and share our observations over the year.

And so it began:
The classrooms are investigating plants this year.  Today, Vida did a beautiful presentation during line time on the symbiotic relationship between plants and animals.  In simplest terms, she demonstrated that when we breathe, we inhale oxygen made by plants as a byproduct of photosynthesis and when we exhale those same plants can uptake the carbon in our carbon dioxide to make the sugars they need to grow. (Of course the process is a tad more complex).  Inhale, exhale. Symbiosis.  This simple lesson communicates interconnection.  Plants and animals need each other for MANY reasons and breathing is not the least among them.  Are they part of our community?

This lesson has support in a variety of classrooms materials, from various plant puzzles, books, classification cards to the various types of plants living and "breathing" in the room (so to speak).

The studio offers other opportunities to explore these concepts.  We can express these ideas in sculpture:

 photography:

 paint:

and more.  Keep checking the blog to follow our year of inquiry.  And feel free to let us know if you have any thoughts, ideas or suggestions.  You can post a comment here, send an email or schedule a time to chat.  Your input is most welcome.