“Today we read The Thank You Book by Mo Willems. We chatted about the things for which we are thankful. ”
Week 11: Taking Shape
The Oaks’ Museum of Shapes
Ms Christine (kindergarten teacher): We began to explore two and three dimensional shapes this week. We learned a big juicy word for corners . . . “vertices” sounds so much more dramatic! The children can now describe shapes by corners, vertices, sides and edges. We played Hide The Shape, designed with tam blocks and searched with laser focus to find squares inside of squares and circles inside of circles.
Week 10: Fun & Games
At Silver Oaks, children spend a lot of time learning through play. Whether they’re playing math games, enjoying outdoor time, or involved in group projects like making complex structures from blocks, our students are always building on the “six c’s.”
“Collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation and confidence.”
It turns out we were onto something. According to Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and co-author of Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children with Roberta Golinkoff, “Everything goes through the social.” In other words, we’re wired to learn from interacting with others.
To hear an interview with Kathy Hirsh-Pasek on NPR click here: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/10/769052767/the-key-to-raising-brilliant-kids-play-a-game
“Ms. Christine: During Social Studies, we continued chatting about Rules, Laws and Authority Figures. The children made up their own game with their own rules; a big cone and a small cone, a big bear and a small monkey and medium dog were involved. No one won and no one lost. It was inconclusive how exactly the game ended.”
The Growth Mindset
“Growth Mindset” is a term coined by psychologist Carol Dweck, who encourages parents and teachers to validate kids’ efforts, rather than focus on their grades or one-off accomplishments. She believes that this approach teaches children perseverance, and builds resilience.
Dot Day
Dot Day @ Silver Oaks
with Annette Nelson
Sharing this reflection from teacher Annette Nelson:
Dot Day?!
At Silver Oaks recently, we celebrated “thinking outside the box” and “coloring outside the lines” for Dot Day, a day set aside by teachers in mid-September to encourage students to make their own mark on the world.
The story behind Dot Day is that teacher Terry Shay read the book The Dot by Peter Reynolds to students on September 15, 2009 and encouraged them to make their mark on the world.
It's a lovely book about a girl in art class who thinks she can't draw. Her teacher encourages her to just make a dot on the paper and then treats it as a work of art. Once the girl sees her dot framed above her teacher's desk she is inspired to make even more dots.
It’s wild that International Dot Day has become a phenomenon celebrated in 183 countries! Students all over are encouraged to harness their creativity, make their mark, and see where it takes them. It seemed like just the sort of thing that the SOCS community wants to celebrate.
Empowering the Artist
One thing I did before we started was to share with the students some “best practices” for painting, from the amazing, hilarious art teacher Cassie Stevens. We used watercolor paints but the rules are generally the same. Dip your brush in the water, wipe it on the lip of the cup, dip it in the paint and go for it!
The paint brush needs to dance on it's tippy-tippy-toes across the paper because no one wants to go to the booty-scooting-ballet! That ruins the brushes and makes for less detailed artwork. To ensure students remembered the rules, I dressed as a ballerina and danced around. It was a hit!
Since it was dot day, each child got a paper plate and painted concentric circles (or whatever they were inspired to do) to make their own "dot." The kids loved it! And, even though everyone had the same basic supplies, the variety they came up with was something to see.
P.S. You can purchase the book here.
A new year at Silver Oaks!
What kind of school did Mozart attend? I have no idea. And I don’t care that my children will never be Mozart. But I do care that they learn to be humans who can express themselves and can move and act with confidence and compassion in the world in which we live—particularly the natural world.
To that end I want to say, wow! What a wonderful first couple of weeks at Silver Oaks Cooperative School. As new members of the cooperative, we feel lucky to find a group of educators dedicated to leading educational practices. Silver Oaks offers a relatively affordable, parent involved education focused on social-emotional growth with plenty of outdoor time.
At Silver Oaks, my children are having plenty of outdoor time, including two outdoor “work” sessions a day. I put work in quotes because from a certain perspective, children shouldn’t be doing work, but rather playing. Increasingly, though, folks are realizing that play is work. And unstructured play sometimes seems to be relic of the past. What will the children do if not entertained? What will happen?
They will find something to do—right?
So far, I’ve reveled in my co-op days at Silver Oaks. There is a child-friendly rhythm. The teacher takes the lead, and I learn some helpful ways to interact with my children at home.
I’m so glad that Annette and Alicia decided to dream big and work with many, many others to make this dear school a reality.
I once heard, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” And isn’t that what we need right now? I feel like some pressure is off me now, because raising a child in this world is not just a two-person thing, it’s more like an all hands on deck thing, and at Silver Oaks many hands make light work.
Amy, mother to Isaac (K) and Oliver (2)
Spotlight on Silver Oaks Cooperative School!
Route One Fun Blog Spotlight
A lot of our families live in Greenbelt. We were lucky enough to be featured by this local blogger.
Science Thursday: Star Power
This week we discussed stars and constellations. We talked about the life and death of stars, including our own, and how our sky view will change over the next thousands and millions of years. We discussed how connecting stars to make pictures helps people find certain stars in the sky. Also, how the constellations were used to help with agriculture and navigation back in the day. We also all drew our own constellations out of the stars that make up Orion and Ursa Major. Finally we watched as a projector shined moving stars on the ceiling. A special shout-out to Annette for providing me with a constellations shirt to wear for the day!
Have a great weekend, Olga
Week 33: Eggs, Caterpillars, Butterflies, Oh My!
Christine: As you may have guessed, we are spending a great deal of time wondering, thinking and observing, and writing about these things. Our caterpillars are quite chubby now and we anticipate all five will be in a chrysalis by Monday. We’ve written our observations about Day #5 on Monday and Day #8 yesterday.
We have read Caterpillars and butterflies by Stephanie Turnbull, Bob and Otto by Robert O. Bruel, On Beyond Bugs! by Tish Rabe, National Geographic Kids Caterpillar to Butterfly, velma gratch & the way cool butterfly by Alan Madison and Kevin Hawkes, Miss Spider’s New Car by David Kirk, Butterflies for Kiri by Cathryn Falwell, A Butterfly Is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston, Dinosaurs ROAR, Butterflies SOAR! by Bob Barner, and Anabella Miller’s Tiny Caterpillar by Clare Jarrett.
Week 32: Field Trip and Fantasy
Alicia (lead teacher of the Oaks): It really was a spectacular week! In addition to all the dreamy fun, we just couldn't quite leave Chris Van Allsburg yet, so we read The Garden of Abdul Gazasi, Widow's Broom, Zathura, and Ben's Dream. We wondered which ones were fantasy and which ones were just fiction or another genre. We made our own quite brilliant comics. At the field trip, the children learned about the four stages of an insect's life, and got to see the stages in butterflies at the Wings of Fancy exhibit. The Oaks will return to this and research other insects as well.
Science Thursday: Metomorphosis
We had a puppet show about metamorphosis. A molting cicada and a caterpillar talked about life cycles and metamorphosis. The cicada molted, the caterpillar became a butterfly, and a good time was had by all. This was the year's final puppet show, which made some kids a little sad.
— Ogla, resident scientist
Week 31: Amazing Acorns
Literacy: We had a fabulous guest reader on Wednesday....none other than our very own M! He read A Bad Day at Riverbend by Chris Van Allsburg to us and handled the pressure like a pro. Continuing the Chris Van Allsburg theme, Miss Alicia treated us to a Read Aloud of Probuditi; it’s a clever story about a birthday boy and his very smart sister. Darling has five new sight words: ran, saw, she, soon, there.
—Christine, lead teacher of the Acorns Kindergarten class.
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Week 30: Hola!
In Spanish, we returned to Donde esta el bano, patio de recreos, pasillo, y salon de classes. We drew maps of the school, labeled them, and used the maps to practice asking each other where things are. We will continue to use the maps next week. We have also been reviewing hola, buenos dias, como estas? I have loved seeing how the children are beginning to search their Spanish vocabularies to say things to me in Spanish. They are seeing that during Spanish class, I get confused and just don't seem to be able to understand them in English.
— Señora Alicia
Science Thursday: Spring Fever
Hello All,
In science today we talked about spring and what we think of when spring arrives. We talked about animals and plants coming out of hibernation; we talked about renewal and rebirth; about flowers blooming; bees, wasp, and termite nests coming back to life; and all the stuff spring brings. We also talked about how nest building and nests coming back to life was a big part of spring and we sat and looked at a wonderful book Rachel lent me called Animal Architecture by Ingo Arndt, a German wildlife photographer, which is full of photos of wonderful nests built by all different kinds of birds, insects, and mammals. To top it off, since spring is about new plants growing, we planted one sunflower plant per child in our garden.
Have a great weekend,
Olga
Creative Movement
CreativeMovement
Alicia: In Creative Movement, we played Shape Museum and Sculptor. The children LOVED freezing in shapes while museum-goers wandered around making observations. They also loved carefully sculpting a partner to make a shape. This took so much concentration, not only to create a shape, but to also be respectful of their partners bodies. They did wonderfully.
Week 29: Reading for Fun
Reading gives us wings.
We also read Snarf Attack by local author Mary Amato. The children have thouroughly enjoyed reading this book and gotten many giggles from it. I believe we have a few of her Good Crooks series books in our collection that I plan to dig out. I also plan to purchase some more of The Riot Brothers series so they can continue reading! We had some good conversations about how funny Snarf Attack is and how we are working so hard to learn to read so we can read books like that on our own!
—Alicia (co-founder & lead teacher of the Oaks)
We read Library Lil and learned about Hyperbole. We found many examples of hyperbole in our every day conversation (If I can't do one, I'll never be able to do any!). We read Bonk's Loose Tooth, from a series about a lovable monster named Bonk.
Science Thursday: Hair-Raising Physics
Hello All,
Today we put together our terrarium lesson from yore and our circuits lesson from last week and talked about static electricity and lightning. We talked about how clouds get saturated with condensation and it rains, and when they become thunder clouds they become charged.
We rubbed our feet on the rug and got shocked when we touched metal and we drew lightning going from negatively charged clouds to the positively charged ground, or person, or other cloud. We used static electricity to move some objects and lift some straws to show how negative and positive are attracted to each other.
Have a great weekend,
Olga
Week 28: March Mathiness
Amazing Acorns Math
We read Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina, and practiced addition, subtraction and sequencing with tiddly wink chips. Today we played a board game that required both addition and subtraction skills.
Each child has individual strategies for solving math sentences. Some are looking at the numbers hanging on the clothesline, some are using number lines and their fingers (which are always handy and available). Some are practicing mental math, some are crossing out or drawing dots. It all works. I’ve told the children that there are many methods to finding the right answer and I’m encouraging the children to use several strategies so that they are comfortable with variations. These kids rock!
— Ms. Christine
Week 27: More Mo Willems
We are having a ball learning about Mo Willems and reading his books.
