Welcome to day 4 of School at Home! It’s weird to think that it’s been 4 days already… it feels both like it’s been a long time since we’ve all been together, but also feels like it was just yesterday. Hopefully, you are starting to feel a bit more settled in your daily routines. If you are having any difficulties with figuring out your routines or if you are having particularly challenging parts of your days, please reach out so we can troubleshoot together! Here is today’s curriculum (and here is the doc version):


Morning meeting: Join Teacher Patricia for morning meeting – singing Willoughby Wallaby!


Read aloud: Join Teacher Rachel for the book “Piglet Is Entirely Surrounded By Water” — there are some prompts for you child to have discussions with someone nearby, so if you can, be ready to pause the video and hear your child’s thoughts. 


An activity for today: Make a “share and tell” video! If you haven’t yet, please send us a quick video of your child doing a share and tell or just sending us a video of something your child has done this week. Kids can share a toy, an activity, something special in their homes, a family member, a pet, a story, a joke, a song…anything!  Just like before, you can also send pictures or write out your child’s answer and send it to us, if the video format doesn’t work for you! Please try to send it by 2pm today (Thursday).


An activity for today: Heavy work!Channel all that brimming-over energy with focused, big physical tasks. They require proprioception (our sense of body awareness), and proprioceptive input tends to have a calming effect when kids (and adults!) are overstimulated or overwhelmed. 

Try some out (and find more here): 

  • Do turtle walks: Place a large pillow on the child’s back and see how long they can crawl around with a “heavy shell” on their back

  • Push the doorway: Stand in the doorway and push against the sides of it as hard as possible with one arm on each side. See how many seconds they can push.

  • Wheelbarrow walks: Child places hands on floor, grown-up holds child’s legs off floor and helps them walk with only their hands on the floor. Child should keep their fingers facing forward as much as possible. Easier = hold child’s legs at knees or hips, harder = hold child’s legs at the ankles

  • Pour items such as sand, dry beans, dry rice, or water back and forth between containers (larger containers = more heavy work)

  • Rip paper or pieces of cardboard: Give your child yesterday’s newspaper or junk mail and have them tear it into strips (after, you can create a collage with all the different colored strips of paper!) They can also help you tear up empty cereal boxes or other boxes from the store. These activities can also be especially helpful in moments when children need to get out some frustration.


An activity from Zoey and Ezra: “Mess free” painting. From Zoey: “On our own we did a supposedly mess free painting activity (I saw it on Pinterest) but it turned messy when Norah decided she wanted to paint with her hands. Both kids liked and worked out well for Ezra who didn’t want to get messy and Norah who did! Thought I’d share in case anyone else wanted to try it messy or not messy;) It was a color mixing project with blue and yellow paints squeezed in a ziplock bag. The kids smooshed and mashed it to make green. And then Norah opened it and we got a big brown paper bag for her to do hand painting which then turning in to finger scratching and then letters and number drawing – so many things I didn’t even think of!”


Practicing writing (and singing) numerals: You can trace or write numbers in the ziplocked-paint bag! (Or in anything sensory: sand, flour, cornstarch, mud…) This gives sensory input and also is an impermanent medium, meaning that kids don’t have to worry too much about whether it looks “right” or “wrong”. Here are short songs you can sing with your child while you write numerals (from Carrie! Check out her email about math from today. We didn’t even plan to both send out the numeral songs – we’re all still on the same wavelength, it seems!) — All to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle”. (Here’s a separate doc, if you want to print them out.)

0: Draw an oval nice and slow, that’s how you make a zero.

1: Straight line down to make a one, I am having lots of fun.

2: Curve around that’s what you do, straight line out- you’ve made a two.

3: Bump to the right, bump to the right, threes are fun day and night.

4: Little “L”, lift, straight line down. Make four now and don’t you frown.

5: Line to the left, straight line down, five has the yummiest tummy in town.

6: Curve around to make a six, that is one of my best tricks.

7: Line to the left, slant line down, seven slides down to the ground.

8: Make an “S” to start your eight then curve around as you skate.

9: Curve around, close the circle tight. Straight line down makes nine just right

For parents: Self-compassion meditation. Here is a 5 minute meditation for a time when you might feel stressed or are having a hard parenting moment. If you are able to take 5 minutes away from your child (perhaps when they’re in the middle of a project or someone else is watching them), take a listen, practice some mindfulness, and remember to be compassionate to yourself. Hard moments are okay. You are human. You are doing a wonderful job in an incredibly difficult and new situation. 


We are thinking about you all and holding you in our hearts. Don’t hesitate to reach out with anything. If you haven’t joined the Slack page yet, make sure you do, there are some great ideas on there for school at home, screen time, and there’s a thread where you can ask the community for help with a problem. We are all in this together. 

Warmly,

Rachel Ford and Patricia Houston