Celebrating the Coming of Longer Days

                                             Winter Solstice Breakfast with the Robins

As the days shorten by a few precious minutes each day, anticipating and preparing our Solstice Breakfast brightens our energy and gives us all a happy outlook.  This simple and joyful tradition of sitting down together to eat breakfast, at a beautifully decorated table, with quiet music in the background, is a peaceful way to spend our last day together before our winter break.    
The class worked in committees to plan the entire breakfast; we spent a part of each afternoon in groups brainstorming, sharing and deciding our plans.  As the following pictures show, all of the planning made the breakfast a great success!
The morning of the breakfast was quite a flurry of activity with decorating, moving furniture around, preparing the food, preparing the menus, and arranging the seating at the tables.  Then comes the fun part...eating good food with good friends!!  There was a lot of yummy food to choose from like pancakes, syrup, applesauce, bacon or sausage, fruit, cocoa, juice, milk and more which was all provided by the children's families and by the teachers. 
And finally, the flurry of activity starts all over again with the clean up.

Playground Fun!

A Little Help from Our Friends!
Chickadee head teacher Becca Couch thought the Cornerspring playground needed a little sprucing up and decided to put it out to the Cornerspring community.  A committee of enthusiastic parents, teachers, and board members rallied to join the committee and help.  They began working on a plan for the playground by meeting to discuss some of the initial stages.  They quickly went to work getting the immediate things done.  Committee members rolled giant tires donated by director Paula Johnson and her family and placed them on the playground.  The kids had a blast playing on the tires.  A few weeks later, Joseph Holmes excited the children by bringing his excavator and digging the holes to place the tires and parallel bars in the dirt.  The children were thrilled the next day when they could play on the tires and parallel bars. 

The committee will continue their upgrade of the playground by constructing a shed for housing playground tools and toys.  In addition, the committee will build a bigger sand box and place it on the playground this spring for the children to enjoy.  The school will also investigate the cost and delivery of wood chips for the committee members to help spread throughout the playground early in the spring.

 
Thank you to our volunteers and committee members:
Joseph Holmes
Mike Dionne
Chip Curry
Ethan Shaw
Dan Miller
Scott Kelley
Alexia Morgan
Emma Menard
Becca Couch, Chairperson

  

Come and join the fun!

 Volunteers are still needed!

Contact Becca for more details or for other ways you can help.
 

 

Secret Ingredient.....Sharing!

Bring What You've Got...Put It In The Pot, We're Making Stone Soup!  The Cardinal 5-Day class started the month of November with the Story of Stone Soup.  Throughout the weeks several different versions of the story are read.  They all carry the same message of Sharing and Caring.  The children play together creating the story and making pretend stone soup together.  On the day before our Thanksgiving holiday the children all bring in one item to "Put in the Pot" and we all work together to make a real Stone Soup.  It is shared all together family style with other snacks along side.  A fun and meaningful tradition that the children look forward to and remember forever.  

Kindergarteners Take the Plunge!

The Cardinal class kindergarten students have begun swimming lessons @ the Belfast YMCA.  Their lessons begin with pool rules and instruction on water safety, then into the pool for practice with blowing bubbles, kicking, strokes & floating.  The class ends with a few exciting minutes of free play....fun for all!  

Fire Safety Visit at Cornerspring

In recognition of Fire Safety Month Cornerspring invited local firefighter and parent Dan Miller and Chief Bill Gillespie from the Liberty Fire Department to come and teach our students about fire safety. 

They discussed several safety practices students (and their families) should do to help avoid fires as well as what to do if a fire breaks out, such as:

• Call 911 in an emergency and if they ever call by mistake to tell the operator it was a mistake and not just hang up

•  Stop, Drop, and Roll if your clothes catch on fire

• Testing the smoke detectors at home and changing the batteries regularly

• Not hanging clothes to dry near wood stoves or heaters, especially overnight

• Have a fire escape plan including making a meeting place to find their parents so mom and dad know if they got out of the house

Here is a helpful tidbit...Did you know that firefighters can seem scary to a child?  That is why Dan demonstrated  what a firefighter will look like and sound like with all of their equipment to help the children be less afraid.  That way they know to yell for help when they see this intimidating figure and not run and hide. Dan and Bill reminded the students that firefighters may look a little scary but they are there to help people get to safety in an emergency.

Some important information for parents to know is that some children actually don’t wake up with the smoke alarm sound.  For this reason there is now a smoke detector available that allows the parent to record their own voice with a message since children are more likely respond to their parent’s voice.

Cardinals "Pumpkin Jack"

We started the month of October with the story of Pumpkin Jack, written and Illustrated by Will Hubbell.  It is a sweet story of a boy who carves a pumpkin and names him Jack.  He is sad when his pumpkin begins to rot and needs to be put outside.  He is delighted to discover when springtime arrives that a pumpkin plant has sprouted.  It is the beginning of a new life-cycle. 

So we brought a pumpkin into the classroom as our representation of Jack.  All month the children waited in anticipation for when we would transform it into "Pumpkin Jack".  On the day of Halloween the children all worked together to carve out "Pumpkin Jack".  We then roasted the seeds and shared them at circle.  Pumpkin Jack is still in our classroom and will remain until he begins to rot.  At that time we will place him in one of our garden beds with several of the seeds we saved.  We will watch his transformation progress until springtime when hopefully a sprout will emerge and begin a new life cycle of our "Pumpkin Jack".