Who are we?

This morning we took some time to talk with the children about our class agreements. The class agreements are statements that we, as a class, come up with that we all agree to follow. We told the children that we needed to think about how to be good to ourselves, each other, and our classroom. After much discussion the children came up with four agreements that we will follow as a Willow family! Feel free to reiterate these at home with them! In the next week we will start creating some drawings that coincide with each agreement and we will practice them daily!

Here are our agreements:

*Be good for everybody

*Do exercise like yoga

*Be good listeners

*Be Kind

We can't wait to see the children practice these agreements with each other!

During our morning meeting we also talked about learning about ourselves. In order to follow these agreements we need to have a positive sense of self, which in turn will help create a positive sense of others and our environment! We began our self portraits today and talked about who we are as a person. We will continue this exploration into self throughout the next week and see where it takes us! Below are some of the children working on their portraits. We'll share the finished products as soon as everyone has made theirs!

To start the process we used only black markers. We will continue to add color as we learn more and more about ourselves. We also used mirrors to help us focus on what we wanted to draw while making a self portrait.

"I made my teeth and eyelashes."

"I made me with a heart over my head!"

"I'm making the outlines of my body first. I drew the parts inside of my ears."

"I put my hair over my ears."

Another interest that we have noticed with our Willow friends is an interest in collecting. Every time we go on a walk or spend time outside the children begin to collect different kinds of nature. They love small things like clovers, acorns, and flower petals. And they love big things like sticks and pine cones. Today we went outside with the intention to collect nature. We talked about what we were collecting and why by asking the children:

What are our intentions when we collect?

Today our intention is to collect nature materials that are small enough to make into a beautiful collage that we will make together, as a family.