This Week in Mountain Laurel Cottage...

As the weather begins to change, please have your child prepared with their coats and boots each day. The children are eager to go outside and play, but the weather often varies.

This week we will be sending home a gallon size Ziploc bag with your child’s name on it. Please return this bag to school with an extra set of clothes (shirt, pants, socks, and undergarments) for your child, in case it is needed. There are times when we are painting such as artists or experimenting as scientists and may get something on our clothing and need to change. Or sometimes we just accidentally fall in some mud. Feel free to return this bag on Friday, so that we can place it in your child’s labeled shoebox. Anytime clothes are changed, they are always sent home immediately to be washed and returned. Please let us know if you have any questions.

This week in the kitchen, we will be making cheesy-spinach frittata and sweet molasses bread. The children will season the frittata with fresh rosemary from our garden and add a bit of dill too. When we make the bread and will practice four types of basic bread patterns with each mini loaf of sweet molasses bread; sprinkling each loaf with oats and a drizzle of honey. We will make some rosemary butter to go with this recipe as well. We have made molasses cookies in the past, and so the children are excited to make bread using the ingredient molasses. Before cooking, we will talk more about where molasses comes from, why it is used and how it gets to us.

Another group will be making garlic knots in the kitchen this week and will learn how to make the dough and shape the knots before baking. Everyone loves to eat the garlic knots. Several children are interested in cooking and there has been lots of recipe writing going on using the cookbooks from our community and the library. Discussions about on whether to use an ingredient or make substitutions have come up or how to calculate the measurements to double the recipe to increase the serving size, The children are enjoying cooking very much!

Parents, we thank you for supporting our kitchen each week with ingredients, we are grateful!

We have had great discovery with music this past week, which children continue to explore more with grading the bells and tone bars. Along with understanding the whole and half notes, and recognizing the sharps and flats, we’ve went further and learned about reading sharps and flats using songs from our music binder and composing using the bells and/or tone bars. A few children are making songbooks, while others are using the song charts to play. This has interested others to form bands with instruments and/or making their own songbooks using the basket of instruments, the bells and/or tone bars. They have established practice times too so that everyone can individually and collaboratively balance their day with on-going work and lessons.

Our community has recently finished the read aloud book, “The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man’s Canyon,” by S.S. Taylor. Everyone voted to read the next book in this series, “The Expeditioners and the Secret King Triton’s Lair.” This book series is a story about a group of children who identify themselves as explorers and go on several adventures to find missing clues and information to old maps, which lead them to hidden caves/taverns with beautiful treasures. Each chapter leaves us wanting to read more and we have gotten to known the characters Kit, MK, Suki and Zander very well. Everyone looks forward to reading the second book in this series.

This week we will read a book about Martin Luther King Jr. to honor and celebrate MLK day. We will read a few quotes from his speeches to understand his work in influencing change. Other areas of study within art include a technique of painting called pointillism and creating our own. A few are interested in visiting an art studio to see examples made by artists here in Austin. In addition, we will be studying more with crosshatching and looking at specifically the 6 forms of crosshatching. We have done work with color gradation using prismas, but will move onto this technique, but with other material; oil and chalk pastels. Art is always welcomed and wonderful to have to aid with embellishment and detail when making binded booklets, charts and posters for the children’s further studies/group projects. We would like to present an Art Expo in March.

Parents we wish you a lovely week, and welcome back, Mountain Laurel

          

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