Tiny Tribe

Playdough to Plato -Sight words around the classroom

My friend and colleague, Malia, who most of us at Tiny Tribe simply know as "Chase's mom", is also deeply committed to education. Aside from working hard to become a master teacher, she has also developed an amazing program called Playdough to Plato, for parents and educators like you and me. I love her weekly blog posts and early literacy tips. She has one main purpose: to make learning engaging and supremely effective for our youngest learners. That excites me because I share the same mission in my preschool program. Her ideas are always play-based, fun, and outside-the-box. She knows that kids don't learn best with rote flashcards and workbook pages, but that they are most engaged when we cater their experiences to their own interests and abilities.

The Labeling Game from Playdough to Plato

Last week, Malia's idea for using sight words around the classroom gently encouraged me. Running a childcare and preschool program and being the mom to a three-year-old is a lot of work but, I do have a marker and some paper sentence strips and a roll of masking tape... and that's all I need to change the learning environment up in a big way. When I mentioned the idea to some of the kids the next morning they joined in with their own excitement.

As we walked around Tiny Tribe together, the preschoolers wanted me to label everything.

Ooohhh, ooooh, Jena! Let's write "toilet" on the toilet!
How about "couch "and "book shelves"?

"Sink has an "S" in it just like my name!

That spells garbage, right?
T-r-a-s-h spells garbage.

We're still learning, remember? :)

Hey, let's hide from my mom in the "l-o-f-t" , okay?

That comment really made me smile because I am regularly spelling things around the kids

that I want to keep a secret. Ha!

"1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12, 13! Whoa! Refrigerator has thirteen letters!

Malia understands that the life of a busy parent, or preschool teacher, is full and hectic and we need simple and easy. Life is three-dimensional and for young children, learning takes place in real life moments, like gardening in the yard, cooking in the kitchen, shopping at the grocery store, or going to the bathroom. Thank you, Malia, for helping the teachers at Tiny Tribe

make learning easy and fun for everyone!

Visiting the Toy Store

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Making Beautiful Music

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Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Yoga Wednesdays

Each week the kids at Tiny Tribe look forward to our visit up the big stairs at 8 Limbs to the yoga studio. After we take off our shoes, we enter the large airy room, and are greeted by Jennifer's warm smile. Music usually fills the air and awakens our emotions, sometimes calming and other times energetic.

Jennifer always has a wonderful imaginary adventure planned for us. We've gone to the zoo and used our bodies to represent animals. We've created a bus with our bodies and moved together across the floor. We've made pizza and fruit salad and pretended to eat them up!
We've learned tree pose and downward dog and cat and cow.... things often get silly and we all giggle for awhile.

We always finish with Savasana, which is pronounced "sha-VA-sa-na". In Sanskrit "sava" means "corpse" and "asana" means "pose". Savasana offers quiet time to lie down on our

yoga mats and focus on your breath.

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Next week will be our last Yoga class for the school year. Though we will enjoy being outdoors exploring the many parks, beaches, and wooded-areas that West Seattle has to offer, we will really miss Yoga Wednesdays and especially out teacher, Jennifer, too.

Friends Across Generations

Story People by Brian Andreas

I have always loved Brian Andreas, an artist from Iowa who incorporates drawing, painting, and writing in his art. He also makes sculptures on old barn wood. I love his quotes and think they are beautiful to use with pictures.You can check him out here @ http://www.storypeople.com/

These are little packets of light & you need to plant them early in the year & remember to mark where they were because lots of times they look like weeds in the beginning & it's not until later that you see how beautiful they really are.

They came to sit & dangle their feet off the edge of the world & after awhile they forgot everything but the good & true things they would do someday.

Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.

It is not what you think, this reaching across the generations. There is no effort of will, no fierce glare in the face of the sideways dance of everyday. There is only the quiet of each morning, filled with soft breathing while you hold your tea in the cool air & always that moment when your love spreads a cloth upon the table & invites the whole day in again.

If there is any secret to this life I live, this is it: the sound of what cannot be seen sings within everything that can. & there is nothing more to it than that.

She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went.

It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said.

Everything changed the day she figured out there was exactly

enough time for the important things in her life.

I have heard too much beauty to ever go back, he said & in that moment, I knew there was no way the children of our world would fail.

Friends Forever

Story People by Brian Andreas
http://www.storypeople.com/

This is a dress-up box for the future & it's filled with stuff like courage & love & play because they're the only things that are any use at all when you get right down to it.

We sat side by side in the morning light & looked out at the future together.

What if we all got along & people loved each other & sang songs about peace? he said. Would that be a good world? & I said I didn't know about that, but it would be a good summer camp.

They're like pets who shed clothes instead of hair, she said & they talk back & want a lot of stuff. But at least they don't pee on the carpet anymore, she added.

She seemed to move everywhere dancing & music followed her like leaves on the wind.

There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise.

When I die, she said, I'm coming back as a tree with deep roots & I'll wave my leaves at the children every morning on their way to school & whisper tree songs at night in their dreams.

Trees with deep roots know about the things children need.