Celebration of Learning (With Athena)

I'm a little late with this post, but i'm working on catching back up before the new year! Back before Winter Break started Athena invited me to her Celebration of Learning at school. Athena is always excited when we get to come do something with her at school, and even more excited when she knows baby Beatrix will be in attendance. So she was pretty excited about this event. Essentially this event was going to be for the kids to show the parents what it is they do at school. Tour us around the classroom as the teachers and teach us. Before going inside for the day the kids start outside on the playground. This is where we check in Athena in the mornings. The playground is pretty nice, it's woodland themed, with your basic big toy type playground, swings and monkey bars. The kids also have bikes that get brought out each morning that they can ride on. Athena loves the bikes, and is a pro. Daily i see her riding around, sometimes with a friend on the back. (some of the bikes are two seaters) The kids get 25 min. outside before collecting up their backpacks, lunch boxes (if they brought home lunch) and water bottles to go inside.

First all the kids had breakfast (all the kids in the Denver Public Schools get free breakfast, regardless of income everyday). Breakfast on this day consisted of their choice of an array of items. Egg and cheese breakfast biscuits, Cereal, Lemon Loaf, bananas/Oranges, Fruit Strudels (one of Athena's faves) and Juice or Milk. In Athena's class they have Breakfast in the morning, and a snack after nap time in the afternoon. And then in the early afternoon they go to the "Market" for lunch. Athena has one of the nicest lunchrooms ("Market") ive seen in a kids school, complete with table and booth seating.

After Breakfast is open play time, they have several different stations of things they can do, they get to have open play for 30 min. before the kids clean up for reading time. The first station Athena took me to was art with playdough. They make their own playdough then make art with it. they had some pieces already made to show off. Above is a "happy sun" Athena worked on while i was there. To the left is a piece she had already made to display.

After Art Kira took me over to play with blocks and rounds. I didn't take pics of everything, but we also checked out their tank of snails, Dolls, the play food area, Reading nook etc. Each morning the kids also come in, grab a sticky note from the teacher and put their name (or whatever mark they want to use for the day on it), and put it on the feeling chart, at the front of the room. They can choose between, happy, sad, scared or mad. Each day the kids put their vote up for how they are feeling for the day. When it was Athena's turn she chose mad! I was a little confused because she had been in a great mood all morning. I asked her why she was mad and her teacher sort of chuckled. She said Athena had been choosing mad for a couple of weeks, and always with the same response. Athena was mad she had to get a flu shot! LOLOLOLOL.

Athena then took me to the hallway outside of the classroom, she was very excited to show me where all the kids had hung their self portraits right outside the classroom. The kids do a lot of art, and she had art all over the place to show me. Generally when

they create a new piece of art

the teacher will write down what the kids had to say about the piece. Most of Athena's pieces have something to do with either art, or being friends with the other kids in class. Already Athena has kids that she plays with on a daily basis. The last thing we did before eating, since it was a celebration after all there was tons of food for everyone to eat. So the last thing we did was go to the book nook, Athena showed me some of her

favorite books and the "timers" The timers were her,

and a lot of the other kids favorite things. I'll have to take a picture later but they are like water/ colored oil timers that you flip over and watch. They like to play with them, but they are also what the kids get when they are upset to calm down. They sit in the quite nook with a timer and watch it, generally when its done they are in a better mood. Athena like them so much i got each of the kid one for their Christmas stockings this year. I then found out they have them in Kira and Donovan's classes for the same reason.I actually used this calm down method with Donovan this morning and it worked quite nicely!

Athena has a wonderful teacher named Perry, and a secondary teacher in the classroom named Monica. Athena really loves her teachers, and school. They are right next to Cherry creek so they do exploration outside once a week. They also partner up with the older kids once a week into their crew families. At Athena's school classes are called crews, Athena is part of the Tiger crew. She also goes on field trips about once a month. So far they have been to the Cherry Creek State Park, The children's Theater to watch Good Night Moon, the Botanic Gardens, and the Farm! We had her parent teacher conference last month, and she is doing great in school! Next year since she will start the school year at 4 years old she can transfer over to her Brother and Sisters school, but her school is so nice, and right down the street we may let her stay there another year before transferring her over for Kindergarten. (She will then be old enough to ride the bus with her brother and sister to and from school)