Happy spring, Cedar families! We hope you will enjoy this coming spring break and get a chance to immerse in nature to refresh and reset your body and mind. The followings are the themes we focused on in the past two weeks.

Nowruz

Noushin presented the traditional custom of celebrating the Persian New Year to the class. Nowruz means “new days.” She brought many items such as candles, garlic, wheatgrass, an apple, coins, eggs, vinegar, poems, and hyacinth flowers. Each of them symbolizes something good and positive for the year’s renewal. The holiday goes on for 13 days and on the last day, people spend time with families and friends outdoors to share joy and laughter; they usually pack a picnic and dance. They also leave the wheatgrass in the river, symbolizing restarting the year with a clean and fresh mind. 

Leaf

We picked some leaves from our yard and observed their shapes, sizes, colors, textures, and smells. We also talked about the function of leaves that makes food for plants through photosynthesis. We did an experiment to see how leaves breathe and how they absorb water. We add food coloring to the water and left them for a couple of days and saw the shamrocks change their colors according to the color water.  We can even see their veins on the leaves.

Kindness

We discussed what it means to be kind and what we can do to be kind.  We conclude that kindness is love, help, and making people happy. We also categorized kindness into wider directions including, family members, teachers, friends, animals, environments, and self. One excise we practiced is that we sort our kind acts with color-coded rocks and children pick the right rock according to their acts.

We also learned that the words we say have meaning and can be powerful that can positively or negatively affect the receiver’s feelings. Some words are helpful and soft like a cotton ball, and some are hurtful and rough like sandpaper and will wrinkle people’s hearts depending on how we use them. 

Building a friendship requires effort and uses a mindful mind. We illustrated good friendships with apples, carried mindfully with two hands. On the contrary, unsounded friendship is like tossing and catching an apple with one hand which inevitably causes a bruised apple. 

We enjoyed our kindness Festival with a nice sunny day and different activities in the yard.

Sound of the Week–“q”, “r”

For the sound of “q”, we made a paper quilt. For “r”, we made yummy rice pudding.

Art with Julianne

We learned that clover has 4 leaves and shamrock has 3 leaves. We did fingerprints to make shamrocks. 

This week because of the rain and hails we made a rainy scene with oil pastels.

Work Time

Outside Time

Thank You

Thank you to Jubilee’s family for bringing the flower bouquet to the class this time.