WPNS News

Dear Mulberry,

A: Why didn’t you want to sit next to me?
B: I wanted to have some space.
A: Do you want to sit next to me now?
B: We are best friends.
A: Let’s go play.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Oak,

When I was little, I liked playing with playdoh and modeling clay. I still do. I went to Rainbow School. I was 4-years-old, and I lived next door. Sometimes, I helped make the playdoh, and there would be a big batch for everyone to play with.

One day, there was a big batch, and everyone was at the table playing. We had little dinos too. I was wrapping dinos in playdoh, and I thought I might need a little more playdoh. I was wrapping a T-Rex. One of my friends had a lot of playdoh, so I just reached in and grabbed a little bit.

It was only a very little bit. And she yelled. I don’t like being yelled at, so I may have, maybe boomed her. Maybe. She cried, and I felt bad. I wonder what I could have done differently. I wonder what you would have done.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Mulberry,

Today you were four. There was no oopsie daisy five. One of you growled and showed your terrible claws. They may have gnashed their teeth and rolled their terrible eyes too, but I didn’t see it. They chased two others who ran. And the fourth? They followed. Perhaps they were a wild thing too.

Someone must have performed a magic trick. I think the magic trick might have been a snack and a book because the wild things were tamed. Two of you hunted treasure in the sand that I was scooping up from outside to return to the sandbox. Then, there was a dispute over a treasure, and one went to swing, and one marched away the other direction.

The other two of you investigated water and sand. One pointed out how the water had begun carving a river in the sand. The other turned into a sugar donut.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Oak,

Do you know about the domino effect? I know at least two of you do. I wonder if one of you taught the other. I noticed one of you building with blocks in the Mulberry class, a structure of some kind. Maybe it was a school for spiders with their cool spider skills like walking on the ceiling.

Later, I noticed another person had joined you, and you were both doing the domino build. Today, the two of you were doing the domino build again, only different. You used the rectangle blocks. There are lots of rectangle blocks. You asked others to give you space. You need a lot of space.

You each had your own build. One did a line. One did a Y. With the line, you could start from either end. With the Y, there were 3 ends to start with. You showed me one, and all the blocks fell. I wonder if anyone knows which end of the Y you started with.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Oak,

Bugs! Bugs! Glorious bugs! Oh wait, that’s the mud song, but I’m fascinated by the bugs. Did you see the scorpions? Not just one, but two! They looked like scorpions. Mama Mary agreed, but neither of us had heard of scorpions living in Woodland. And they were scorpions, but not harmful to humans though they curl and point their tail to say, “This is my body. This is my space.”

We crowded around to watch them, but we watched with care, caring for them and caring for us. They are so little, and we are so big. Then there were the potato bugs. They mash their teeth and smile their terrible smiles and say, “This is my body. This is my space.” Their bite makes you feel like you have the flu. They are also good at hiding and have stripey bottoms that might make someone think they sting like a bee or wasp.

We also watched them with care. And I said a little word of thanks for the cleaning jobs they do. I wonder what stories the bugs have to tell.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Mulberry,

There was Levi Spider, Levi Millipede, and Levi Roly Poly. You built a house for them of Magnatiles and wondered how Levi Roly Poly got out. I wonder how bugs get in. I wonder if they can move through walls or is it that they go through the space between the window and the ledge even though it seems there’s no space at all.

I wanted to know what their stories were. You opened up the Magnatile house for Levi Millipede and Levi Spider to roam. Levi Spider moved fast. You wanted to play with him. You are so so big compared to a small small spider. Levi Spider let you know they were scared and wanted to run and hide.

I wonder what is the best way to make friends with something so tiny.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Dear Oak,

You drove around the bike path higgeldy piggeldy, some on the bike, others behind the bike pushing. Then, you began collecting things on the bike. You collected all the kitchen things. You ran out of space and got the wagon and collected the drums and the boots and a book for good measure.

You took the things to the barn and dropped them all in one big heap, but I think you got hungry or thirsty before you could unload all the boots from the wagon because some boots were left in the wagon. You knew that you’d have to undo the heap, go in reverse and put everything back.

The collecting had gone quickly because 5 or 6 of you worked together on the project. There were 10 of you at school today, and all 10 got involved in the cleanup relay, relaying from one hand to another all the kitchen items. I wonder if we put them back even faster than they’d been collected.

Once we’d returned the kitchen items, it was a mad dash as everyone grabbed boots and raced to put them back. I’m very speedy, so I don’t know how you managed to get to the shelves first. And very last the drums and drum sticks were returned by the Super Cleaner Oak Class.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

P.S. Maybe T stands for turtle, and V stands for voice, so turtle voice.

Dear Mulberry,

Mama Amanda and I were cleaning. We’d been gone an extra day from school, and our spider family had been busy making homes where we store things, like our cubbies, our blocks, our paper. Did you know that the more kinds of spiders and bugs that we have, the healthier our school is and the healthier we are?

Some bugs and spiders do cleaning work for us, and we wanted to encourage them to move and build their homes in places where we don’t store things and they could get accidentally hurt. I was cleaning the blocks, and I saw spiders and bugs scurrying away to find new homes. You came and helped me clean the blocks.

While we were cleaning, two other people were busy building. They were busy building a tower, a tall tower. I wonder how they knew how to build together, when who should put what and where. They stopped a moment. They noticed they’d put two purple tiles together to make one wall. They had to climb on top of the table because their tower had gotten so tall in order to add more tiles.

CRASH!! I jumped as they smashed their tower and walked away.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

I have a chapter book that is special” – J

Dear Oak,

You found green fruit on the ground. It was split open. I thought it might be from an almond tree. I wonder what you thought it was. We were on our adventure walk. We’d gone East towards where the sun shines in the morning. Then we headed North over the bridge with no water beneath.

The grass was too tall to go further that way because we wouldn’t have been able to see our feet or our scared rattlesnake cousins hiding in the tall grass. So we turned back. We passed the amphitheater and went towards where the horse was and the tall mounds of mulch. You climbed the gate. I climbed the mulch. We all climbed the mulch.

Then we went to the pond and looked across the water towards the Goose Toilet. There were no geese, but there were lots of our tree swallow family swooping and diving. We went down to the Goose Toilet. We watched out for Miss Sneaky Oak who is poisonous and sings, “This is my space.”

On the way back, we found the tree with the green fruit. You collected as many as you could hold from around the bottom of the tree. I picked one for each of you. Papa John thought they might be walnuts. I wonder.

Love,
Teacher Michelle

Monster Truck” – E

Dear Mulberry,

First, you found three spiders where we keep the cardboard and the paper for drawing, writing and making. I wondered if they were sisters. You thought the smallest one was the baby. Then you noticed more spiders.

There were three spiders living up in the rafters, one spider in each of the between spaces. Mama Stephanie thought they each had their own apartment. Maybe they were neighbors.

There were two more spiders you found in the Safe Area. These were in the corner by the bathroom, a small one living in a web above a larger spider. They were all long-bodied cellar spiders. These spiders carry an egg sac with as many as 60 eggs in the sac in their mouth until their babies hatch. Maybe they were all sisters.

I wonder if you and your grownup know a story about these spiders.

Love,
Teacher Michelle