Families in the multi-age preschool and kindergarten program receive a packet with songs, stories, crafts and activities, recipes, and articles on parenting. Here is a sampling of the materials they receive in one week. In addition, students have weekly times to connect through Google Meet, where our teachers tell stories, and celebrate our students’ birthdays with the class.
Recipe
Heather’s Flower Water Tea
I hope you enjoy this refreshing treat! Heather will often have this tea out for us teachers for our meetings, and she will also lovingly make some to share with her class. It’s a perfect spring drink!
Listen to our Meal Blessing from the Apple Blossom class.
Songs and Verses
Story
Craft
How to Finger Knit a May Crown
We always love to see all the children and families that come to our May Day celebration adorned in their May crowns. At our fair, we weave willow branches with fresh flowers. You can also finger knit a crown and put in fabric flowers! This weekend my children made lots of flower crowns using long grass that they braided and adding violets, dandelions, and periwinkle flowers. Soon we all had crowns, bracelets, and necklaces galore. If you make a crown, please take a picture and share it with the class in our Google Classroom.
Finger knitting is one of the first handwork projects we do in the kindergarten class. It is really fun for the children, and once they get the hang of it, there are so many creative things they can do—ropes for playing with, belts, necklaces, headbands, and crowns!
Finger knitting encourages hand-eye coordination, concentration, and perseverance. It builds dexterity and strength in students’ hands, fingers, and thumbs. These are all building a strong foundation for when it is time to use these same skills for writing.
In class, we teach the children to finger knit by making it creative and imaginative. We tell a little story about how the loop is actually a bird’s nest, and with pinching our thumb and pointer finger together, we show how a hungry birdie pokes through the loop and finds a worm to eat. It eats the biggest worm as the pointer and thumb “bite” onto the long piece of yarn. Sometimes the nest gets really big (when the loop gets stretched over time) and you can make it smaller and cozier by pulling the long piece of yarn.
Our youngest students have tried finger knitting and they work closely, one on one, with a teacher. Our older students are at varying levels with some needing a bit of help still, to some who are so fast we can’t keep up! Here is a finger knitting tutorial so you can help guide your child.
Please feel free to ask questions, share what you are making out of all the finger knitted ropes you are making, and share pictures of your child and their finger knitting if you’d like.
Parenting Resources
Inner Work for Parents: What it is and Why it’s Important
By Meagan Wilson
A Mindfulness Practice for Stressed-Out Parents
By Mitch Abblett
Try this mindfulness practice the next time that mean inner voice pops up and starts making parenting harder than it needs to be.
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