Talk Like a Pirate Day - Pirate Picture Book Favorites!
YARRRR ME LAND LUBBERS!!!!
TODAY BE “TALK LIKE A PIRATE” DAY, AND WE ARRRRRR CELEBRATING BY SHOWING OFF OUR FAVORITE PIRATE BOOKS! AHOY!!!!
We love to play make-believe with our kids. We love putting on costumes and turning our old playground bus into a massive pirate ship.
Most importantly, we love teaching them things they need to know hidden under things they WANT to know.
THE BEST LESSONS ARE THE STICKY ONES, THE BELLY LAUGH ONES, THE PLAYFUL MEMORY ONES
Here are nine of our absolute favorite picture books for preschoolers (and school agers!) that you can read with your best pirate voice.
Pete the Cat and the Treasure Map (Who doesn’t love Pete the Cat?)
How I Became a Pirate (In Ms. Janette’s Classroom!)
Pirate & Penguin (Recommended for Pirates with younger siblings!)
Pirates Next Door (In Ms. Janette’s Classroom!)
Pirates Don’t Go To Kindergarten (Busy Bees Wish List!)
There was an Old Pirate who swallowed a Map! (Perfect for sequencing, cause and effect, and laughing!)
Even Pirates Need to Listen (Perfect for walking friends through following the rules)
The Gingerbread Pirates (Ms. LJ’s absolute favorite!)
A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade (Ms. LJ’s OTHER Favorite!)
Night Walks:Activities for Autumn
Despite the ninety degree temps we all know that the days are getting shorter and shorter! Pretty soon it’ll be dark before our littles’ bedtimes.
Whether or not you have the ever-present battle against screens in your household, it can be hard to decide what to do with your evenings, especially when adding in dinner, bath time, bed routines, and finding time for yourself to decompress.
An easy breezy add to your weeknight is a brief Night-Time Walk together! These do not require much prep, can involve kiddos of any age, and can span any amount of time you need.
Optional Materials: Binoculars, Paper, Coloring Implements, Compass, Flashlights
FOR CLEAR SKIES
Creating your own constellations: Much like looking for shapes in clouds, you can look up at the stars on a walk and ask your kids if they see any shapes! Tell your own stories about the shapes they see.
Learning the constellations: older kids may be interested in constellations and the stories they tell! You can pair this with one of these amazing constellation story books!
Moon Phase Journal: We talk about this a lot, but by having your child do observational drawings of the moon as it changes, it helps your child begin processing how time passes long term. If you do the observations from the same spot, your child will also see how the moon moves around the sky based on the seasons!
Bonus: Help them learn how to use a compass when finding the moon, the planets, and the stars so that they can begin to learn basic parts of navigation!
Autumnal Celestial Events:
Sea and Sky Events 2023 has all of the upcoming celestial events in the night sky. We will list a few of the best ones below.
September 23 - September Equinox. The September equinox occurs at 06:43 UTC. The Sun will shine directly on the equator and there will be nearly equal amounts of day and night throughout the world. This is also the first day of fall (autumnal equinox) in the Northern Hemisphere and the first day of spring (vernal equinox) in the Southern Hemisphere.
September 29 - Full Moon, Supermoon. The Moon will be located on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun and its face will be will be fully illuminated. This phase occurs at 09:59 UTC. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Corn Moon because the corn is harvested around this time of year. This moon is also known as the Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the September equinox each year. This is also the last of four supermoons for 2023. The Moon will be near its closest approach to the Earth and may look slightly larger and brighter than usual.
*EARLY EVENING* October 8, 9 - Draconids Meteor Shower. The Draconids is a minor meteor shower producing only about 10 meteors per hour. It is produced by dust grains left behind by comet 21P Giacobini-Zinner, which was first discovered in 1900. The Draconids is an unusual shower in that the best viewing is in the early evening instead of early morning like most other showers. The shower runs annually from October 6-10 and peaks this year on the the night of the the 8th and morning of the 9th. The second quarter moon will be visible in the early morning but shouldn't interfere too much. Best viewing will be in the early evening from a dark location far away from city lights. Meteors will radiate from the constellation Draco, but can appear anywhere in the sky.
October 28 - Full Moon. The Moon will be located on the opposite side of the Earth as the Sun and its face will be will be fully illuminated. This phase occurs at 20:25 UTC. This full moon was known by early Native American tribes as the Hunters Moon because at this time of year the leaves are falling and the game is fat and ready to hunt. This moon has also been known as the Travel Moon and the Blood Moon.
October 28 - Partial Lunar Eclipse. A partial lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through the Earth's partial shadow, or penumbra, and only a portion of it passes through the darkest shadow, or umbra. During this type of eclipse a part of the Moon will darken as it moves through the Earth's shadow. The eclipse will be visible throughout all of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and western Australia. (NASA Map and Eclipse Information)
For cloudy nights
Weather Journal: During a lovely evening walk together you can discuss the weather! What do the clouds look like? Who thinks it’s going to rain? Is there wind? How does the outside feel at night versus during the day? What kinds of animals are we hearing and seeing? Afterwards, you could have kids do a brief journal entry. Kids can do observational drawings, write questions, and create graphs to see what kind of weather shows up the most in a week/month/year!
“Night Sounds and Sights” Scavenger Hunt:
Night Bird Sound
Rustling of Leaves
Crickets (or other night bug sounds)
A Bright Star: Planet or Star?
The Moon: What phase is it?
Autumn Leaves in multiple colors
Moth
An Evergreen Tree: Bonus - can you smell it?
A Flickering Streetlight
A Stop Sign — Did you notice anything interesting about this sign? (point out how it’s reflective so it’s visible in the dark)
Learning Begins at Birth: Infant Curriculum
We have written quite a lot about how are preschool teachers are not just “babysitters.” They are early childhood professionals who give your kid a whole-body, play-based learning experience. We have seen time and time again that our approach encourages our students to be confident, independent learners who have a leg up when they begin kindergarten!
Now it is time to give our infant and toddler teachers credit where credit is due. They are phenomenal, educated, practiced professionals at their trade, and they are giving your babies an enriching childhood experience.
No Small Matter is an eye-opening documentary all about how early REAL LEARNING truly begins. We talk about this a little in our Conscious Discipline Spotlight, but essentially children start looking to you for guidance at birth.
Our teachers are constantly talking to our tiniest students. They are singing. They are describing everything they’re doing. They are making that uninterrupted eye contact and responding to any attempt at communication. All of these things are helping build essential those neural pathways for learning.
Here are some examples of how our infant teachers do lessons through play.
Songs with colorful pictures help associate words with tangible objects.
Coloring and themed sensory play help with fine motor work!
Coloring with chalk is perfect for cause and effect with fine motor work.
Animals and weather velcro gloves help with cause and effect and word association!
Playing outside in every weather helps with sensory, self-regulation, attention, and physical fitness.
Our little explorers learn so much, and it is a joy to watch. Don’t you wish you were here?
Love, Love, Love,
Your Common Ground Family
"I met a Pediatrician in the woods..."
Hello all! Ms. LJ here. We have been talking so much about kindergarten readiness here, both as discussions in our blog and in our kindergarten planning meetings. For many of us it is a passion project, a calling to find a way to reintegrate the joy of childhood with the delight of curiosity, of hunting for answers in this beautiful world of ours.
Learning IS a joy that fuels the fires of our existence. Our children are subjected to the fears of failure early, of “falling behind” or being measured against their peers with a single yard stick and being found wanting. These anxieties become inextricably linked to education as they get older, convincing them that it is something they have to endure, rather than tools given and honed to become our best selves.
Why? It is our very ambitious belief that it is because we have cut off curriculum from play. Particularly in the American education system for young children we have turned away from the most natural, efficient source of teaching.
BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT: I MET A PEDIATRICIAN IN THE WOODS…
On Friday morning last week I found myself home with my two children. I had just received my second covid inoculation and was feeling a bit run down myself, but I did not want to squander this rare opportunity to spend alone time with my kids! The Covid-19 pandemic as a whole has been a tragic, frightening event, but I will always cherish the summer I got to spend every day outside with my babies. I took them to the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, one of our favorite “safe space” hangouts from last year, to walk the grounds and kick the slush around under a blue sky.
It was here on one of these particularly wet paths that I ran into two women, one of which commented that it was nice I brought them out on such a nice day. I laughed and said flippantly “I figured they didn’t need to sit in a classroom today.”
In response, this woman gestured around her and said with utter sincerity, “This IS a learning space.”
I grinned, even though I knew she couldn’t see it behind my mask. “I think so too.”
The lady laughed and turned back to her friend, ”And I’m a pediatrician, so you can quote me on that if anyone asks.”
It’s not just our career teachers that are seeing this. It’s not just the parents who know their “energetic kids” focus better when in motion. Doctors who specialize in children are urging for parents and educators alike to integrate consistent, long-form play into all aspects of children’s lives. Physically, they are stronger. Mentally, they are more able to pay attention and less likely to have sensory issues.
Social competencies and emotional resilience suffer greatly without consistent peer-interaction in a playful and imaginative setting as well! Children often work out a lot of their big questions and anxieties of the day by integrating it into safe-space imaginative play reenactments. Without being able to work these issues out themselves, children are unsure of their own abilities to problem solve, and those anxieties and dependencies grow.
Here is a fantastic article from The American Academy of Pediatrics all about The Power of Play if you would like to read more:
The Power of Play: A Pediatric Role in Enhancing Development in Young Children
It’s not that wrote learning, memorization, and standardized long-form curriculums don’t work, it’s that they miss the point of education entirely. They leave behind many and narrow the focus of the rest, curbing creativity, independent thought, and resilience to the necessary process of failure.
Think about any lesson you still remember 10, 20, 30 years later. Which ones stuck with you?
For me it’s almost always the games. My sixth grade teacher had us turn our entire classroom into a bunch of cardboard houses to mimic Hoovervilles. She dunked our feet in cold water and drew cards with battlefield injuries to give us a taste of war on the front. In third grade, multiplication songs and games stuck with me way longer than any flashcard work. Watching pumpkins rot, playing with baby chicks hatching from eggs and experiencing them grow was a poignant way to learn about the life cycles of living things. One of my favorites was pretending to be sound waves bouncing around a back alley. Even “Which President was it?” trivia tag helped facts that HAD to be memorized something fun and worth doing.
To reinvigorate education as a whole we have to reunite the JOY that should come with it, the fascination, the wonder. Let the kids run off in their excitement and experience a lesson with their whole bodies. Let them learn more than you thought, more widely than you thought. You’ll be surprised what you learn when you’re muddy and out of breath too.
Go Play! Keep Learning! Most of all, Have Fun!
Miss LJ