Morning Song School, Mill Valley, Marin, CA

A magical Waldorf inspired children's program

The LONG awaited Blog!!!! How many seasons have past????

Hello All,

I am so sorry for not staying on top of the blog, but I am here for the update. My apologies. Nicole

Remember Horse Hill kids? I know that was awhile ago, but the children and teachers really enjoyed their day on horse hill.
Here are the long awaited photos. Sorry Miss Linda!

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A big Happy Birthday to River. She is three years old!!!

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It’s Valentines day; one of our lovely valentine flowers, others of making valentines, playing in our valentine tunnel of love, receiving valentines from friends…

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Here the children are on a walking field trip to the farmers market…
The children got to ask questions, meet vendors, see and taste new things and practice very good manners!

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Outdoor garden play on the tree swing, tire swing and trapeze bar!

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Here we are going sailing in the boat……

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We built the leprechaun trap and worked hard on decorating so that our friend who comes and causes mischief each year, Liam the leprechaun, would be lured in….
We came back to school hoping to have caught him so we could have some words with him regarding the condition he leaves our room in each year
as well as get many questions answered (such as what DOES a leprechaun do with all of that gold and what does his house look like). When we arrived, we found that he DID come in and turned our classroom topsy-turvy, leaving a big mess for all of us to clean up. He tossed our green glittery box trap up onto the wall of the loft and used the net to trap our own classroom wizard!

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He shared in a letter written in leprechaun language (it took us a while to decipher what he was trying to tell us) that while he was playing, he had forgotten his hat in the classroom and was not sure where he left it. He said he looked for it all night and finally had to go, asking us to please find it for him.

In exchange, he left us each a cupcake hand made by Granny leprechaun – she knew to make them gluten free!
The cupcakes were left on each chair, which was strategically placed upon the table in a pyramid.

He left leprechaun greens” all over the classroom, including in the kitchen pots and bowls at the table; he had been playing with our babies and feeding them leprechaun greens!

Happy 4th Birthday to Nathaniel and Wyatt!!!

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The children are making apple/cranberry muffins; chopping apples and mixing.

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Here is our hungry cat puppet show:

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Before school (early care) music lesson with Monty and Mr. Rick.

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Here we are planting Spring baskets:

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Here is our Spring nature table:

Here’s to hoping the hare visits and finds our baskets!

Our spring celebration day and egg hunt!

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Soup day; we love the great variety of veggies that are coming in for the soup, children are getting an opportunity to learn about and try many new things!
Thank you to all of you who send in contributions with your children!

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Back at Fairy Glen; children playing with their boats in the water, building a fire, making rice to feed the babies….

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Winter Days

Our Winter blog is here. Please remember to click on the pictures in order to see all of them. Also a big welcome to Liam and his parents Wendy and Justin. If you see them, please introduce yourselves. He attends on Thursday and Friday.

The Winter has begun and here is our winter nature table.

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To prepare for the Winter, the children are preparing the garden to sleep.

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Winter cooking fun. Here we are making yummy ginger muffins and gingerbread men.

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A surprise from St. Nicholas, he left goodies in each child’s shoe. We heard the bells ringing outdoors while we were playing indoors. We went outside to see what was going on and we found a trail of glitter leading from the shoes all the way to the front garden and way where Monty spotted St. Nicholas flying away on his white horse in the sky.

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We enjoyed creating winter crafts and making the popcorn and cranberry garlands and silk fairies for the trees.

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On Three Kings Day, we made a Three Kings cake and the children found surprise kings in their snack, this made them kings or queens for the day! They all took turns wearing the kinds and queens crowns and they had special privileges we don’t usually get. Redbird is always our friend who visits the king’s castle and was with us that day for the celebration, where we found treasures left for us all, gold myrrh and frankincense.

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Here are the pictures from the class play, “Mouse Finds His Winter House”.

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Here we are getting dressed for the cold snowy outdoor play, then venturing out to mark our steps with our feet in the white snow….little holes, bigger holes, (look back and) see where we go!
We were also busy singing to the snow fairies, becoming little flakes of snow (on the trees and on the bushes, on the mountains afar) and singing about ol’ king winter and the north wind and their playful days together (albeit very cold days!),
We are making snow angles, racing downhill in our sleds, building snowmen (in this case, snow women – Sedona played the part in the center) making hot cocoa with marshmallows…and other various winter games!

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We have been having lots of fun making gluten free handmade pasta.

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Besides all of these great activities we continue to bake bread, make soup, working on handcrafts such as finger knitting and working with beeswax clay. We have celebrated FIVE birthday’s this winter.

Birthday 2012

The photos in this album include one day where the children were all drawing “tickets” that they intended to use to go through and on their “chair tunnel”. There are ticket takers and flag boys or girls that open and close the ends, it’s quite a workout. The children have come up with very creative ways to move through the tunnel and often come out sweating by the other end!

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Harvest Season

Hello To All. We have been so busy at school and have much to share. We have been busy doing crafts, carving, baking, celebrating Halloween, Birthdays, making amazing sailboats, and doing puppet shows. We finally are getting to the blog. There will be loads of pictures so we are going to do a different format for this time. Please remember to click on the one photo to get a larger image. From there you must click the link in the upper right hand side of the page that is named MS_Oct_Nov1. The entire photo album will pull up instead of the group we are featuring. There were just too many photos to group them. Sorry about that. We will put one photo by each event entry. We try to give all the children a chance to be featured. Some of our stories have been of that of “Tipperty Toes”, the little elf and the tales of tiptoes lightly, the Goblin who crept to town to make mischief (of course, the children LOVE this story), and now we are onto the Mouse finds his winter house and we are currently doing this story as a puppet show. The Mouse photos will be in next blog.

So let’s get started with our Fall nature table!

From MS_OCT_NOV1

Here are some indoor play photos, and a glimpse into how in depth their play is as a group.

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Here are some lovely photos of children helping harvest from the garden to make a surprise basil/tomato/mozzarella salad for Saniyah and River’s family with the arrival of their new baby boy. Congratulations to your family!!

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Here are some photos of the children all playing together outdoors with the large blocks. They built a jet plane and decided to fly to africa. Beck and Wyatt were the pilots. Monty and Saniyah served the food and and made sure everyone had their seatbelts on (the smaller flat boards you see across their laps). If you look at the far side of the plane, you will see a stack of long flat boards that Sedona and Saniyah are adding to the cargo hold as these are the children’s surf boards getting loaded onto the plane before take off. In one photo, you’ll see Monty talking to the passengers on his little speaker phone (hand held to mouth). They then journeyed by boat after the plane landed, you’ll see them in the boat with beck at the wheel (hula hoop). There are also some random play photos in this batch.

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Here is a sugar pumpkin we grew in the garden. We added it to our pumpkin recipes. There is also a photo of Alana mixing pumpkin muffins with our pumpkin.

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Here are photos of the back garden when the pumpkin king came to visit and turned the garden into a pumpkin patch, three of children playing on teeter totter and swings.

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This was our Bat making project. They came out terrific.

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A big Happy Birthday to Bo. He turned 3 years old. Our little Gnome and our elf friends came to celebrate with us.

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Here we are preparing for our Halloween Festival and we have a special visitor. Ember came to help us out. Here the children are enjoying their pumpkin carving. Thank you to all the families who helped out in carving extra pumpkins.

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During our Halloween Festival here is Morgan the witch telling her funny stories about her dog and her magic spells gone wrong. We also have some pictures of the kids in costume as well as Justin dropping River off and he was in disguise. There is also some photos of all the pumpkins, and photos of the front garden.

From MS_OCT_NOV1

Here are some photos of the back garden on Halloween day, the Pirates surprised everyone and had been for a visit (threatening to sail our boat off to look for treasures). The children are playing in the pirate boat with the treasure maps that they left behind (they also left gold coins, they were in such a hurry to go because morgan the witch scared them off).

From MS_OCT_NOV1

How creative. These little boats are so amazing. Dusty Gnome (aka “Rick” for this project) was so kind to bring his tool box and the bases of the boats for the children to build their own sail boats. Thank you parents for sending in the fabric.

From MS_OCT_NOV1

Here are the photos of nature day and the sailing of our awesome boats. Here are photos of a group of children playing at tall stumps, pretending they were on a train and that was the spot to get and give the tickets. Nathaniel was the conductor. A couple are of the children who were riding on a large tree branch they found (at one point, all of the children were on it together) and they learned about working together to get the branch to go in the direction they all needed to move to get anyplace.

From MS_OCT_NOV1
From MS_OCT_NOV1

We hope you enjoyed the blog. We will do one more before the end of the year. Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving.

Welcome to Morning Song School….Autumn Blog

The first weeks of school have been delightful, it is so fulfilling spending these magical mornings with our friends, old and new. So many different little personalities; it is great fun guiding each one of the children.

Many thanks to the families who have brought the flowers in this past few weeks! The choices have been vibrant and lovely, bringing in the colors of nature and adding beauty to our nature table and the center of our snack table.

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Thank you to Big Nana! We received a gift of apples and pears from Jack and Sedona’s Big Nana’s garden. The children took joy in sharing them as special snacks; we also baked apple muffins with them for our snack one day!

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From Baking 200110922

We appreciate everyone remembering the soup day contributions, we have had colorful and tasty soups and the children are learning to try new things. The children love to contribute to the soup and help chop and peel the veggies, and it’s lots of fun to see the end result and get to taste each thing that we find in our bowls.
Last week we harvested from our gardens, Morning Song grew swiss chard, basil, yellow squash, tomatoes, Rosemary and onion that all went into the soup in addition to the veggies brought from children’s homes. Dusty Gnome brought lentils and fresh garlic for the soup, he always likes to add something too! River and Saniyah brought in the tiniest bell pepper we have ever seen and a bag of little carrots that they grew in their gardens, as well as other wonderful things children shared! This week we added butternut squash from Saniyah and River, Potatoes and beans from Beck and Alana, Snap peas, Cilantro and carrots from Theodore!

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You may have heard your children sharing their stories about Rick passing through now and then in the school (and even lending a helping hand when we need extra help). It is hard for the children to engage in anything else when Mr. Rick is here, he has become a favorite of every one of the children. Rick has a tool belt and tools that capture the children’s attention and they all begin telling their stories of “their tools” or experiences with workers at their homes. Beck shared with Rick that he is a “worker man” too, and that it is a lucky thing, because his house needs a lot of work. Last week he played on the playground with them and many of them watched him do some pull-ups and begged to try too, so they learned how to do pull-ups with the trapeze bar.

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We always have the enjoyment of listening to the children’s stories. They are such creative little beings, it is amazing sometimes to hear the stories. One child shared that his dogs have a bad marriage. I asked him why, he said that there was a tornado the day they got married so now they fight a lot. He went on to say because of this, the boy dog wants a new wedding place and the girl dog does not, so they fight about it. I talked about some ways he could help them to come to a peaceful resolve and agreements, he said the problem is getting the girl dog to listen.

We also got to hear the story of a child’s dad who is growing an “air beard”. I asked what this is and was told that the beard needs air to grow, so dad stands outside in the air to make it grow.

We have been enjoying a story about little mouse and little flea. Flea goes off to tend the garden and leaves the pot of soup on the stove, asking the little mouse to be careful to not fall into the soup pot while he is away. While gone, little mouse wanders into the garden and feels sleepy, laying down under the rose bush to take an afternoon nap. When little flea returns, he can not find little mouse anywhere and is saddened at the thought that his dear friend has fallen into the soup pan. He cries on his way out the door, passing the table who asks little flea why he laments; little flea replies “little mouse has fallen into the soup and has been burned and I can not stay here anymore” and the table said “if you, from here, will be gone….then with you I will come along” and the table lifted himself up and followed the flea out the door. Subsequently, baking trough, the door and the tree all followed along, the door taking itself off of it’s hinges, the tree uprooting from the earth, etc. and they all paraded down the path. Of course, when they passed the rosebush, they saw little mouse curled up and sleeping under the rosebush. Upon the discovery of their little friend, they all began to dance and sing, and put themselves back where they each belong, the tree stretching its roots back into the earth, the door placing itself back on it’s hinges, etc.

Other stories, the children have learned about Octopus, who always gets her legs tangled, jeremy mouse helps bee, who lost his buzz (grumpy old cactus took it), and the worm loses his squirm.

The children have had a great time in yoga, here are some photos of a few of their poses during the unfolding of their yoga story.

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Circle time has been taking us on the journey of a dear little boy, all bonny and gay, who went out for a walk on a bright sunny day.
Over the course of the journey, the boy’s feet get all sore and he cries out that he can’t walk anymore….he says “I do wish that someone would listen to me, I wish that someone would carry me”.
In his adventure he is carried by a murmuring brook, a fine little boat, a snail, a kindly horseman, a shepherd who is leading the sheep along to the fold and eventually his mother, who carries him back home like a bird to it’s nest.

It is possible if you ask your child to tell you the story about “A dear little boy all bonny and gay”, by now they may be able to go on to tell you the entire story (and could possibly act it out for you, too).

Nature day was a huge hit. The weather at Fairy Glen was glorious. We enjoyed circle time in the woods and went on to have many outdoor adventures. The children made sailboats, gathered materials to make a raft with Rick, went fishing, climbed trees. It was wonderful to see the more timid children come out of their shells and courageously try things that they have never tried before. It was very sweet to see the children who were not ready to try some of these things living the experience through watching the joy of their friends accomplish such a feat.
We woke up our listening ears and noticed the many sounds of the outdoor world…the crows, the neighborhood dogs, the breeze in the trees, the birds singing, the street sweeper, the “family of bikes” as the cyclists passed, the water in the creek, etc. We learned about some ways we are thankful for the tall timbers, the canopy above us made by the branches, the home of different critters and bugs, the protection they offer etc. It was a very successful and special day.

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Please remember our parent meeting coming up Thursday, Sept 29th, 2011. The gathering will be short and informative and will begin at 5 pm. You should be able to head back home in an hour to an hour and a half at the most, it is really a chance to say hello to one another and cover a few things that for most of you, will serve as a reminder. If you are able to bring finger foods, please let me know what you will bring.

As tomorrow marks the first day of autumn, we will venture into the season together filled with nurturing and warm experiences.

xo
Miss Linda, Chay and Miss Christina