9-9-11

Friday, September 9, 2011

Hi, Folks,

Thinking inside the box:

The year my son was 1, my brother gave him a box for Hanukkah. Not an Xbox. A box box. Cardboard. The biggest gift in the room and wrapped in colorful paper with a bow on top, my son, JP, immediately toddled over to it and tore the paper off. It was taller than him and from Office Depot, and at first I wondered if Uncle Keane had purchased my son his first office chair or file cabinet.  I ripped the tape off of the top, opened the flaps and...nothing. Empty box. Immediately JP tipped it onto it’s side and crawled in.  “Buh!” He cried, rolling his arms around, “Buh!” Ahhh, he wanted to sing “Wheels on the Bus”. So we sang, and he pretended to drive the box/bus. Eventually, we cut holes for windows and drove that bus for all 8 days of Hanukkah. We turned that box has been an airplane, a cave, a restaurant and countless other things.  When he was 6, he tore it open, flattened it out, and we made a map of his world--including Mommy’s school, Daddy’s shop, both sets of grandparent’s houses, the Dekalb County courthouse and the Candler Park Fellini’s Pizza. He’s now 8. The box still lives under the couch with the dust-bunnies, and every once in a while we pull it out. My daughter, now 5, has added to our box world with fabulous destinations such as a fairy castle and a Barbie beach vacation home (complete with hot tub and separate changing room for Ken).

I get really, really excited when I see boxes left out on the street for recycling. Unnaturally so. So,when Alison Auerbach brought one in on Wednesday afternoon, I thought “Great! We can use it to build a house for the Three Little Pigs.”

Your kids had other ideas.

The first thing student #1 did, was pull out the Styrofoam sheet inside, and to my horror, began to crumble it all over the floor. But, Erin and I took a deep breath, and let it go. More kids joined in, because making a gargantuan mess is fun and a great way to watch steam come out of your teachers’ ears. “It’s snowing in September!” someone gleefully shouted. This went on for 10 minutes before someone actually remembered the box. One kid climbed in. And promptly fell over. Tried again, fell. Another kid got in, “I’m going to mail myself to Boston!” he shouted. Soon, we were being mailed all over the US. I asked if we could ship a kid to France, and one student looked at me with a serious expression and said, “No, Ms. Amanda, only domestic deliveries.” A kid from another class heard the excitement and joined us, “typing” the delivery routes on a keyboard.  Meanwhile, 3 little snow fairies were negotiating vacuum time (yes, they actually wanted to vacuum) to clean up the Styrofoam madness. Ready to ship

On Thursday, the kids came in from swimming, and as we ate our snacks, the conversation somehow turned to how much houses cost. I described my sister’s apartment in Brooklyn, and how it is probably smaller than the size of the  classroom, yet it probably costs more to buy than a 4 bedroom home in Atlanta.
“What? You can’t live in a house as small as this room!” someone exclaimed.
“I wonder how big this room is?” someone else said.
 Well, how could we measure the room? We have a ruler, but it’s only a foot. Can we borrow a yardstick from Tara? Sure, but she only has one.
Hmm...how can we make more yardsticks?
“I’m going to cut one out of the box!”
Many scissors and one bloody finger (mine) later, we had a yardstick of our own.
Yardstick factory
Yardstick and 12 inch ruler        Life threatening injury of my “non-verbal vehicular communication” finger





Alas, we never actually got around to measuring the room. Hopefully next week. We did, however, make one very important measuring discovery:
3 pigs + 1 wolf=1 yard

All this is to say, you can have your wii, your Xbox, your ipad. I’ll take a box and a kid’s imagination any day.

Class Movies:
I would like to post our plays and puppets shows on You Tube. I will do them as unlisted videos, which means you need the link to view them. If anyone has any objection to this, or if you have a better way to share these videos, let me know.

Cooking:
Do we have any food allergies or sensitivities in the class this year? I’d like to do a little bit of cooking in the upcoming weeks. Please let me know if there is anything your child can’t have or that you would prefer they don’t eat.

Conferences:
Parent conferences are on September 23rd.  Here is the schedule. If you need to swap with someone, email them and then let me know.

9:00- Stettner-Auerbach
10:00-Hurtado
11:00-Reilly
12:30-Vigilante
1:30-Perkins





Three final deep thoughts:


1. Mallets are for games, not skulls

A comfy pillow always makes the book better

and, most importantly...
Never, ever wear a pig snout after Labor Day


Have a great weekend!

Amanda and Erin