Cafe

Our cafe has been making exciting progress over the last couple of weeks. The premises has grown, there is talk of introducing a live show once it officially opens and several students have been involved in preparing extra components, including signs and price lists which are being prepared and edited into usable menus for the customers.  

We encourage students to be 'brave writers' and have a go when they are unsure of the spelling or numerals in their piece of writing.  Here several students have first spelled the sounds they could hear in the word, and then referred to an exemplar to compare with and edit their own work.  

Construction

A problem occurred on the Terrace last week. A soccer stadium was built next to the cafe, which naturally needed seating, and we discovered that there were not enough chairs to go around for both venues.

The children decided that the best solution was to build extra chairs out of the big blocks, but soon discovered that they were a little unstable for spectators to sit on.  

Both groups combined for the rest of the session to solve the design problem of how to stabilise the seat. We discovered that the base was the first thing that needed to "feel safe", and that when the orientation of big blocks was changed to an overlapping pattern it made a more stable base than when all the blocks were vertically aligned.

The next problem was the back rest. Even once the seat base had been built up sufficiently the back still felt unstable when someone sat and leaned back slightly to test it. To solve this we added more blocks in varying orientations to the back of the chair.  


We experimented with adding more blocks to "build it up" but found that adding them in different directions did not always result in a more stable chair. Specifically, building it up vertically made it feel less stable than a design with a lower back, and that adding support at the back of the chair to make that section thicker helped considerably.  

Week 4 Update

Café Excursion

On Thursday 1^st March a group of students from our room who have been building and running a café on the terrace went on an excursion with a group of Triciclo students to visit a real café to their enrich their experience. 

We observed all the different fixtures and elements that make up a working café.  Some of the things that we noticed in particular were the sugar pots on the tables, the lights, television, cake stand and the all-important coffee machine!  We were able to ask the owner questions about how the café runs, and he told us how important it is to keep everything clean, where he buys the ingredients for the food, and what he does during the day to keep the café running smoothly. 

We recorded our observations with drawings, and a few students were brave writers who had a go at taking notes as well. 

We will be running more excursions as well as community walks over the next few weeks.  Each excursion is planned in response to the specific interests of the children, therefore often only a small group from our learning community will attend each excursion.   As you have already signed a permission form for local excursions, we will let you know via email the day before if your child will be attending a local excursion – no notes are necessary.

Readers

Readers have started this week!  We know that you’re all very excited, and the children have been eager for some time.   It’s wonderful to see the excitement that the children have for this activity and also to see that you all share and celebrate this enthusiasm with them. This is an exciting time and a positive attitude to simple routines like this makes for a great start to kids’ reading lives. 

You can change the reader in the morning between 8:45 and 9:00 or in the afternoon before you go home.  Children should put their reading folder straight back into their bag once they have changed it.  If they don’t get a chance to change it in the morning, they can leave their folder in the tub under the reading table in case a family helper is able to change it with them during learning time. If you would like to read a book that you have at home with your child instead of one from the reader boxes that’s fine, just remember to record it in the reading sheet on the inside left cover of the folder. 

At the start of the year, the books were sorted into the coloured boxes that correspond with the coloured dot on the back of each book. Please help the children to put books back in the right box to make choosing books of various levels easier.

Some ideas on how to support your child reading at home will be posted soon.

If you want to help out with the readers during the day, just let us know. You can read take-home books with children so they feel familiar and confident with them by the time they take them home. You can also help children whose folders are in the tubs under the tables to choose new books to take home that night, remembering to get them to put their folders in their bags once they have chosen a new book and read it with you.

We ask you to keep the number of books that you borrow to a maximum of two, including weekends – we are so glad that you are enthusiastic and that you love books, and encourage you to borrow books from your local library if two isn’t enough.

Daily Diaries

We have started our individual daily diaries this week as well.  We aim to draw and write something that we did at school in our diaries each day. At this stage we are largely scribing for the children, and although we do try to get through each child’s diary with them it’s not always possible. You can use these diaries as a sentence starter with your children.

Some ideas on how to support your with the diary at home will be posted soon.