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Spirit Play, week 4
Sep. 28th, 2008 02:30 pmToday we did the life cycle of butterflies. Once again, I ignored the book, this time because my cunning plan was to start by asking the kids what they knew about butterflies. Cobbling their answers together got us about 90% of the book's contents, and I filled in the remaining 10% myself. Yay improvisation!
We had a minor mishap during snack and free play, when one kid knocked over her apple juice, but she helped me clean it up so that was okay. Spirit Play is, I think, more prone to such mishaps than other curricula, because we have no table or chairs: everything is done on the floor, preferably in a circle.
I still think some of the Montessori aspects are unnecessary, mostly because the idea seems to be to create a sense of ritual, and UU RE classes already do that. We always start by lighting the chalice, doing Joys and Sorrows, and reciting an opening of some sort. (Our current one is adapted from Gandhi, with hand gestures.) So there's already a firm sense of ritual and 'this is not your weekday school' going on.
Anyway, after class I went to a lunch held to honor our outgoing DRE (director of religious education); I thought there was going to be a speech and a presentation of a scrapbook created from the kids' art, but that was apparently done during the service. Ah well. The food was good, and free, which is always worthwhile. :-)
And in half an hour, I'm off to work.
We had a minor mishap during snack and free play, when one kid knocked over her apple juice, but she helped me clean it up so that was okay. Spirit Play is, I think, more prone to such mishaps than other curricula, because we have no table or chairs: everything is done on the floor, preferably in a circle.
I still think some of the Montessori aspects are unnecessary, mostly because the idea seems to be to create a sense of ritual, and UU RE classes already do that. We always start by lighting the chalice, doing Joys and Sorrows, and reciting an opening of some sort. (Our current one is adapted from Gandhi, with hand gestures.) So there's already a firm sense of ritual and 'this is not your weekday school' going on.
Anyway, after class I went to a lunch held to honor our outgoing DRE (director of religious education); I thought there was going to be a speech and a presentation of a scrapbook created from the kids' art, but that was apparently done during the service. Ah well. The food was good, and free, which is always worthwhile. :-)
And in half an hour, I'm off to work.
