Today was Oliver’s “Fly-up” ceremony where he transitions from Children’s House into the elementary school. In Montessori terms, he’s not only moving into a new classroom next year (as a first grader), but he is moving into another developmental stage (or “plane of development”). Here’s how his teacher described it in a recent email:
Fly-up is a celebration to mark the passing from one plane of development to the next. You probably already see signs of your second plane child: abstract thinking, reasoning mind, strong sense of what is just and fair, strong inclination to be with and work alongside peers. The fly-up ceremony is a visual representation of this internal growth.
At the celebration, each child will run down the hallway from the Children’s House wing, out the door and into the elementary courtyard where they are greeted by the elementary children, teachers and parents.
In honor of the occasion, Oliver decided to wear a festive fancy shirt and a top hat from our costume closet. He looks pretty dashing! (Maggie dressed up for the occasion, too.)
Sarah and the kids surprised me with an early father’s day present this year: a wood-fired pizza oven! We’ve loved the green egg grill for pizza, but it takes a while to get up to temperature and it takes longer to cook a pie. This sleek thing heats rapidly and cooks a pizza in 60 seconds flat. It’s amazing.
One of Griffin’s birthday presents was a sushi-making kit. The crowd was unanimous: we must make sushi immediately. Andrew went out to pick up some fresh salmon and tuna while the rest of the family made the rice and prepped the vegetables. The results were delicious!
As a bit of an April Fools day meteorological joke, we were hit with a fairly severe blizzard overnight. With 8.5 inches of snow at the airport, this puts us at the third snowiest winter since records began in 1971. And this wasn’t just a blizzard, it was a thunder blizzard. Lightning and thunder accompanied the billowing snow in the evening. Our power went out for an hour or so in the night, but was miraculously back on before sunrise.
View from the front door this morning.
And out back…
Ominous weather alerts.Our third snowiest winter.
For more details, check out this morning’s post on the Updraft Blog (MPR’s weather site).
“I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s like my mind is connected to the bead bars. I Just know what’s going to come next.”
Oliver’s wonderful Kindergarten teacher, Molly, sent us this picture and quote. The “bead bars” represent numbers (by the number of color-coded beads on each bar) and can be used to explore a lot of mathematical operations (including addition and multiplication). It’s amazing to see how these manipulatives give kids real confidence around number manipulation. Oliver regularly stops me from solving math problems so that he can do them himself.
A big winter storm came through this week. Two more days off from school. (First day was a false-positive… we could have easily made it to school, but it had already been called.) Today (the second day), seems much more justified.
Back porch scene this morning (with a few more hours of snow to come).
Actually, this is just for Andrew and Griffin’s school (SPA). Maggie and Oliver got three days off!
