Letter to Parents

Dear Parents,

What a joy to welcome your children back to Spindlewood after the holidays. They seemed to be filled with the magic of the season, and content to play in one large cluster (like the honeybees at this time of the year!). They have been creating their own imaginary landscapes with carved wooden figures and table dolls and enacting their own dramas, (still featuring taming, feeding and tending kittens.) 

We painted with all three primary colors last week, something we have built up to very slowly, beginning by experiencing first one and then two colors. With all three colors, there is the possibility of making only “mud” on the paper, but every one of the children created a painting with complete quiet and absorption with glowing colors. We will send it home soon.  

This past week the children also sewed together some of their previous paintings to make pocket folders to store their crayon colorings. They are collecting them carefully so that they can sew ten pages together to make their own books. 

Each child has also begun sewing with colored embroidery thread on cloth held taut by a wooden hoop. They delight in choosing their colors and use all of their powers of concentration to work the needle up and down. When it is finished, we will turn it into a balsam pillow. 

On our coldest day, we had a special session of beeswax modeling, warming a piece of modeling wax first in warm water and then in closed hands, and then carefully pressing the wax (as do the bees!) to form small vessels. The children spontaneously produced tiny boats, bowls and cups. Perhaps the most touching to my sensibilities was the six-year old boy who made a tiny “cradle”. 

Our daily story time has been a table puppet play of The Shoemaker and the Elves. Have I mentioned what an extraordinary class this is in their ability to listen in complete silence to stories? When a repairman turned up one morning to fix our gas heater just as the children were transitioning from rest time to story time, he seemed stunned by the quiet in the room of 12 children. 

This would be a good time for another child to join the kindergarten. Please let your friends know that we have an opening. 

At last we have snow! If it lasts, you may find us still on the sledding hill at 12:15. If you are able and willing we would welcome your support and assistance in rounding up sleds and returning them to the shed where we will have our closing circle promptly at 12:30.  

Warmly,

Miss Susan  

The North Wind doth blow and we shall have snow
And what will the robin do then, poor thing?
She will sit in the barn and keep herself warm
And hide her head under her wing, poor thing.

The North Wind doth blow and we shall have snow
And what will the dormouse do then, poor thing?
He’ll curl up in a ball in his nest oh so small
And sleep ‘til its springtime again, poor thing.

 

The North Wind doth blow and we shall have snow

And what will the swallow do then, poor thing?

Oh do you not know that she’s gone long ago

To a country much warmer than ours… Ah!