February 2025
No friendship is an accident
-O.Henry
Clan Updates
Water Clan:
Water Clan made the most of that spectacular weather, barefoot running around in their base layers basking in the sunshine - what a most glorious week! The Water Clan has been doing such a beautiful job of being flexible with my role as director and flowing with Ms. Christina and Ms. Bri, I am so grateful to them and the children as I make it through enrollment season (which ends in March.)
Water Clan is working on not being reactive with their bodies when things aren’t going their way. When I see this type of reaction I stop the play and take the child aside and ask questions like “tell me what happened” “how did that make you feel?” “What could you do next time?” To help the child develop more tools to to handle the situation independently in the future. I avoid saying “Look at what you did” or “Why would you do that?” because we want to stay away from language that translates blame, shame guilt - kids can’t learn to do better when they are feeling those emotions. Here is an article that might help elaborate on this topic.
Earth Clan:
Hello families, I cannot believe how fortunate we were this past month with so many sunny days! It surely was a magical month spent outside. We all worked hard to push through the cold weather and built up our resiliency with learning and adapting new skills socially and academically. During our morning circle, student’s are practicing recognizing and building their own social strengths through picture book read alouds and group conversations. They are verbalizing skills that they personally want to get better at at school, for example: standing up for myself, stop being silly and saying bad words, take deep breaths, including others in play, and saying stop. This is the first step in building empathy and awareness for others! We will continue to work on this and talk about it throughout the year. I am looking forward to spending February with Earth Clan. Regardless of what the weather may bring, I know we will experience more laughter, growth, and connection with each other.
Air Clan:
Hi Air Clan families, we have jumped into our geology unit on Mondays with both feet and the kids have learned about matter (stardust) and the layers of the earth. We will be continuing our unit in February by learning about fossils, plate tectonics, volcanoes, and earthquakes. It has been a very fun unit so far. Our Academic blocks continue on Tuesdays and Wednesdays with math and reading. We have also been taking a deep dive into our social and emotional learning and have been practicing compliments and kindness. Our class meetings are a rich source of conversations and lately we are discussing conflict resolution and cool off periods and learning ways to come back together and have productive conversations where all sides are presented and discussed. It is still a work in progress but we are beginning to see positive changes in daily interactions. As always, please reach out with any questions and keep coming in layers, February looks a bit chillier than January!
Fire Clan:
The Fire Clan loved having so many sunny days and made the most of it with multiple trips to the river, lots of games of Everybody’s It and exploration of the forest (especially log balancing). Socially, our clan is working on inclusivity. They’re practicing flexing their empathy muscles in recognizing when other kids are feeling left out or not included. It may be as simple as an off hand comment or facial expressions/body language that can make someone feel unwelcome. So as a group, we’re taking time to practice building our awareness through role playing, thinking before we speak AND trying to think from another's perspective before making judgements or comments. Academically, the Fire Clan is working hard in all their subjects and diving deep into our project based learning geology unit. They can look forward to a trip to the library in late February!
Friendship Day
February 14th we will be celebrating Friendship Day at school. In the morning at drop off you can support (if needed) your child by helping them distribute their “love notes” to each friends bag. Then, near the end of the day, there will be popcorn, hot tea and book reading to honor Friendship Day. Our hope is that the students don’t go through their notes to one another until after school so things don’t get lost, dirty or scattered. Also, handmade cards are best but store bought are absolutely fine, and please NO sugar.
Join Us
Down to Earth Forest School, with the generosity of McMenamins Kennedy School, offers anyone in the the community a free viewing of the movie Chasing Childhood. Bring along children mature enough to appreciate a documentary-style film. After the film, we will open for a brief panel and discussion about giving children a childhood worth having and the over-scheduling of our children's lives. Please invite everyone, and spread the word!
Where: McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland, OR 97211
When: Thursday, March 6, 2025
Time: Doors open at 6pm, 7pm movie starts
Q&A and Panel discussion following movie
