Yellow Band: Coin Arc, Weeks 3&4

What is important to you? What do you think is important to folks living on other countries? What are some of the things humans have historically used as a means of exchange? Why? What makes a piece of paper worth 5 or 10 or 100 dollars?Those are a few of the questions we've been contemplating the past few weeks. As we get deeper into Coin, get accustomed to our bandspace and routines, we've started to go deeper into some arc-related topics. We've even started to think about value: where it comes from, what we value and what others value. As we go, we continue to practice our routines--morning centers and afternoon choices, getting ready for park, using the library--and have even incorporated some arc-related activities as we build and expand on our competencies; we even started Writers' Workshop and Class Meeting!One of the first books we read together this arc is called The Story of Money, and while some of its concepts are a bit outdated, it outlines the transition from barter economies to money-based economies. (Although there is some question now as to whether there ever truly were entirely barter based economies!) This story based explanation of the emergence of mediums for exchange like salt, shell beads, barley and silver, and then the transition to coins and finally paper money really helped the Yellow Banders connect these dots. By the end of the book, we could all confidently say "The Chinese paper money had value because the people were ordered to use it!" This was the first step into some of our next conversations about value.In order to start to make some inferences about different values, we would need to learn about the lives of other people though. So, we started reading this awesome book! This Is How We Do It is one of my favorite finds for this arc. I love the way it objectively tells the story of a day in the live of children around the world. Paired with beautiful illustrations, the kiddos were captivated.In the meantime, we've kept up with our routines of centers in the morning, and choices in the afternoons. We've explored playdough, painting, tons of different games, and started Writers' Workshop Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The Yellow Band specifically is starting to learn some decoding strategies, woven through our morning messages at our morning meeting, and taking these skills to our literacy centers on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This week, we started to learn about closed syllables, consonant-vowel-consonant patterns (CVC).Magnet magic!

This week finished up with a community lunch served up by none other than our own Sylvester--thank you friend!It's hard to believe it's already almost the end of the Coin Arc! Stay tuned for a very exciting plan we have for next week...