Traditions and Transition: How the Owls Use Play and Routine to Grow Together

Red Fox Community School
2 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 4 hours ago

by Sarah Post

Spring 2026

Springtime in the Owls classroom is full of routines, traditions and play! Owls continue to infuse play into all aspects of their day. We write and perform our own play which is a beloved tradition. Routines anchor us to our day and our sense of community during this busy time of year while we look forward to all our school wide traditions in May.

Owls find comfort in the routines we created earlier in the fall. They look forward to outside time every day where they practice the skills of risk taking, problem solving, empathy, imagination and self-advocacy, just to name a few. While some of our day needs to have flexibility, Owls find comfort in the rhythm of Snack, Lunch, Read Aloud, Explore Time, and our Morning and Closing Meetings. These activities keep us centered and regulated throughout the day, so we can go with the flow and be flexible when needed. The spring weather brings a welcome change to our routine of getting ready for outside time. Owls were so happy not to need all the layers and boots while happily and quickly gearing up for field time or Hawgolwood time.

Springtime brings a lot of excitement and energy for the many traditions that carry us through. As a school we look forward to singing on stage with Maxine at our annual fundraiser. We also enjoy scheming up acts to perform for each other at our annual Open Mic. In the Owls room we have two end of year traditions we all look forward to that signal the end of the year: Carpollozza and Legomania. Owls love bringing in cars (and tractors) to share and play with during Carpollozza and Legomania, well can you guess why Owls love this tradition? Having these activities to look forward to helps bring joy and comfort to the end of the year–a time which can be bittersweet for students and teachers.

Our Read Aloud routine had a special component this spring. Owls fell in love with yet another Kallie George book, Heartwood Hotel, Forever Family. We finished the book just in time to have our own Golden Acorn Celebration, complete with each Owl finding their own golden acorn charm as a token of their year in the Owls classroom. One of our favorite quotes (and there were many) from the book is "We won’t know unless we give it a go, right?” spoken by our favorite character, Mona the mouse as she takes off on her next adventure, which we learned is the setting for book number six in the series.

Play is always a big part of our day, whether we are playing a math or reading game or imaginative play outside with rocks, sticks and mud. Inside the classroom we play while building fabric forts and cities out of blocks. Play is important for so many reasons, but the biggest reason for Owls is that it’s engaging and fun!

Our all school play this year was a culmination of our study of Innovation and Problem Solving. The play project involved collaborative work on researching, brainstorming and writing our play. Owls joined Hawks and Eagles in mixed aged groups to complete this project. They helped each other flesh out ideas and come up with a storyline that included facts about each time period and how to get there through time travel from their chosen time period: the 1980’s. Play work is quite an undertaking and all students were up for the challenge in some way or another to help with memorizing lines, making props and costumes and practicing their roles on the stage. The whole experience of creating our play from idea to product is a good example of how much we value the creative process at Red Fox. The result was a wonderfully creative, fact-filled and fun play that everyone was proud to share.

Jack: I liked our play. It was so fun. I was a kid in the play and I did the lightening sound effects.

Leif: I played soccer in the field. I liked it!

Fritz: I picked flowers with Zena and I dyed the fabric blue. We put the flowers on the fabric! We put the fabric in the sun and it turned blue except where the flowers were it turned white.