Pumpkin seeds, play dough, pinecones, and more! The preschoolers had so much fun using natural materials in their play dough creations and doing some counting with pumpkin seeds. Then we collected sticks for a thankfulness project we will be working on together soon, and spent some time painting them and making leaf prints, too! We also celebrated a birthday and read a story together that we all enjoyed - it was a wonderful morning all around!
Today our K-2 students worked on an animal classification challenge! After starting our morning building some structures in the play space, we journeyed to the treehouse. While we were there we reviewed the different animal classifications that we have talked about and thought of some examples for each one. Then we read a book that told us different foods that an animal likes to eat, and we worked together to try and guess what the animal might be and what it is classified as! It was a fun challenge, and we realized there are lots of ways that animals can be similar or different from one another!
Pumpkin donuts! Today our Pre-K class continued looking at pumpkins. We observed Pumpkin Jack for changes, read another fun pumpkin book, and measured, mixed, and baked pumpkin donuts which we got to enjoy after snack. We finished our day at the nature play space where the K-2 class had built a structure the younger kids decided was a home. They spent their time readying their home for a hurricane, which involved lots of hammering on the structure and telling everyone to Get ready! Free time today was full of lots of giggles, jokes, and playing cooperatively in big groups!
We can’t get enough of exploring how amazing pumpkins are at nature preschool! This morning we spent some time talking about the different parts of a pumpkin, which we have been able to observe up close over our past few classes. The flesh of the pumpkin was important today because we used it to make our own pumpkin donuts! Everyone got to help scoop, measure, and add ingredients to the bowls to make the batter. After it was piped into the baking sheets, we wished them good luck as they headed into the oven! Finally, we got to give them a taste test all together after they had finished baking and cooled off. They were gone before we knew it and earned lots of thumbs-ups from us all!
Our last Monday Explore Together for the Fall was a wonderful time together! We read "Bear SaysThanks" by Karma Wilson. We had a special pretend feast of our own using the parachute as our picnic blanket! We are grateful for our fun Fall together and for all our little explorers!
Our preschoolers had a big adventure today. We started by reading The Bold Pumpkin Plan and followed the sequence of our story to find our handmade creatures at turtle rock (a new destination for this class!). We created a variety habitats for our creatures to shelter our creatures. Some of our bold plans were camouflaged homes of leaves, some had a roof of sticks and branches and some found safety near big logs or rocks.
Our Forest Friday class enjoyed lots of time exploring our Hundred Acre Woods this morning! The morning started with some fun games of tag and gaga ball, and we also read a story about decomposition and how important it is to ecosystems. We also spent lots of time using some new materials in our play space, including some gourds, a new mud kitchen, and some mallets! This group of students always proves to have so much creativity in their exploring and play!
Our K-2 class had a morning full of leaf throwing fun! After exploring the play space we spent some time reading a silly story together. We also played some field games, which also helped us run around and warm up our bodies in the cool morning air! Finally, we travelled to our observation log to see what changes we could observe. There were lots of interesting things that the class noted, like the texture and color of the chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms that had changed!
Today was a cold, chilly day, so Ms. Sally took a moment to talk about adapting our coats to open or to closed zippers as our bodies get too warm or cold. We made our own hedgehogs using pine cones and yarn. We enjoyed running, reading, and snacking at the field. Then, we took our hedgehogs to Turtle Rock where we constructed homes for them. This week we learned that hedgehogs make a new home every year, so it was fun to make special homes for our little pine cone friends!
Thursday was our final Explore Together of the fall season and cooler weather meant it finally felt like fall! We warmed up our bodies by playing with the parachute together, then we read Bear Says Thanks and used playdough and nature treasures to make a feast. Of course we had to spend plenty of time at the nature playspace as well —we found pumpkins and corn there to add to our play. It’s been such a fun season getting to know this crew!
Hedgehogs hiding in the woods! That’s what our nature preschoolers explored today - making hedgehog friends and giving them a home! We read “A Bold Pumpkin Plan” this week, which inspired us to create our own hedgehog friends out of pinecones and yarn. Then we visited Turtle Rock to find a perfect spot to create a home for our new hedgehog friends! We had so much fun working together to create cozy and protective homes using materials found in nature.
Our last Wednesday Explore Together for the Fall was spent on a favorite topic: seeds! We read "The Dandelion Seed" by Joseph Anthony. Then we made a seed picture with seeds! Of course we ended our time together at the nature play space one last time. It was a great Fall together!
Today, our Pre-K class enjoyed a fun book about a Hedgehog making a pumpkin home. Then we carried corn stalks to the nature play space where friends got to play in our mud kitchen, climb logs, and use our hammocks. We finished our day with more pumpkin time: this time we go to use wooden mallets to hammer in golf tees, and weave and twisted colorful yarn onto our pumpkins!
The K-2 students enjoyed the cool fall morning today! It started with some time cooking in the mud kitchen and working together to break apart some large sticks to make firewood. We went to the field to soak up some sunshine and then worked on comparing different kinds of animals - mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates! Each of us drew an animal that we have seen around camp or our homes and then thought about its features and habits to sort it into the correct group, which we will continue to do throughout the school year!
Our nature preschool class continued their exploration of pumpkins today! During our time at the play space we got to use some pumpkins in the mud kitchen, and saw some animals in nature that appeared to be making themselves at home inside the pumpkins. We also found a variety of creatures living among the leaf litter at the stream! After checking in with Pumpkin Jack and drawing a picture of him for our journals, we finished up the day by doing some hammering and wrapping yarn around our pumpkins. There were lots of eager kids ready to do some more decorating next time!
Explore Together was all about seeds today! We read "The Dandelion Seed" by Joseph Anthony. Then we created pictures of dandelions and used different kinds of seeds to make stems and leaves! We even used the apple seeds we collected earlier in the session.
Our Friday preschoolers started the day reading about animals preparing for winter. We brainstormed some animal features and what they may need to prepare for winter. After hiking to a new location we created creatures of our imagination which we will help prepare for winter this season. We finished our day with a lengthy time at the playspace exploring leaves and pumpkins before wishing everyone farewell.
Our Forest Friday students had so much fun exploring a new whittling material, playing some games in the field, and exploring more trees! We enjoyed sawing up pieces of foxglove trees and finding out they were hollow, and very easy to whittle, too! When we went to the field we played tag and nature charades, and laughed through every round. The morning finished up at our play space where we enjoyed lots of creative building and playing together on the net and hammocks. What a great day spent together - we are so excited to see what this next session will bring this fall!
Today we read Pumpkin Jack and we put own own pumpkin in a jar with some soil for us to observe it changing throughout the year. We drew pictures of our pumpkin as it is now. We spent time playing in the field, and we hiked up a steep hill to the fort. As we hiked up the steep hill, we paused and looked how far we came, and reminded ourselves that “We are capable!” At the fort, we enjoyed eating our snacks, climbing up and down the ladder, playing family and dinosaurs, and we also got to color pictures just for fun! Today was also another good day for trying to catch leaves as the fall from the trees- it’s not easy, especially with the wind- but we laugh and enjoy trying just the same!
Hello, hello from the K-2 class! Today we read the book “Hello, Hello” by Brendan Wenzel to work on comparing and contrasting animals. We found lots of interesting features that were similar, and identified many differences, too! There was also plenty of time for fort building and exploring in the stream, and we spent some time observing a new space and working on adding details to our entries in our journals. We had such a great day in the sunshine!
