October 22 - 26

This week, we started learning about community helpers. The Dramatic Play center transformed into a post office where the students could write, mail, and receive letters! There are also a lot of community helper costumes in the Dramatic Play area that the children enjoyed wearing and pretending in. We read some stories about postal workers during story time on Monday and Tuesday, and on Wednesday we took a field trip to the post office! The post master showed us around the post office and told us what they do with the mail from drop-off to delivery. The students enjoyed the field trip, and we all worked together to write a letter to our new friends at the post office! Throughout the week, students also enjoyed creating silly Halloween monsters in the art center, finding gems in putty in the practical life center, and making roads for community helpers’ trucks in the block center. Next week, we will learn more about community helpers and celebrate Halloween!

Post office Dramatic Play

Postal worker :)

Dinosaur

Puppy!

Princesses

A couple of community helpers

Guessing the secret sound

Creating a spooky creature

Telling a story with art

The post office parade

The students with their new post office friends!

Our thank you letter to our new friends

Firefighters and astronauts having a conversation about their trip to the moon

October 15 - 19

This week, we talked about emotions and some strategies for how to handle them, as well as how to be a good friend. We read some great stories throughout the week that touched on these topics. I also introduced the students to the Hoberman Sphere which is a great tool for practicing deep breaths (breath in as you pull the sphere out, breath out as you push it back in). In the beginning of the week, we welcomed a new friend to our classroom! For many students who attended school on Thursday, their favorite part of the week was playing in the surprise snow! We finally got to mark "snowy" on our weather graph which was very exciting for the students. Next week, we will begin learning about community helpers, and on Wednesday we will take a walking field trip to the post office to learn how mail gets sorted and sent out!

Making new friends :)

The birthday girl showing off her finished moveable alphabet

Creating artwork that went along with a story he was telling

Block village

Finished alphabet puzzle

Showing off his hard work

Surprise snow!

Working together to line up the butterflies

October 9 -12

We had a very exciting and busy week this week! On Tuesday, we came back to school to find that six of our chrysalises had opened up and six beautiful butterflies were flying around our butterfly enclosure! We spent the day observing them in our science center, and in the afternoon we released them outside. We also had another fun encounter with nature during our outside time on Tuesday. We found a big, fat earthworm that the children had fun looking at and touching. Inside, we opened up our sensory table to find natural items like small pumpkins, gourds, apples, fall leaves, acorns, and pinecones along with water and some water toys. The children enjoyed seeing which items would float and which would sink in the water. We also learned three new vocabulary words throughout the week: hibernate, migrate, and gather. These three words helped us learn about and understand what animals do throughout the fall to prepare for winter. On Wednesday, we took a walking field trip to the Fairlee Library where Ms. Samantha read us stories and we did fun crafts and activities! We even got to have a dance party with a bubble machine! Later that day, Mr. Norm and Ms. Jen sang songs with us during Music class. It was quite an eventful day! On Thursday, we continued to learn about animals in fall and went outside in the pouring rain. The children were soaking wet and had to change some of their clothes when they got inside, but they had so much fun playing in the rain! On Friday, I was away at a conference, but the students had fun playing with our awesome substitute Ms. Jen.

Two of our beautiful butterflies

Observing the butterflies

Releasing the butterflies

A puzzle that he finished all by himself!

Practicing cutting skills

Water table with fall items

Looking at the big earthworm

Pretending the tire is a train

Throwing fall leaves

They worked together to finish our butterfly life cycle puzzle

Walking to the library

Bubble dance party!

Sticker mustache :)

Our new bulletin board documenting the students' work and observations about the caterpillars/butterflies

Working hard in the block center together

Heart leaf <3

October 1 - 5

What a busy and exciting week we had this week! On Monday, we learned all about apples. We did an apple taste test to determine our favorite color of apple (red, yellow, or green). We also learned about the parts of an apple by cutting it apart and looking at the star-shaped seed pod, the seeds, the skin, the flesh, the core, and the stem. During choice time, students could paint with halved apples in the art center. On Tuesday, Ms. Elena came in to teach us about bees and honey. She has bees at home, so she brought in some of her equipment, a honeycomb tray, and some honey for us to taste with apples. The students loved poking the honeycomb with a toothpick and tasting the honey that came off on the toothpick. We also had a fun surprise in the sensory table on Tuesday; pumpkins! Students could stick their hands inside open pumpkins and help pull out all of the pumpkin seeds. Some children really liked the feeling of the squishy pumpkin pulp, and others did not like it at all. The reason that they pulled the pumpkin seeds out was so that we could bake them and eat them on Wednesday! The children mixed melted butter and salt into the pumpkin seeds and helped to spread the seeds out on baking trays. Then, I brought the seeds down to the kitchen to bake them, and when they were ready, I brought them back for the children to eat. Some children really enjoyed the taste of our pumpkin seeds, and others did not, but I was proud of a lot of the students for trying a new food! On Thursday, we visited Riverview Farm on a field trip (*see previous blog post). On Friday, we made our own applesauce in a slow cooker! Ms. Elena let us borrow a fancy apple peeler/corer/cutter that each of the children got to use to prepare the apples. Then, the children mixed in the lemon juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg and used the spoon to help chop the apples into even smaller pieces. We turned on the slow cooker (in a safe, high-up spot of course), and let the apple sauce cook for 4 hours. The waiting was hard, but our classroom smelled great! When we finally got to taste the applesauce after rest time, many of the children were excited to find that they really liked it! It was great to see how proud they were of all the hard work they put in and how delicious the outcome was. Next week, we will learn about animals in Fall and how they prepare for winter (i.e., gathering food, hibernation, migration, etc.). Don't forget that there is not school for students on Monday next week!

Apple painting

Mr M. came in to read "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus"

Our caterpillars are all in their chrysalises now!

Creating homes for animals using the Magna-Tiles

Another animal home

Dance party with beanbags

Balancing our beanbags

Making applesauce

Tasting our delicious applesauce