Samuel Morey Preschool: October 1

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!