october 11
This morning, we had so much fun dipping our fingers into an assortment of dried lentils, buttons and buckeyes at the light table. We had to do a lot of communicating around how many lentils each person should get — ensuring one person didn’t have more than another :) This was tricky at first, but we quickly figured out a way to play together, share the materials and have fun.
We enjoyed snack indoors today because of the rainstorm. While we ate, Deidre read us a new story by Amanda Gordon called, Change Sings. We loved how the characters in the story each had their own instruments and decided that we wanted instruments to accompany our good morning song. So, after we finished eating, we rummaged through our big box of instruments and each chose one to play. Ridley wanted a tuba, but we didn’t have one of those. We think we should play instruments during our good morning song more often!
In the park, we had a blast climbing on a giant tree trunk that was cut down last week. It was scary at first to try and balance as we walked across, but with a little practice and encouragement we were able to do it. Sometimes, friends wanted to walk in a different direction and so we had to work together to figure out how to let someone pass by with so little room on top of the log to scoot out of the way. Ridley figured out that he could kneel down on the edge of the log and Autumn could pass by, using the top of his head as a “handle to balance.” We got very creative with the different ways we could move out of the way!
After climbing, we found a “tiny Christmas tree” that we want to decorate with ornaments. We talked about what materials we might use for the ornaments. First, we suggested paper, but then realized that paper would get wet. Then, we thought we could use play dough, but Sylvie said that it would melt. So, we decided on metal :) We’re not sure how we’re going to make the ornaments yet, but we’re excited for what’s to come.
Today we ate our first persimmons from the persimmon tree! Unfortunately, due to the late frost, our tree has almost NO persimmons on it this year (quite the opposite of last year, where we gorged on persimmons for four straight months!). We were excited nonetheless to find a few squishy ripe ones on the ground. We sang our song of gratitude to the tree to thank her for her delicious fruits. “Thank you tree and thank you leaves for gathering sunshine. Thank you roots and thank you fruits for treating us so kind.”
We spent the rest of the morning splashing in a giant mud puddle! It was the BEST!
Back in the classroom, we filled in a color-by-number Fall tree. We also decided to build a flower and ice cream shop and so we gathered all the materials we needed. Sylvie made money and tickets that we used to purchase the flowers and ice cream :) If you ordered mint chocolate chip, it was made up of green and blue puff balls. Rainbow sherbet was all the colors, and chocolate was only brown puff balls. We’re looking forward to more puddle jumping and pretend-ice-cream-fun tomorrow!