Squirrels and Nuts

We continued learning about this beautiful season we're in. One particular animal associated with autumn is the squirrel and one particular food associated with squirrels are nuts. Both of these topics made for some fun discovery this week.










Ms. Amy helped us to look at patterns of fall items and decide on what would "come next". It took a lot of looking to choose the correct item.











We painted squirrels with our dot markers and gave them "bushy" tails with cotton balls. These little guys turned out much more colorful than the real thing.











The most fun this week was using real hammers to open a variety of nuts.





We were very careful, wearing appropriate safety gear and using our tools with caution.











It was harder than it looked to crack the shells.
















Perseverance paid off and everyone experienced success.













We learned that squirrels have some mighty sharp teeth to do the job of finding yummy treats inside a nut shell.








A lot of work and a lot of fun!

Leaves

Our favorite art activity this week was using real leaves to make beautiful prints. We chose our favorite from the branches Ms. Lisa brought in and then carefully painted one side.








We placed a piece of paper over the painted leaf and vigorously rubbed it.






Then slowly peeled back to paper and the leaf to reveal our print.



Magic!








Our friends enjoyed looking the leaves over to find just the right one. Big, little, or full of holes.


















At group time we used our rhythm sticks and sang a fun new song about falling leaves and a grey squirrel.









We read a beautiful book about the life cycle of a leaf and the tree it grows on.







Other art projects used paint and glue to produce autumn inspired pieces.










Painting side by side at the easel is a social activity as well.













Baby dolls and building blocks are always a part of our day at school, no matter what the theme is.















We matched some difficult leaf silhouettes with Ms. Amy. The same skills needed to complete this project are used in reading; recognizing and identifying the shapes of individual letters and words.

Happy Halloween

We celebrated one of our favorite holidays this week with lots of fun activities and a costume parade.







We were plenty safe with all those super heros around.








At group time we learned songs, poems, and fingerplays about Pumpkins and Halloween.
We are great at reciting those with Ms. Lisa.















At the art table, we made giant Jack-O-Lanterns using cut paper shapes. The facial expressions created from such a simple procedure were amazing!













We used our sense of taste this week to discover another fun fact about pumpkins. Many of our friends were willing to try pumpkin from a can.















Then we made pumpkin turnovers and baked them in a toaster oven.




We crimped the dough triangles with a fork.












Art projects were all halloween inspired and a little spooky.












We worked on academics by counting seeds from our pumpkin and matching Jack-o-lantern faces. These both required a good bit of concentration.




Wishing you a safe and Happy Halloween!

Pumpkins

We dug into our subject this week with spoons, scoops, and our bare hands!








Pumpkins are so interesting and we used our senses to investigate them. We had some good guesses as to what might be inside this large pumpkin.














The letter "Pp" was our focus for writing.














We tried our sink and float again and we were surprised at what happened.









We used our pumpkins for decorating, hammering, counting, and more.


Look at these sparkly pumpkins. Glue and glitter made this art project very popular with our friends.













We "weighed" this pumpkin in our arms - heavy!




















Our scissor skills got a work out as we tried to cut curved lines. Very tricky stuff.














We used our smallest pumpkins as stencils and practiced tracing them and adding ribs and stems (two parts of every pumpkin).


It was a fun week full of orange and there's more to come next week too.

Apples - Part II

Another week of Apples had us trying a few new tricks. We used a very interesting tool called an Apple-Peeler-Corer-Slicer.






Everyone had a chance to try it out and eat some yummy apple rings we made.





It took some real muscle to do, but it was fun!








We used our smaller muscles to write and create at the art table all week.




The letter Aa got our attention this week and we carefully drew our own version.










We practiced our Math skills counting tiny apples that we glued onto paper. Some papers had almost 20 apples to count!













Check out the science experiment. We took a group of items (including apples) and guessed if they would sink or float. Can you tell what happened to the apples?








Our friends are very careful with the materials at the art table. They enjoy working on their pieces and having finished projects to take home.