we had a short week of preschool last week. there were two days to wonder and explore the changing of the seasons: paper bag trunk making with paper and colored tape leaves, real colored leaf hunts, jumping in imaginary piles of leaves, acknowledging that some people will call it “autumn” and some people will call it “fall” and some people will say both and some people will have no idea it even happened, fake leaves in the tub table, finding a crab apple tree during a “signs of autumn” walk, sorting foam leaf stickers from heart foam shapes, and lots of debates over weather changing because the season changes (i imagine those conversations will continue!)…

welcome, autumn. we’re ready for you.

i will never grow tired of seeing our plastic animals lined up, sorted, classified, pushed in play dough, washed in water, wrapped in toilet paper, hauled around in trucks, traced with crayons… they are one of the toys that is available all day every day…and “we could never have too many because we could just always make the habitats bigger.”

we are doing journal work daily. here was our a week work.
sorting crayons to find the realistic apple colors…coloring apple shapes…writing letter a shapes with sharpie markers…getting apple scented scratch and sniff stickers like ms. kristin had when she was little…it was awesome.
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and a few friends got a sparkly a on the cover of their journal…a is for:

aaaaaaaaaaaah, a week adventures.

“you mean we can move the paint with our hands?”the first full week of preschool is complete. all the children have graced the room. i’ve been amazed at the calm and ease of our time together.

we will follow the alphabet through and last week we started with a. while there are detailed lesson plans in place, when the children enter the room, the lesson plans become the backdrop.

the focus is on feelings and choices.

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the backdrop this week was apples.
there were the tiny thrifted baskets and bead “apples” for tiny finger work outs.

:: :: ::there was applesauce for snack…but no spoons! only two sizes of straws. they also worked well for cheerio kabobs.
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after we painted several table sized pieces of paper and let them dry, we cut them into teeny tiny pieces to add texture to our paper apples. click here for a live video of this project…we look a bit like a factory!
:: :: ::there is a wire framed paper mâché tree we made during sunday school last year. this week it was called apple tree instead of fig tree and we painted the trunk. it was a full body full experience week!

it has started again…a preschool room filled with acts of danger.

climbing up our indoor slide, getting out of the way just in time, standing on a chair to reach the top of a block structure, sliding across the hard floor in socks….whew.

but today I learned about the most dangerous place in our school.

I was informed that this is it. standing on the back of our couch against the rainbow quilt. the most dangerous.

be careful.