“Fall has always been my favorite season. The time when everything bursts with its last beauty, as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.”
-Lauren DeStefano

Children love this time of the year for all its transformation. The leaves are turning, every color bursts forward, and, of course, Halloween itself approaches. Giving us all a chance to connect with the cycle of hunkering down for slowness, and extending into play and imagination.

Fall is also the most common time of year for ancestor celebrations; the light is waning, plants are returning into the ground and lore says "the veil between the worlds is thin."

All the children have been building an ancestor altar for our annual Ancestor's Feast and Lantern Walk!

Using a big map, we learned about where on the earth we live, and where our families and ancestors come from! We even got to learn about the animals that live in different lands.

We checked it out on an actual globe, too! Hearing more about continents, the oceans, and how our families originally came from far away. Once child said "My ancestor's come from all over the planet!!".

Each month we work with a different Slumberkin, a social/emotional learning buddy that focuses on different qualities and skills. Whether that's gratitude, embracing how we're each unique, or learning to sit with our feelings, we read their book during the month and practice skills related to the topic.

Hammerhead is all about recognizing when we might start feeling angry or upset and using breathing and space to calm down rather than hurting somebody else. And that even if something does happen, we can apologize and take responsibility for our behavior.

We colored and created Hammerhead crowns!

Our plant friend for October was pine, inspiring white pine tea, art, pinecone projects, and more!

Some still-life drawing of white pine branches! Feeling pine needles, smelling the sap in their branches, and fostering hand-eye coordination and observational skills.

Some Pinus strobus (the scientific name for white pine) coloring sheets!

After our leaf study, we were easily able to identify the White Pines on the land and collected some branches.

Then we picked off the needles, talking about how they're the leaves of pine trees, and counting how many needles are in each bundle! We discovered the white pine has 5.

Steeped in hot water for 10-15 minutes, with a little stevia, it's perfect for an autumn tea party.

The tea was a hit!

As we we poured we sang together "White Pine tree, thank you for our tea!".

Reciprocity is one of our vocabulary words this month! To express more gratitude for White Pine we made bird feeders with pinecones, nut butter, and seeds to hang in her branches.

A funny substance, ooblek is both a liquid AND a solid! Made of just cornstarch and water, it's a sensory enigma.

Ooblek Zombies!

Using just baking soda, soap, a little food coloring, and vinegar the kids get to see an amazing chemical reaction first-hand! Safe enough to do in our sandbox, everyone got to take turns "erupting" the volcano.

We built a fort together--the perfect place for studying stars and birds!

Using a papier-mache-like clay, we learned about spiders! That they all have 8 legs, unlike insects which have 6. They're hunter bugs, eating other critters and helping us all out.

 We also got hands-on with spiders through beads and pipe cleaners! These creatures are easy to see and find in all the falling foliage, and are important to build a positive relationship with. They also have a bit of Halloween fun! 

We got creative and water-colored some spiderwebs! Learning about habitat and where they come from.

Great for cognitive development and building recall!

Using paint, glue, pom poms, sequins, and googly eyes everyone made their own unique rock friend

We love this mermaid cloth, glittery and multicolored! A great sensory tool, which is grounding and helpful for brain development, we practiced the letters of our names. This worked our letter recognition and fine-motor skills.

A super fun pumpkin game where we pick different action words out of a jack o lantern and then do the action around the pumpkin. They were all so inspired to put the letters together to figure out what action to do next!

Everybody loves the tinkering shed. It's a special place where we get to work with tools, talk about safety, and have extra special crafts!

Fixing the wood into place

We especially love to empower the girls in using their bodies and feeling strong

So good to practice hammering! It builds hand-eye coordination, and is extremely satisfying and empowering to see the nails and screws go into the pumpkin.

Do your kids have a lot of energy? Give them a hammer and a bag of nuts to smash! When we keep both hands on the handle we can't hurt our fingers :)

We took turns choosing yoga cards

And then everyone did that pose together

Physical activités that involve pushing, pulling, or lifting provide proprioceptive input which helps support body awareness, focus, and self regulation.

Feeding the chickens and bunnies! 

In the beginning of the year we are laying the foundation of our learning community as we tune in to our daily rhythm and co-create a culture of kindness.

Our daily rhythm alternates periods of concentration and expansion, as if in a breathing rhythm where there is inhaling and exhaling. In the inhaling or breathing-in phase the child directs their attention to an activity that basically relates him to themselves (drawing, water painting, eating…). In the exhaling or breathing-out period, the child relates mainly to the surrounding world (free play, gross motor movements, guided activities etc.). For each breathing-in period the child needs a breathing-out period and so a pattern and balance is established. 

We do not adhere to a rigid time structure for the day but we do generally follow the same order so there is a natural predictability of what comes next. This natural predictability helps support positive transitions for the children - if they know what is coming next they feel more ease with the flow of the day:

Arrival
Creative Arts
Circle Time
Snack with Social/Emotional Learning
Free Play
Guided Activity 
Dance Party!
Lunch
Story Time

As the children arrive, they put their meals and water bottles in the baskets and have art invitations and manipulatives to create with.

We love process based art!

The kids keep asking for more finger painting! It's so wonderful for fine motor development and creative expression.

It takes a lot of cooperation to lift the parachute together and fly our little animal friends high!

In circle we have had many conversations with all the groups of how can we create a healthy, fun, and safe learning community for all here at the Children's Garden. What are the agreements we can create that will help us grow from a "me" to a "we" community?

In a Caring Circle we all took turns sharing something really kind about a friend. SO many sweet things were shared. Then we shared something kind about ourselves and one child said "I really love my heart." 

Thank you parents for talking about these agreements with the kids at home, it really helps us remember at Children's Garden!

The Kindness Jar is a practice that helps us to spread kindness in our community. Any time we see someone else doing something kind or helpful we put a pompom in the jar. What you focus on grows and a momentum of kindness, generosity, and helpfulness is growing fast. Once the jar is full of pompoms we are throwing a kindness party to celebrate growing kindness in the world!

​Highly recommend creating a kindness jar at home to celebrate all the ways we see our family showing up with kindness everyday and then doing something really special together to celebrate kindness once the jar is full up. You don't have to use pompoms, could be coins, marbles, leaves...

At snack time we like to read a social emotional learning book and talk together about identifying our emotions and healthy ways to respond to them. 

Foraging for Wood Sorrel!

Collaborative building play

Digging for treasures

A completely kids-built and run slide + obstacle course! Learning teamwork and sharing as they practiced taking turns and staying in line.

We love to play house!

Sweet new friends :)

The kids loved reading this book about mixing halves of mythical creatures and were inspired to collage their own magical creatures

Check out our magical creatures!

We learned about lacing and got to practice with fun animals + shapes! Weaving through the holes helps fine-motor development as well as hand-eye coordination. We are ready for some plastic needle and thread next.

We found an Imperial Moth caterpillar! We got to learn about the life cycle of caterpillars and build a cool terrarium to keep her safe until she transforms into a moth

We researched what she needs to survive and gave her moist soil to burrow in and maple leaves to eat

The bunnies and chickens love being cared for by the children!

We were so excited about our caterpillar friend and learning about butterflies, we did some dress-up and theatre to explore what transforming into and out of a cocoon feels like.

We set off on an adventure in search of Lady Goldenrod...

And found some tasty mint on the way!

Where is that Goldenrod?

There she is!

We dried the goldenrod and then covered the dry plant with oil to make an oil infusion which we will make into a healing salve for ouchies and bruises.

As the children were mixing the flowers into the oil, we invited them to offer a magic spell, and they started chanting "kindness, kindness, kindness..."! We promise there was no teacher intervention here! And goldenrod salve is indeed very kind to our skin!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup cooked and mashed pumpkin
• 1/2 cup almond butter
• 2 large eggs
• 2 Tbsp avocado oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup cacao powder
• 1/4 cup coconut sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup chopped pears
• 1/4 cup smashed pecans
• 1 pomegranate de-seeded
• 1 tsp coconut oil for coating muffin pan

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and coat muffin pan with coconut oil
2. Add all of the muffin ingredients, except the pears, pecans, pomamegranate seeds, and coconut oil, and mix well.
3. Add in half the pears and pecans and mix the batter lightly.
4. Scoop the batter into the coated muffin pan, filling each slot just over half way full, and top the muffins with the remaining pears and pecans. 
5. Place the muffins in preheated oven and bake at 350 degrees for 20-22 minutes.
6. After baking, cool the muffins for a few minutes in the pan, then transfer them to a wire cooling rack. Once cool, decorate with pomegranate seeds.

Pomegranates... training the next generation of surgeons with focus and fine motor control!

Smashing pecans is so empowering!

Have you ever seen such joyful whiskers?

We affectionately refer to these young chefs as the three amigos :)

Taking deep breaths is so fun with the Hoberman Sphere!

How many breaths does it take you to blow the pompom off the table?

A great game to funnel some competitive energy into some deep breathing fun!

​We have been learning all about love and growing our community from our home family to our Children's Garden family with Otter from the Slumberkins!

Thank you so much for filling out these sheets at home and returning them to us! 

The Slumberkins curriculum really inspire kids in so many ways.

The songbirds were so excited to practice their numbers and letters with Otter.

And then everybody wanted to join in!

We love dressing up for dance party! Scarves, wings, + capes of all kinds.

We love sharing gratitudes at lunchtime. Mama and Papa are always first on their list.

We love stories and lessons in Spanish too!

It's been such a sweet few weeks of August! We have a gentle flow these first days of the new year as we get to meet new friends and know old friends better.

​Here are a few pics of us loving these last days of Summer! 

We loved creating these still life paintings of jewelweed bouquets with watercolor pencils. 

We love playing the name game at the beginning of a new year where we roll the ball to a friend while calling out their name.

Snack with Social/Emotional Learning
Schubert's Big Voice, (or Sophie for a simpler read) is one of our favorite books to read at the beginning of a new year and really helps with empowering children in conflict resolution. Check out these great videos of them being read out loud: 

Schubert's Big Voice: youtu.be/9vg_1Is_MdE?si=g8YYP9_-E3XYw1nd
​Sophie's Big Voice: youtu.be/K5ZBgGn3w_k?si=etk2MU3p8S5ys8D2

So fun to explore momentum, gravity, and friction with these fast spinning tops!

Cooking Class
​We loved making these delicious Cinnamon Pear Muffins with fresh pears form our sweet Pear Tree!

​Ingredients

• 2 ½ cups almond flour
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3 tbsp honey
• 3 eggs
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
• 1 cup chopped pears

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• In a large mixing bowl, add all of the ingredients except for the pears. Whisk until everything is evenly combined.
• Add the pears and use a wooden spoon to fold them in.
• Grease a muffin pan with coconut oil (or line the pan with muffin cups), and spoon the batter into the pan, filling each muffin cup about 3/4 of the way to the top.
• Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the tops are golden brown. The muffins are done when they are slightly golden brown on top and you can stick a knife in the center and it come out clean.
• Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes before removing them from the pan. After removing them from the pan, let cool on a wire rack before serving.

The hummingbirds helped measure and mix the ingredients...

While the songbirds chopped pears, cracked eggs, and whisked while they counted together to 20.

Pear Butter
So easy to make Pear Butter! We covered our pears with apple juice and a splash of lemon juice, then boiled until soft and pureed until smooth. Yum!

The kids had great form when chopping with keeping both hands on the handle!

Math & Literacy
Geometry! Creating shapes of different numbered sides with natural objects.

Developing number recognition and fine-motor skills through throwing dice and hole-punching leaves

Tracing the letters of our names

Teacher Bluma is a master storyteller! This month she shared a story of a great magical sturgeon to honor the Sturgeon Moon. Her daughter Sophia has also been coming in an extra support teacher, so great to have a Mother/Daughter teaching team!

Our Herb of the Month was Jewelweed! We talked about its wonderful uses, and the kids got to identify, pick, and create poultices to heal any itchy bug bites.

We have been learning colors and numbers in Spanish!

Teacher Anna loves teaching music and we learned to play some major chords on her harmonium!

We reached into a bag of soil for treasures and tried to guess what the items were before revealing them.

Then we made nature impressions into homemade salt dough scented with clove and cinnamon oil!

We created rose stamps from the bottom part of a bunch of celery while being immersed in the cooling and uplifting effects of a rose water spritz!

Turns out the tops of celery make great paintbrushes!

Made with beets, turmeric, and chocolate

Growing food and medicine in our garden and then preparing it together is an incredible sensory experience!

We love to incorporate learning math skills like fractions and multiplication into cooking class.

The freshness of our own mint, parsley, and edible monarda flowers with cucumbers and tomatoes the kids helped plant, then dressed with simple olive oil and Ume plum vinegar, all put together with their loving hands! Yum!

Using a strawberry huller and slicer takes a lot of focus and hand strength!

Watermelon is a great first food to practice knife skills with

Garnishing with fresh mint from the garden for contrast and beauty.

Toddlers can enjoy making shapes while the older kids work on creating their name!

Using natural beeswax crayons with their lovely scent of honey and rich colors enriches the sensory experience of this project!

This celery and food coloring experiment is a simple yet powerful hands-on activity that offers a variety of learning benefits:

Understanding capillary action and plant biology

Visualizing water transport

Learning that plants have tiny tubes that act like straws, drawing water up the stalk

Developing scientific skills like creating a hypothesis, observation skills, experimentation and collecting data

We counted out drops and combined colors to make new colors

After 2 hours in the water and food coloring we could see the xylem (tiny tubes) carrying the water up the celery. This is how our capillaries in our body work too! We are related to plants!!

After 24 hours the tops of the celery were drenched in color!

Maria Montessori stated that ”When you help a child understand it’s sensory and aesthetic sensibilities you prepare their moral awareness!"

We love the wonderful Montessori “Flower Arranging Activity “. It teaches children how to create beauty in their space, while also developing fine motor skills , independence, and concentration.
​
Care of Environment activities are a type of practical life activity that encourage children to care for their classrooms, homes and outdoors.

Working first with the glue, kids have to exercise awareness of where and how they've made marks on the page in their creating. This helps the little ones with object permanence, and supports memory and spatial awareness.

​Questions that often come up are:

So what does a 'play-based curriculum' even mean?

Does that mean the children just play all day with no structure or learning? How will they transition to traditional school?

What are children actually learning when they play?

​"Creative people are curious, flexible, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play" - Henri Matisse

This article was originally published in October 2019 at AltEdAustin: ​https://www.altedaustin.com/blog/why-we-love-to-play

We love to play AND we love projects.

Herb Weaving with our fresh garden herbs :) 

Experimenting with Art: What happens to the colors when you use droppers with diffusion paper?

We love making birds with natural cotton, we made a whole flock!

These guys are so cute, we had to see it twice!

Making muffins for our kindness party!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Buttercream Frosting

Cupcakes:

• 4 small bananas mashed
• 6 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1.5 cups sunflower seed butter  
• 2 large egg
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 cups cacao powder
• 1/4 cup dried coconut flakes for sprinkles

Frosting:

• 4 sticks butter, at room temperature
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup cacao powder
• 3 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 400° 
• Mix together banana, maple syrup, sunflower seed butter, egg, vanilla, baking soda, and cacao powder.
• Scoop into the muffin pan and top with the chocolate chips. Bake for 7 minutes. 
• Mix together butter, honey, cacao, and vanilla for frosting
• Frost cupcakes once cool and top with dried coconut flake sprinkles

It's garden time!

We love our chickens!

Digging for bones!

See you next time!!

The buzz and beauty of spring is unfolding in full bloom!

Practicing fine motor scissor skills through plant harvesting. 

Thank you bees for making honey to sweeten our tea!

Pollination Imagination
... with pom poms and chalk dust.
Who are the bees? What is the pollen?

​How do bees communicate?
​They dance!

Bees communicate ​through a 'waggle dance' to tell the other bees where the best pollen and nectar flowers.

Can you do a bee dance?

Did you know how quick their "waggle" communicates to the other bees how close their resources are? The faster the waggle the closer they are, the slower the waggle the farther they are.

We loved practicing our waggles and dances!

. Using scissors to cut comfrey root to plant.
Did you know if you cut the root to about 2 inches and plant it you'll get a whole new comfrey plant?

Planting the root pieces! You only need to make a small push through the earth and stick the root horizontally and wait!

How many different kinds of bugs are there?
How many bugs are there total, let's count them all!
Let's see how many different kinds of bugs we can find in the yard!

What's similar and what's different?

Heart full of feelings, what feelings make up your heart today?

When change happens,
​ I know what to do
I welcome my feelings
and trust I'll get through

Attaching the screen as the final touch

INGREDIENTS:
For the dough: 
1 Tsp active dry yeast
8oz warm water 
1 tsp sugar 
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil 
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 
1 tsp salt 
1 tsp garlic powder 


For the toppings:
Forage for items you can eat right now such as Spring onions and Dandelions. 
You can add basically any edible plant to decorate with. 
Fresh Herbs ( rosemary, chives, parsley, basil, etc) 
5-6 Fresh garlic cloves 
Olive oil 


DIRECTIONS:
Place yeast, sugar, and water in a bowl and let sit for 5 minutes until yeast is activated. 
Once activated, add remaining dough ingredients to a mixer with a dough hook and knead until all is incorporated. 
Remove and knead by hand for 1 minute. 
Place ball of dough in bowl and cover. Let it rest for 2 hours. 
Remove and grease a 10x15 baking sheet
Shape dough into a rectangular shape. 
Cover and refrigerate for about 45 min 
Preheat oven to 450 F
Remove pan from fridge and use your fingers to create dimples across the surface. 
Coat with olive oil.
Decorate with your toppings in any desired manner.

Sprinkle with salt.
Bake for about 20 min or until golden brown. 
While baking mince garlic and place in a little olive oil and salt in a small saucepan. 
Warm it up gently so the garlic cooks a little bit. 
When the bread comes out of the oven brush with garlic mixture. 

Cool and enjoy!

Cutting up and adding dandelion

​Balls:

• 4 small bananas mashed
• 6 tablespoons honey
• 1.5 cups sunflower seed butter  
• 2 large egg
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2/3 cups cacao powder
• 1/4 cup dried coconut flakes for sprinkles

Frosting:

• 4 sticks butter, at room temperature
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup cacao powder
• 3 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 400° 
• Mix together banana, maple syrup, sunflower seed butter, egg, vanilla, baking soda, and cacao powder.
• Scoop onto cookie sheet with parchment paper and top with the chocolate chips. Bake for 7 minutes. 
• Mix together butter, honey, cacao, and vanilla for frosting
• Frost once cool and top with dried coconut flake sprinkles

See you next time!

Worm Moon heart drum!

Compost Art. 
This Collection’s art activity is inspired by worms’ ability to eat half of their weight in organic matter per day and transform it. What they excrete (poop!) is called castings and it is an amazing fertilizer for the soil. Now, let’s see how creative you can get in transforming your compost scraps!

Digging for worms to build our own "Worm Farm" (vermiculture) 

How is it helpful to add worms to our compost?

Adding some bedding (soil)

Collecting worms in a bucket

Adding food scraps for them to eat and turn back into soil. 

We're making beautiful compost and worm castings for our gardens!

Chickweed Oxymel
Fill jar 1/4 of the way with dried chickweed
Cover and Fill with equal parts 
Apple Cider Vinegar and
Raw Local Honey
Shake! 
Store in a cool and dry place. Shake daily for 2 weeks then enjoy!

Identifying Chickweed
Flowers look like small white STARS! 
Flowers have 5 petals (each with 2 lobes so looks like 10)
Oval shaped leaves that grow in an opposite pattern

*A single line of fine hairs runs down the stem of chickweed* (one of the best ways to truly identify that it is chickweed and not a look alike)

Chickweed hunting outside

Similar but different. Can you spot the differences?

Looking around for chickweed in the big yard (we were unsuccessful)

Finding and harvesting chickweed in our garden space, success!!

Chickweed Pesto
​2-3 gloves of garlic
1/2 cup of cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
2-3 cups of freshly picked young chickweed leaves
1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese
salt
handful of your nut of choice (sunflower seeds, pine nuts, walnuts, whatever)
1 tablespoon of lemon juice (optional)
​Blend it all together and Enjoy!

Filling the jar with water

Shaking up the chickweed in the water

After shaking it up we set it out in a nice and sunny spot for a few hours.

Enjoy!

collaging with feathers

Bird Puppets

Feathers! Do all birds have feathers?

Birds that flap and fly!

Peanut butter and seed bird feeders in our trees.

Baby bird from clay

Bird Watching and Identifying
What color birds do you see?
What different sounds do you hear?
Where do you see the birds?

The kids made their own "binoculars" to bird watch with!

Do all birds eat the same things?
What shapes have you seen?
What do you think each beak shape helps with?
Can all shapes and forms of beaks eat the same thing?

First we used tweezers and yarn and pipe cleaners to see if we could catch the worms with the beaks (tweezers). This is great for fine motor skills and muscle building in our hands.

Then we had different types of beaks, what can each beak "catch"? We brought out different kinds of food and beaks to see what kinds of beaks can eat what kinds of foods. 

Some birds drink nectar and have long straw-like beaks (like droppers).

What kinds of wings have you seen? What shapes are they?
What shapes do you see in different birds wings?
What do you think each shape helps with and why are they shaped differently?
Do all birds have feathers?

Different shapes and purposes of wings

An eagles wingspan can reach up to 8 feet wide and they can build nests up to 13 feet tall! They will stay in their nests for years and keep building them up!

We measured our own "wingspan" against that of an eagle's! 

How many of us can fit in the wingspan width of one eagle? 

Learning flight with balloons with feathers!

How did the balloons with feathers fly differently than those without?

Outdoor nest building. Some nests are on the ground and some in trees!

Building nests through clay.
What do birds use to make nests? 
We used straw, string, feathers, and explored other objects birds may use to make a nest.

Fine motor with the spray bottle and gross motor with wiping the table down!

Gross motor development through hop scotch - Jumping!

and counting skills and practice

Spoon and mashing guacamole

Cinnamon apple shake up

Reading Slumberkin : Yak Struggles With Mistakes 

We asked ourselves these questions to see how we can better respond in situations :
"When I make a mistake I can.."
"When I am trying something new I can.."
"When something feels too hard I can say.."
"Positive things I can say to myself are.."

What is something that felt hard the first time you tried, but you kept practicing, and it started to feel easier?
​
-kicking a ball
-throwing and catching
-cutting with scissors

Beautiful mistakes- learning to go with the flow and integrate mistakes

Tracing and coloring affirmations 

I am enough as I am. 

We talked a lot about "positive" and "negative" self talk and how to reframe things in our minds when we find ourselves talking negatively. 

Mistakes are just opportunities to learn and find ways to do better next time.

Forgiving ourselves and others for making mistakes. 

Building stones of kind words we can use with ourselves when we make mistakes. 
Some things they said they could say to themselves are:
​
- It's ok to make a mistake
- It's ok, you can try again
- Let's fix it!
- You're still learning. 
-You can do better next time

Kindness Pom Pom Circle
​
Each kid picked a pom pom from the kindness jar. We went around in a circle and said something kind about another friend. At the end we put the pom poms back and added a huge handful to our jar. 

We're getting close to a kindness party!

A big thank you to everyone who came and celebrated the arrival of Spring with us. We are so ready to be outside enjoying the warm sun rays. 

Mix it all Together

Chopping and adding walnuts

Adding dandelions from the garden

Thank you for the fun face paint!

We LOVED the amazing Ronna Dragon!

Super fun Music Time!

Sweet Puppet Show! The children made all the puppets and wrote the show all by themselves. We are so proud of them and their imaginative, growing minds.

In February we love to especially highlight emotional intelligence and open our hearts to even more LOVE!

​A great way to learn about different feelings, learn new tools to respond to big emotions, and jump back in the stream of love is through inspiring children's books - here are some of our favorites:

We have been teaching the kids how our brains work when we're "triggered" with this awesome hand brain model. If something happens that makes us mad, we "flip our lid" or "go offline". When we're off line we are not using our thinking brain, instead, our amygdala (and emotions) is in control. This model is a great way to explain this to children and asking them "Have you flipped your lid? How can you put your lid back on? I'm here to help you" while showing them the hand gesture can be really helpful.

We learned some rapid resets for when we "flip our lid". This can be used when kids are beginning to show us they are leaving their resiliency zone and either shutting down or acting out. Some of these resets are:
​

1. Drink a sip of water, ask them if the water is too cold or too hot to get them to tune into how it feels in their body. 
2. Push against a wall. Ask them to try and move the wall! This gets them back into their body.
3. Give them some heavy lifting. Can they move this big stack of books to the other side of the room for you? Can they push this heavy and loaded wheel barrel over to where you need it dumped?
4. "Trick" their brains into casing their surroundings and realizing they are safe. Our brains cannot go into survival mode and also know we are safe. Ask them to find all the orange objects in the room, or to see how many trees or flowers they can count. Anything that helps them look around them to know there is no real threat. 
5. Practice our breath work skills! They are loving the Balloon Breath right now!

Take a long deep breath in, then slowly let it out with a fun balloon sound!

We highly recommend Dr Daniel Seigel's "The Whole-Brain Child".

The kids were asked to think about the word love and how it felt in their bodies to love. They sat with that feeling of love and expressed it through art. 

In the spirit of love, everyone made and decorated a heart for a friend or family member. They wrote something they love about the person on the heart and gifted it to them. 

Painting rocks to surround our tress in love.

Math and art! Learning about symmetry! The kids got paper folded with a half a heart drawn on it- they guessed what shape would be made once they cut it out and have two halves together. Then they painted on side and folded it over, squished it together, and determined if it was symmetrical! 

We looked to see what kinds of things we could find in nature that were symmetrical. You and your kids can take a nature walk (bring a clip board, paper, and pen!) and continue to explore symmetry at home! What can you find that has symmetry? Can they draw what they find on a piece of paper? If you cut or fold the paper in half is it symmetrical? 

Practicing shape building and creating interesting new language to name our shapes!

Letter tracing 

Our dear Teacher Anna was in a car accident and fractured her cervical vertebrae. If you have not had a chance to yet, please consider donating to her fundraiser to support her in this time of healing:
​https://gofund.me/9a49f204

I wonder happens when we put an egg in a cup of vinegar?
​What is your hypothesis?

The shell dissolves!

Passing the egg around after it sat in vinegar for 24 hours

"I can see the baby chick!"

Counting is more interesting when exploring surface tension and the magical properties of water!

Wow, these kids have been begging for our daily meditations every circle time. They really get into it and calm their bodies (mostly!). Continuing with meditation and learning to ground our bodies through breath and clearing the mind. 

Everyone got to practice with learning how to gently use the singing bowl! We love to incorporate the singing bowl before meditation time.

We pulled affirmation cards from our affirmation deck, read them and made up yoga poses to go with the affirmation.

We read through the Slumberkins book of Feelings and matched the emotion.

Guacamole Ole! 

One of the kids favorite treats is to cover apple slices with cinnamon and shredded coconut and then shake it up in a bag to get all the apples coated. Great idea for a travel snack so your apples don't get all brown :)

This full moon our kindness jar was overflowing, time for another Kindness Party!

To celebrate the Snow Moon the children painted and made lanterns to go out and shine love with the Full Moon.

This Winter we have been fully embracing the season by learning about wintertime celebrations, building fire, learning about chemical reactions that create warmth, cozy tea parties, and lots of home cooking!

We love to learn about different cultures and the ways they celebrate. In December we have learned about Kwanza, Hanukkah, Christmas, Yule, and the Winter Solstice.

We explored how these different holidays are celebrated and what ideas and principles they celebrate. This time of the year is a time to come together, spread love, and appreciate what you have and how you can give to others.

We learned that some of these holidays are celebrated in very similar ways and have similar customs. Both Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have candles that lit every night, one is called a kinara and one is called a menorah.

Kinaras are similar to Menorahs, but they have seven candles which are lit every night of Kwanzaa. Traditionally, there are three red candles on the left, one black in the middle (which is the first to be lit), and three green on the right (the colors of the African flag). Each candle represents one of the seven principles of Kwanza. We learned all about these principles at CG! 

1. Umoja - Unity
2. Kujichagulia - Self-Determination 
3. Ujima - Collective Work and Responsibility
4. Ujamma - Cooperative Economics 
5. Nia - Purpose
6. Kuumba - Creativity
7. Imani - Faith

Unity cups are also decorated in the colors of the African flag, red, black, and green. We also added in some yellow and purple for extra fun. During Kwanzaa a wooden cup is decorated and passed around to take drink from in celebration of community and coming together. Kwanzaa is heavily focused and based in community and unity and bringing people together. It does not belong to one religion, but rather it is a celebration open to all from all religious backgrounds to strengthen community. 

We created pieces out of clay creating symbols that represented unity to us. We talked with the children about unity and encouraged them to create this craft with the idea of unity in mind and whatever resonates with them around that concept. 

Hanukkah is the Jewish celebration of lights. We see some similarities here between Hanukkah and Kwanzaa with the Kinara and the Menorah. The Menorah has 9 candles while the Kinara has 7. There are 8 days of Hanukkah and each evening a candle is lit. The extra candle is designated to lighting the rest of the candles on each evening. 

Hanukkah candles out of popsicle sticks. They wrapped them with yarn and worked on their fine motor skills! Wrapping things is great for developing coordination. 

Making gifts,  creating Christmas cards, and weaving in tree inspired literacy! We also heard a great story connecting the Christmas tree to its Yule-tide roots of bringing in an evergreen tree to symbolize the perseverance of life through Winter.

We love to gather and celebrate with the turning of the wheel! The kids got very creative with this nourishing sun bread for our Solstice potluck.

Sun Bread

• 2 1/4 cups raw sunflower seed kernels ground into flour
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1/4 cup whole psyllium husks 
• 1/4 cup flax meal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 egg
• Yellow, orange, and red bell peppers cut in slivers

​Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then mix together. Pat into round sun shape, decorate sun rays on top, and bake at 375 for 55 to 60 minutes.

Deep breath in, and deep breath out a few times then on the last breath out we made deep belly noises! Another breathing exercise we've been doing is breathing in and on the exhale shaking our bodies out and releasing the build up energies from inside us. The kids love these breaths and ask to do them daily along with our silent meditation. They love the "Om" breath and then sitting with our eyes closed in silence. Sometimes we think about someone we want to send lots of love and hugs too, so if you've felt a little energetic hug when your little one is at school, they are sending you one!

Letter matching and recognition. Spelling new words and working on the sounds the letters make for the younger ones!

We did a little math activity : Who can make the biggest snowman? Each child rolled a die, they determined the number that they rolled and cut out that amount of circles to build their own snowman. They did the same to see how many buttons to put on their snowman. We wrote math equations to see how many more circles snowman "A" had than snowman "B". The kids helped figure out how to write out the equations as well as did the math to find the answers!

 We put six cups out in a circle and filled every other cup with varying amounts of water. We added red dye to the first cup, left one empty, added yellow to the next, skipped another, added blue, skipped another. Each cup had a folded up paper towel looped from one cup to the other (see photos). Then we waited.

"What is your hypothesis? What do you expect is going to happen?"

"How will we end up with all the colors of the rainbow?"
-The children hypothesized that the water would climb up the paper towels and drip into the empty cups and the colors would mix to make the full rainbow

"What colors mix to make the missing the colors?"

This was a fun experiment on mixing colors and understanding how water flows.

​ We experimented with cutting some of the paper towels shorter 

"What do you think will happen if the paper towel is shorter versus longer?"
-The children hypothesized that the shorter paper towels would reduce the time it takes for the water to move between cups - or along the "Highway" as Stella put it. They guessed that because the paper was shorter the water would have less to travel.

We also experimented with filling some cups more than others and asked, "Why might the water fill faster with water that is filled higher than others?"

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!

Our November blog got accidentally published under September. You can find the link here:  ​https://www.childrensgarden.earth/blog/we-love-loose-parts