Our apple tree is abundant with apples and we have done lots of fun apple crafts, apple dissecting, and apple treat eating! The children have learned all about the life cycle of the apple, how it grows, and how everything comes full circle. 

We loved listening to this story as we went looking for seeds inside of some apples...

Diving deep into apples we have done a ton of fun apple crafts this month, as well as some miscellaneous fun crafting. The children are working on their names and building their writing skills. 

Apple stamps. Cut the apples in half and dip them in paint for stamping!

Here they put together their own apple trees and wrote their names in the apples.

Watercolors and salt! What happens when we put salt on our watercolor pictures? Turns out it absorbs it and makes colorful crystals! ​

​Here we sewed together some paper in the shape of an apple and stuffed them with scrap paper. The kids then painted their stuffed apples and added a little stem. They had so much fun with this project and it helped with fine and gross motor skills! Not to mention, they worked on their sewing skills =)

We celebrated the new moon by creating new moon affirmations. The children colored these new moon lacing crafts and wrote something they love about themselves on the back.

This month in science we have made oobleck slime, apple spice cloud dough, and much more. The children have been working on developing hypotheses and conducting experiments, then refining their hypotheses based on new information they've gathered. 

Oobleck slime is the most kid requested activity of all! This experiment was so much fun. To create this we mixed cornstarch, water, and food coloring. The children experimented with different amounts of water to find what made the best slime.

What happens when you add hydrogen peroxide to yeast? The kids form their hypotheses and then tested it! This was a super fun experiment for the kids and we found out it foams like crazy!

We have been working on math and writing skills at school lately. Lots of kids are working on learning how to write their names.

We played the game "100" where we start with the number 100, one person at a time picks a number and we subtract that number until we get to zero. Once we get below 20 some more strategy enters the game, whoever subtracts to zero loses! The kids had a lot of fun playing this game and working on their subtraction skills. 

Working on sawing skills in the tinkering shed. Building confidence and independence.

So many of the kids love garden time the best! A group of children go to the garden every day to pick some yummy veggies and then help make lunch.

This month, not only did the kids get to pick delicious food from the garden, but they also got to plant some seeds and transplant some seedlings into the garden beds. When planting seeds they learn about measuring depth and how to nurture seeds to grow. And of course, they water them!

So much fun cooking happened this month. The kids helped make coconut apples, mini apple pies, lots of lunches, applesauce, and helped chop lots of veggies!

​Check out this 'Call in the Fall' Quinoa Salad!

We know the secret to making perfect fluffy quinoa! It's all about the ratio and our young mathematician-chefs eagerly got to work figuring out how much to measure and cook.

We want to make 9 cups of cooked quinoa. 1 cup of dry quinoa makes 3 cups of cooked quinoa. How many cups of dry quinoa do we need? We counted it out on our fingers and figured out that we need 3 cups of dry quinoa so we carefully measured it out.

The ratio is for every 1 cup of dry quinoa we need 2 cups of water. If we have 3 cups of dry quinoa, how many cups of water do we need?

​We counted it out again on our fingers, we need 6 cups of water!
​
It's really important for our measurements to be exact when cooking quinoa and we were very careful to fill right up to the top of the cup and not spill any water.

To cook the quinoa, there is another secret to getting it just right! Different amounts of quinoa take different amounts of time.

Do you think it takes more time or less time to cook a small amount of quinoa?

Less! That's right! 
less quinoa = less cooking time
more quinoa = more cooking time

To get your quinoa nice and fluffy, bring your ratio to a boil, then lower it to a simmer ( around 10 - 20 minutes depending on how much you have). Once the quinoa has absorbed all the water, remove from heat, place a lid on the pan, and allow it to steam for 5 minutes.

Voila! Perfect quinoa every time :)

To make our 'Call in Fall' Quinoa Salad: we added diced apples, bleached kale, stir fried sweet potatoes, a sprinkle of currants, and a dressing of lemon juice, fig balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and sea salt to taste.

We served our quinoa salad with a delicious garden veggie lentil soup!

​The kids loved making these little mini apple pies for our Fall Equinox Potluck!

Jacqueline did some amazing face painting!

We had some fun and special music time with everyone at the potluck. Thank you to Kumba's family for leading the music circle.

​Music
We love music class! The children get so into creating music, making up new songs, dancing around, and enjoying the moment. 

Spanish
Teacher Brianna, a native Spanish speaker, comes in for special Spanish classes and all the children love to gather around for stories, songs, and counting in Spanish. Check in with your little ones and see if they can remember how to count to 10 en Espanol!

See you next time!

Clay and dried bean mosaic crafting.  

Some fun "loose part" crafts where the kids had objects they could put together and use their imaginations. They ended up making little monster puppets with the supplies provided.

Coffee filter turkey crafts the children made. They glued turkey bodies, eyes, and beaks on the coffee filter and painted the filters with water colors! 

And while we LOVE loose parts, we also love to balance the projects that are offered with more classical academic projects too.

Handprint cut out turkeys! We wrote something the children were grateful for on the back of the turkeys. We named them "gratitude turkeys".

"I am the best I can be". Self-portraits with things we love drawn in. Practicing gratitude for ourselves and all the things we love about ourselves and enjoy in life.

We made this awesome pipe cleaner and bead "corn on the cob" craft. This craft was amazing for hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. The children laced all the beads on 7 different strands of pipe cleaners. They even counted out the beads for each pipe cleaner. We then did the math to determine how many beads would be in the whole project if there were 20 beads on each pipe cleaner and 7 different pipe cleaners. This craft was all around fun and the children got very into it. 

Paper plate and pinecone turkey craft!

Kindness and Gratitude trees.

Washi tape and loose part craft turkeys out of toilet paper rolls. We wrote things we are grateful for on the turkey feathers!

Loose part Alphabet board in the making. The children created letters of the alphabet from loose part materials and they will be made into a big board/poster that will be hung in the classroom.

During circle time the children have been going over boundaries and personal space. We played a game where we would be in our airplane bubbles and have our arms stretched out as airplanes. The kids would have to fly around without touching one another and practiced asking one another before entering into their personal space "bubble".

We talked a whole lot about gratitude this month. The children are all so grateful for their wonderful parents (and we are too!), their families, friends, and themselves. 

We have been practicing a lot of breathing; the children have been working on their deep breaths in and long breaths out. Exhaling longer than the inhale is very grounding and a great reset for the nervous system. It is the ultimate breathing tool to calm your body down. We have been doing our "heart" breaths, where we hold our hands over our hearts as we take deep breaths and. As well as, our "s" breath, where they breathe in deep and breath out making a long "sssssss" sound, we also call this the "snake" breath.

The older children have been working on mini meditation practices. They have been doing such a great job and even ask for our meditation time in circle! I think their favorite part is saying and humming "Ommmmmm" as we begin our meditation time. 

Yoga and Stretching time!  A wonderful way to get our bodies moving gracefully in the colder months and the children love it. We have been doing a lot of cross body stretches (midline crossing), bringing our right hand to our left foot and vice versa. These kinds of movements are great for developing brains, eyes, and bodies; these movements connect the hemispheres of the brain. 

Meditation Zone

The kids got really into nailing wood together and decorating their pieces with so much fun glitter. 

They also practiced with sawing! These skills are building their independence and self-confidence. They're all learning how to be careful with tools and building new skills with sawing, nailing, and so much more. 

Helping to make popsicles! The kids helped juice the lemons, add stevia, pour the liquid into the popsicle molds, and add the sticks!

We know how much your kiddos love these popsicles, and as it gets colder and colder we have moved to raisins as our afternoon snack. So, we would like to share the recipe with you so you can make these simple and healthy popsicles at home!

Lemon Popsicle Recipe
​
2 lemons, freshly squeezed / juiced
~15 drops of stevia 
 -add these ingredients to a quart size mason jar and add water to fill the jar. Add less or more water to your liking of dilution. 

Math, science, and literacy really come up throughout the day all the time. We are always counting, adding, learning to identify numbers and letters, learning how things work (these kids ask all the questions!), and building pre-writing skills (and a lot of kids are writing their own names). Even though these subjects naturally present themselves in our daily rhythm, we still carve out special time for them.

We rolled these dice, counted the dots on each die, and learned how to write addition equations. For instance, this roll above would be 3+1= ?. The children would practice writing their numbers and work on their addition skills. 

We added in some marbles to give us a visual on our addition problems. If one die said two, we would count two marbles, then we would count out the next number on the die and count that many marbles. To find the answer we would count all the marbles together. 

Putting letters together to spell our names and more!

Developing pre-writing skills through tracing letters with our fingers and other objects. This helps build fine motor skills and letter recognition.

Writing their names in the sand! Some kids can write their own names in the sand, others we write their names for them, and they learn to recognize the letters in their names and can trace their letters with their fingers or a stick. 

The kids learned what happens when you add baking soda and vinegar together. They created a hypothesis about what they thought would happen when the two were mixed. Then we wondered, "What would happen if we added soap?" They formed a new hypothesis and then we tested it again. What happened is that it become a much thicker foam and stayed foamy for longer!

​Additionally, they explored color mixing and how much you have to use of food coloring for it make deep colors vs light colors. 

Piggy backing off our lesson of mixing baking soda and vinegar, we experimented with what would happen if we mixed them in a bottle and closed the lid tightly? The children again formed a hypothesis and tested it. They took turns adding vinegar to the bottle, then we wrapped baking soda in a napkin and added it to the bottle, then quickly screwed the lid on tightly. The reason for wrapping the baking soda in the napkin was so it wouldn't dissolve all at once and release all the gas before we could close the lid. Once the lid was on the kids took turns shaking the bottle up!

What happened? The bottle got full of gas and popped out and became really tight. We observed how the bottle was able to be squeezed and crinkled up before, and after there was no room left to push the bottle. 

Then, Ben unscrewed the cap and we heard a "POP" and watched the lid go flying!

See you next time!