Happy Entomologists!

Here at ACG we love to play with our food!  These Banana Ants are a fun way to learn about the different body parts of an ant.

We learned that all insects have 3 body parts as we connected the head to the thorax and the thorax to the abdomen with pretzel sticks.

Ants use their antennas partially like we use our noses, to smell things (they also use them for touch). When an ant meets another ant, it will touch it with its antennas to pick up any scents. The ant can tell if an ant is a member of its own colony from its smell!

 We connected the eyes with sunflower seed butter.  Ants have compound eyes made from many tiny lenses connected together. Check out this cool camera that allows humans to see the way insects can!

We had fun pretending to be predator bugs - beetles, spiders, and caterpillars... as we devoured our banana-ant prey!

We loved reading these great books to learn more about these fascinating creatures:

The kids have been enthralled with our new ant farm!  They can really see how the ants create tunnels and carry food around.

We created some really cool ant tunnels with a tape resist technique.  Tape resist art is a fun process based experience! So fun and simple to try at home.

We mixed together blue, red, and yellow to make brown paint.

The kids love tearing off the tape to reveal their designs!

Ants dig their tunnels so they have a place to live. If they stayed on the top of the ground things like birds or lizards might eat them. Also, the temperature is better underground. It is not windy, away from the rain or snow, cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

"I'm building a nest for the baby eggs!"

​Cool Spiders!

The kids have also been fascinated with spiders! Inspired by The Very Busy Spider, children incorporated fine motor skills, including hole punching and sewing, to create their own paper plate spider webs. Provocations such as this inspire questions and allow for further exploration into a subject. "How do spiders spin their web? Do different spiders spin different webs? Let's do some research!"

​Spider Shapes!

Spider Webs!  Chalk on black paper makes really cool webs!

​Silly Spiders!

​Nature Bugs!

We collected items from nature and then researched different bugs with insect field guides.  The kids created some really beautiful bugs!

​Looking for a very special holiday present this year?  This Spielgaben set is a collection of very high quality learning materials with endless possibilities. We really enjoyed creating different insects with the fun colorful shapes.

​We explored even more mathematical principles with these bug-inspired patterning and sequence cards.

​These over-sized toy bugs are a huge hit!  We had fun matching them to our specimen collection and playing bug attack with them.

​Make your own bug stickers! Combining stickers AND stamps? So much fun!

We love the quality of these beautiful stamps!  The kids were delighted in how many different types of bugs they could identify after all our projects.

​Insect Watercolors!

​Stained Glass Bugs!

​Bug Searching!

​​Creepy Crawly Yoga

We had so much fun creating bug yoga poses:)   

Sweet butterflies!

Jumping Grasshoppers!

Dragonfly Pose!

Praying Mantis!

Wiggling Earthworms!

The kids love finishing class with these chimes - it takes a lot of concentration!

​And of course we celebrated the Mighty Pumpkin this month!

The kids LOVED these crunchy pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds).

We simply scooped out the seeds, left the flesh on the seeds, coated them in coconut oil and salt, and roasted them at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

Halloween Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Muffins!

Step 1:

Prep your chocolate chunks by hammering 1/2 a bar of dark chocolate in a sandwich bag.

Step 2:

The pumpkin had been de-seeded and baked at 350 for 45 minutes.  Once cool scoop out the cooked pumpkin.

Step 3:

​Crack and whisk together 3 eggs.

Step 4:

​Mix into the eggs 1/3 cup cooked pumpkin, 1/3 cup honey, 1/4 cup coconut oil, and 1 tsp vanilla extract.

Step 5:

Mix together 1/3 cup coconut flour with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp baking soda, chocolate chunks and a pinch of salt and combine with the wet pumpkin mix.

Step 6:

Spoon into a greased mini-muffin tin and bake for 12 - 15 minutes at 350 degrees.

Such a healthy and yummy Halloween treat!

​Thumbkin Patch!

"I'm making a big pumpkin!"

​No-Mess Color Mixing Pumpkins!

​Paper Pumpkins!  Check out these awesome scissor skills!!

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​Bunnies love kale!

Kids love kale too!

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Roly Polys!

​Fall Planting!

We planted carrot, beet, lettuce, spinach, sugar snap peas and cilantro seeds in the garden.  Little hands are the sweetest seed planters :)

​Community Art!

The kids started spontaneously painting the playhouse and it turned into quite an artistic feat!

Finger painting too!

​Fall Leaves!

​Love Bugs!

​The kids loved making these cute love-bugs with backyard rocks, glitter glue, googly eyes, and pompoms!

​Rain doesn't stop us!

​Banana-Dogs! 

The kids love making (and eating!) these banana-dogs.  Simply spread sunflower seed butter on a tortilla and roll a banana up in it.  Slice to make cute little 'banana sushis'.

​We Love Our Blocks!

These awesome blocks and our water table were the result of fundraisers with our parent community - Please check out our 2017 fundraiser below!

Annual Fundraiser!

We are raising funds for a whole new indoor block center for our schoolhouse!  This block center will include 4 different sets of blocks which are all mathematically modular, along with ramps, cars, trucks, toy people (all hand-made with beautiful wood) that can be used together to create endless play and possibilities.  These blocks are crafted by Community Playthings (just like our outdoor blocks and water table above) where they use the finest materials and care in their products.

Blocks are one of the most powerful learning tools for young children, enriching every area of the curriculum and supporting child development.

Please help Austin Children's Garden have an amazing new indoor learning center!  We are hoping to raise all the funds before the holidays so the children can play and learn with them as the weather gets cooler.  Please consider donating to the fundraiser in lieu of any holiday teacher gifts - seeing the kids happy and creating with these beautiful learning materials is the best gift we could imagine!

And please pass this on to any family or friends that might want to donate - no amount is too small!! You can write a check directly to Community Playthings and put it in the black mailbox in the schoolhouse or go to our GoFundMe campaign:

​https://www.gofundme.com/BlocksForAustinChildrensGarden​
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Check out all the wonderful skills our kids are learning when they play with blocks:

See you next time!