​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

Thanks to so many amazing parents, teachers, volunteers, and donations from near and far, Children's Garden was able to open back up quickly after massive devastation from Hurricane Helene!

More huge thank you's to Mama Parham, Papa Mike, Papa Dalton, Papa Eric, and Papa Brady for hours and hours of fence rebuilding in the courtyard so the children would have a safe space to play outside!

Huge huge gratitude to Mama Ginny, Mama Yagmur, Mama JJ, Mama Allie, and many more for clearing out and beautifying the big yard so the kids could once again run free and play in the hay. We are so very grateful to report that all 13 chickens survived the storm! Slowpoke and Floppy (the bunnies) made it through with some bounce in their hop too!

​Sending so much gratitude to Mama Ali for helping create our fundraiser and helping with laundry!

And overflowing gratitude to Mama Amanda and Mama Madeline for helping to rebuild our playhouse roof:

Deep immense gratitude to Papa Shawn, Papa Chris, Mama Miriah and her Charlie's Angels for helping turn our undrivable driveway and parking area into a completely new and improved safe space to drive and park! 

And infinite gratitude to our Austin Children's Garden families, our local families, and the kind donators from near and far for showing up in such a big way for our rebuilding fundraiser. While we have had a lot of volunteer help, the financial costs of rebuilding and supplies has been high. We would not be open today without y'all. We know many of our past families still read the blog - we thank you with our whole hearts for believing in us and supporting the local children here!

We still have a long way to go in repairing the fences, gardens, schoolhouse floors, and in replacing the many school supplies, playground materials, and furniture we lost in the flood. Please help share our fundraiser with any folks you think might want to help: Children's Garden Fundraiser

HUGE HUGE gratitude to Teacher Evan for working day and night those first few weeks after the storm, knee deep in mud, saving our schoolhouse furniture, hauling tree limbs, and beaming love and positivity through all of it. He is a true hero and loved by all! We are so blessed to have his bright heart of service with the children and on the land. We love you Evan!!

And HUGE gratitude to our beloved Teacher Mariah also showed up everyday after the storm to help heal and repair the space! Thank you Mariah for your commitment, courage, and tenderness through some intense challenges! 

All of us here in WNC have been through a lot since Hurricane Helene. We were so grateful to be able to open back up again so quickly to create a healing environment and healthy routine for the children. We love Dr. Dan Seigel's work on child development and healing after a traumatic experience. In both his book 'Healing Trauma' and his course 'The Neurobiology of We', Seigel talks about how important our community is in our healing and offers many activities and movement based exercises that change our neurobiology and help us process a traumatic event. We highly recommend Seigel's courses with Mindsight Institute.

Circle time can help children heal from trauma by creating a sense of belonging and connection with their friends and teachers, a safe place where each child feels seen, heard, and valued.

We loved passing the pumpkin as a talking piece as we shared our experiences of the storm and talked about all the helpers who are working hard and keeping us safe. Not only is it super fun to pass the pumpkin while we are sharing, it also helps us to heal trauma by crossing the midline of our bodies as we pass it to each other. Crossing the midline helps heal trauma by promoting communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which can lead to better integration of processing and releasing traumatic memories that may be stored in the body.

Circle time is also a great space for the healing power of storytelling with themes of resilience, healing, and personal growth. We have loved sharing some of the stories from Susan Perrow. Thank you so much Mama Allie for gifting us the new Perrow book Stories to Light the Night!

The kids love the healing stories from Slumberkins too, especially Ibex Feels Deeply.

Roleplaying out challenging scenarios is another great resource for empowerment!

And laughter may be one of the most healing expressions of all! We love to play the game "Pass the Smile" One child starts smiling at the person next to them and says, "I pass the smile to you." The next child smiles back and passes the smile to the next person. Pretty soon everyone is laughing and smiling.

“Community means strength that joins our strength to do the work that needs to be done. Arms to hold us when we falter. A circle of healing. A circle of friends. Someplace where we can be free.” - Starhawk

We also shared our huge gratitude with the Barnardsville Fire Department. We are blessed to have them as next door neighbors. They helped us with access to clean water and a cord to their generator immediately after the storm. We have witnessed these heroes working 24/7 to help rescue folks and help repair our beautiful community!

The kids created hand made cards and a very creative banner (all while practicing their early literacy skills!), then we walked next door with a safety rope and got to say thank you to Chief Mundy and offer our banner and cards!

Thanks to all who came out and enjoyed a lovely afternoon of feasting, sharing about our varied ancestry, and celebrating together! The kids were so excited all day as we made decorations, carved pumpkins, and prepared some delicious dishes in community together.

We are so deeply grateful that Grandmother Magic Maple made it through the storm without a scratch!

To prepare these delicious Roasted Pumpkin Wedges we marinated the wedges in freshly grated nutmeg, sprinkle of cinnamon and sea salt, then drizzled with honey. After marinating for an hour we roasted them in the oven at 350 for 22 minutes until the wedges were soft and slightly crispy around the edges.

The secret to delicious toasted pumpkin seeds is to boil them first for 5 to 10 minutes in salted water, then pat dry. To make sure each seed was coated in tamari we used a dropper and counted out 10 drops each. It takes a lot of focus and fine motor control to create one drop at a time!

Once they were all covered we added some melted coconut oil and then spread them in a thin layer on parchment paper. Then we toasted them in the oven at 400 F for 10 minutes (cooking time can depend on size of seeds).

Ingredients

• Dry:
• 1 cup cornmeal 
• 1 cup oat flour
• 2 teaspoons aluminum free baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Wet:
• 1 cup unsweetened almond milk 
• 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• 2 eggs, at room temperature (can use chia seed eggs for vegan version)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup butter, melted and cooled (can use coconut oil for dairy vegan version)

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a mini muffin tin generously with coconut oil.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: cornmeal, oat flour, baking powder and salt.
• In a separate large bowl, mix together the wet ingredients: almond milk, apple cider vinegar, eggs and honey. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir with a spoon until just combined. Finally stir in the melted butter. Divide batter evenly into prepared muffin pan.
• Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached.

As we mix the ingredients together we love to count! The younger kids count 1 to 10, the older kids count by 2's, 5's, and 10's.

For the buttercream frosting we mixed together softened butter and mixed in honey to taste - the kids loved taste testing to see if it was sweet enough!

For the final touch we topped each muffin with a chocolate chip!

Thank you Teacher Jacqueline for your amazing face painting!

Did y'all know that Teacher Jacqueline and her son Josh created a beautiful children's book together? We love to read Benny and the Bigfoot with the kids, you can order a copy here!

We love to watch the popping in action! Instant transformation!

How many legs does a spider have? How can we make 8 legs with 4 pipe cleaners?

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!

We have had a wonderful first few weeks of the new educational year in our beautiful learning garden! We love our home and community!!

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.

​A nurturing environment that is rhythmic in nature supports a strong foundation that is essential to healthy child development. Predictable rhythms through the day, week and year provide security and a sense of the interrelationships and wholeness of life. 

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 relates them to themselves (drawing, water painting, eating…). In the exhaling or breathing-out period, the child relates 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. 

In our weekly rhythm, teachers strive to give a rhythmic structure to individual lessons as well as reflect on a subject we explored the previous days and follow it with the presentation of a new element. Whatever has been taken in one day is remembered and reflected on throughout the week. This builds a growing rhythm and a deeper sense of understanding of each subject.

Children are in deep harmony with nature and our seasonal rhythm connects us more to the natural world.  Nature is a world of rhythms - the rising and setting of the sun, the flowering of trees, the change of seasons... when we provide supporting rhythms for children, we harmonize their being, thereby aiding the development of their inner rhythms of sleep, digestion, circulation etc. Monthly themes, block study, seasonal festivals and celebrations reflect and support our connection to the seasonal rhythm.

We highly recommend reading Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne for inspiration to create more rhythm in your children's life at home!

​“Children depend on the rhythmic structure of the day–on its predictability, its regularity, its pulse…. By surrounding a young child with a sense of rhythm and ritual, you can help them order their physical, emotional, and intellectual view of the world. As they come to understand, with regularity, that ‘this is what we do', they feel solid under their feet, a platform for growth. Such a stable foundation can facilitate their mapmaking: the connectedness that they are charting in their brains, in relation to other people, and in their emerging worldview.” (Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne)

We also recommend the blog Rhythms of Play for more inspiration on how to create healthy rhythm and routine in your life at home.

​As children arrive we have invitations to engage in art laid out for them. The first few weeks of school we have been getting the children familiar with the different art mediums we will have available throughout the year and learning how to treat our materials properly. Children have been practicing with proper scissor use, gentle hands with our paint brushes, colored pencils, and crayons. As children are learning about their new school spaces and what is available, projects have been simple and set as an introduction. Process art is great for children's development and expression. Additionally, all art helps build hand-eye coordination and fine and gross motor skills. 

Painting art rocks!

Nature Mandalas

Making nature paint with green and purple basil!

We LOVE multi-age learning!

Harvesting Tulsi (Holi Basil) from our magic fairy herb garden

Drinking Tulsi Tea!

Learning to do deep breathing!

In outdoor free play the children play freely with one another and explore their natural environment. This gives them the space to form friendships and bonds in a deeper way with each other. They are given the opportunity to explore and invite in their imagination and develop skills in gross motor, fine motor, social-emotional, independence and so much more!

We are beyond excited to introduce the new tinkering shed into our preschool space. Thank you to all the parents who dedicated their time and energy to making this sweet vision a reality. 

The children have been hard at work with learning new skills in sawing, drilling, safety, clamping, etc. We are excited to begin working on projects in the shed that will be brought back into the classroom setting and the children get to enjoy the fruits of their very own labor. This month we began with introducing the children to the new skills and working on the safety of the space.

We have come up with some safety precautions such as:

(1) always wear your safety glasses in the tinkering shed
(2) shoes are required to enter the woodworking station
(3) take turns patiently
(4) limiting the number of kids in the shed at any given moment
(5) give your friends space when they are working with tools and stand 4 feet back from where they are working 

This month we began a project that the children will get to enjoy in their classroom play. They have been sawing small branch pieces that we will write letters on for them to learn their letter recognition and begin to put together some words. 

Child: "Can I drill a hole in my wood cookie and make it into necklace?"
Teacher: "Yes you may, let's use our hand crank wood drill!!"

We absolutely love when the children help harvest vegetables and herbs from the garden for lunch. They love it to! Before lunch is made we have a small group of children collect vegetables and herbs from the garden and then we head to the kitchen to make lunch together!

We have been enjoying so many delicious cherry tomatoes, green beans, and basil from our garden! The children even help feed our bunnies with greens grown right here on the land. They have also been picking lots of apples and pears right off the tree for "dessert" after lunch. We are so excited to source as much as we can for our lunches from our land here at Children's Garden. It has been fun to talk to the children about growing your own food and giving them the opportunity to be a part of the harvesting and prepping process. 

This month in kitchen the children have helped make and bake up some delicious and healthy muffins to share with their friends, chop up veggies for lunches, and make some quesadillas!

Planting sorrel and winter spinach seeds with Ben

After lunch we have special days that we offer special classes. Some of these specials are music classes from Tia Wryn and Spanish classes from Briana Banana. We love these classes, and so do the children!

They get to sing and dance in both English and Spanish. The children get the opportunity to play instruments and dive into the realm of music with song, vibration, and happy moving dance feet. Additionally, they are learning words and counting in Spanish and hopefully you will hear some of these teachings come home with them! The early years are a perfect time to introduce the rhythm of music and new languages to their developing brains.

We learned about the Appeal of the Nobel Laureates where Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, and other Nobel Prize Winners created the Better World Pledge with this Kindness Kids Adventure.

​Our Community Agreements
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?

Well, the kids had ALOT of ideas in response to this. Some of the ideas that were offered from the children were: no hitting, be nice, listen to the teacher, take turns, take care of the toys, listen to each other, no running inside, no yelling inside, don't grab toys from each other, tell a teacher if you are hurt or scared, use your big voice, gentle hands, be generous, keep the classroom tidy so kids don't trip...

From all our conversations we were able to consolidate all of our thoughts into 3 simple positive agreements:

Be Safe
Be Kind
Listening Ears
To put all of our love and energy into our agreements we created a collaborative art piece with all the groups which we then turned into a community reminder. Do we forget our agreements sometimes? Of course we do! We are humans :) We can gently remind one another and learn to adjust from a "me" to a "we".