Getting to know our Children's Garden

“You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!” -Dr. Seuss

Welcome to The Children's Garden! We are glad to have many returning friends joining us for another year of growing, and are so excited to welcome all our new friends joining our garden family. As a nature-based learning environment, we spend our days connecting with the world around us, nurturing and developing our bodies and minds through free play and child-led activities. In August, we focus on learning about each other and our environment.

We start our days with art based and creative engagement activities. Our art projects are based upon child-led discovery, allowing the kids to take charge of their own learning. By having open ended activities, the kids learn to enjoy the process of making art, rather than the final product. (Read more about Process Art in our past blog post)

Favorite Things Collages

Getting to know each other through our favorite people, places, and things is our first step in connecting with each other.

Learning About Colors

Using primary color paints, the kids loved discovering what colors could be mixed to make new colors.

“Yellow and blue make green!”

Bubble Wands

Using pipe cleaners, soap, and water we can make our own unique bubble wands.

Fingerprint Stamping

Every kid is special and one of a kind, and we are reminded of that by stamping our fingers and hands :)

Watercolors and Oil Pastels

Using oil pastels and watercolor paint, we can make “magic” paintings!

Explore and Play!

Our program highlights play-based learning, letting kids naturally learn through playing and exploring. We can learn so much from the world around us that learning happens naturally. Check out our past blog about Why We Love to Play!

This month the kids were especially interested in bugs from the garden, counting their steps, and how to work together to build block structures.

Gross Motor

After free play, throughout the week we like to alternate between doing a gross motor, mindfulness/yoga activity, or music and dance parties!

Some of the gross motor activities we did this month were tag, hide and seek, and climbing on our hay bales.

Breathing Makes it Better

Learning about our emotions and how to deal with them in a positive way is a big focus here. Using books like "Breathing Makes it Better", we learn lots of different ways breathing can help us reflect on our emotions when we are experiencing big feelings. Our breathing ball also helps us think about our breath coming in and out.

Based upon conscious discipline, we also learned about breathing techniques like balloon breath, drain breath, pretzel breath, and STAR.

Yoga

The kids love picking yoga cards to inspire yoga poses for them to do.

Music and Dance Party!

Building Fine Motor Skills

Building with magnet tiles and stringing beads on pipe cleaners are just two of the ways we help our little hands build strength and dexterity.

Gardening

By helping plant and water our garden, the kids love being able to see their plants grow and to eventually munch on all the yummy plants we nurture.

Stepping Stone Art

As well as helping grow the garden, the kids also helped make our garden more beautiful by working together to make a garden stepping stone.

Water Play!

One of the best ways to stay cool in the summer heat is playing in the water!

Story Time

We end each day with reading books and fruit juice popsicles!

Recipe

We have begun doing cooking classes again during our morning program. This month the kids helped make organic cookies, brownies, and banana bread! Check out our recipe for Paleo brownies:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare an 8x8 baking dish with parchment paper or oil.

In a large bowl beat together 4 eggs, 1 cup coconut sugar, 1/2 cup honey 1 cup melted coconut oil, and 2 tsp vanilla.

In a separate small bowl, stir together 1 1/2 cup almond flour, 1 1/3 cup cacao powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp salt. 

Combine together and pour into prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes and enjoy :)

See you next time! :)