Late yesterday afternoon we read Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. We had a lengthy conversation about “What makes a story a Fairy Tale?” We discussed the meanings of the Dwarves’ names. The conversation naturally turned to comparing differences and similarities of Snow White to our previous study of Sleeping Beauty. After hearing the story, a small group jumped up and immediately acted out the scene where the Wicked Queen, as an old woman in disguise, invites SW to eat the apple.

We continued the conversation/acting out this morning, with each friend fully owning the character they chose. Here’s our cast so far:

Snow White – Jane, Annie, Ada, Arleigh, Alexandra, Addi

Prince – Kai

Bad Guy – Stephen

Wicked Queen – Macy

Puppies – Nate, Umi, Alma

Black Raven – Simon

We set out Tami’s apple red Play-Doh and sang “Roll roll roll the dough, in between your hands…roll, roll, roll the dough in between your hands!”. Ada turned her ball into an apple while Alexandra’s ball became a basket. Nate’s roll was a carrot and a hot dog.

For a counting and sorting activity, we made a felt apple tree and stuck red, green and yellow apple stickers to it. Friends took turns dropping green apples into a green felt basket, as well as the red and yellow ones into corresponding colored baskets.

We continued singing The Johnny Appleseed Song, learned about who Johnny Appleseed was and had an apple hunt in the classroom. We learned the meaning of “orchard” and talked about visiting one.

As we move into cold/flu season, we will keep you posted on any illnesses that make their way through our classroom. With severe illnesses (strep, chicken pox, lice etc.) Tami will send out an email as well as post it on our Parent Information bulletin board. Over these past few weeks, there was a flu-like bug that affected three Wee Friends and three teachers, in varying degrees. It involved fever, vomiting and diarrhea. For the past week, there have been no signs of this particular virus persisting. During this season, it is usual that colds will come and go on an ongoing basis. Again, we will make sure you are aware of anything passing through multiple families so that you can watch for symptoms in your own child.

Addi has been spending alot of time playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and belting out the lyrics as she plays!

Hope your day is happy!!!!!!!!!

This morning, Jennifer and the gymnastics bus were here! Our older friends go from 9-9:30 and our younger WF go from 9:30-10:00. I will post a reminder on Friday for the following Monday’s schedule so everyone who has enrolled has a chance to participate.

This weekend Tami was hard at work making apple pie Play Doh! When Wee Friends were not on the bus, they spent, literally, the whole morning exploring and creating with the Play Doh. They made everything from huevos grandes y poquenos, apple pies, cherry pies, chocolate cake and Jane made a Sweet Shop. Kai practiced a math concept with a discussion on 1/2’s, 1/3’s and 1/4’s, cutting the Play-Doh accordingly.

On her guitar, Paulina picked out the secular version of “The Johnny Appleseed Song” and we sang along. We invited Wee Friends to practice their courtly bows as Paulina played a musical montage starting with “Lavender Blue” , “Skip to My Lou” (changing the words to “bow to your partner”) and ending with “Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me!” The Wee Friends princesses, relaxed into a music meditation as Paulina played a tune on her recorder.

Later, some friends chose to make crowns out of pipe cleaners!

Outside a group of friends were wondering why the leaves were on the ground and why they weren’t green anymore. A discussion was had about the changing season and what happens to trees and leaves during this time.

Addi exclaimed “It’s a nice day out today, Mina!”

For lunch we served whole wheat pasta and marinara, pineapple and fresh WF tomatoes.

ENJOY YOUR DAY!

This morning we continued the multi-step process of making grape juice! Using the grapes that the Nickerson’s brought in, each friend had a chance to mash ’em up!

We combined all the grapes into a big pot and mashed some more…

With Melinda’s help, friends strained the juice from the pulp. She put the grapes on the stove to simmer slowly throughout the morning. We’re hoping to be able to finish the juice for our afternoon snack! F.1.3 Observe and describe properties of objects. F.3.1 Participate in activities using materials with a variety of properties (e.g., color, shape, size, name, type of material). F.3.2 Investigate and talk about the characteristics of matter (e.g., liquids and solids, smooth and rough, bend-not bend).

A small group of friends read The Napping House by Audrey Wood.

The book tells the story of a Granny who goes to sleep in a bed. Over the course of the story, a child, a dog, cat, mouse and other sleeping creatures all join her in the same bed. By the end of the book, there is a mile high pile of sleepers on top of granny! After reading the book, everyone chose a stuffed animal to represent the characters in the book. First we explored balance – how many stuffed animals could we stack before the pile fell? Next, we stacked the animals from largest on the bottom to smallest on the top. We discovered a triangle shape when the last pile was complete and discussed – what makes a triangle? F.4.6 Sort by one attribute (e.g., size, shape, color). F.4.7 Sort a group of objects by more than one way. F.2.1 Identify “first” and “last.” F.2.13 Break apart a whole quantity of something into a set. F.2.14 Combine a whole quantity of something (e.g., pop beads). F.4.7 Sort a group of objects by more than one way.

Next week we will begin an Apple Study. We’ll kick it off with our final (for now!)juicing experience, apples!

Remember us when recycling old glass jars- we are starting a collection for an upcoming activity!

For lunch today, we served peanut butter and honey sandwiches on whole wheat bread, pea pods and pineapple. Have a pleasant weekend!

For the past few days WF/WWF have heard Macy cry out from the WWF playhouse: “Anyone want lemonade?!” Today, Paulina built a sensorial packed lesson around Macy’s intrigue.

With friends gathered around, Paulina laid out several pieces of felt in varying shades of yellow and green. She read El Verde Limon, by Alma Flor Ada. She asked friends to examine a lemon: it’s color, texture, scent and finally, it’s taste! They cut the lemon in half and studied the lemon seeds. After each friend had a chance to taste the lemon, they began the juicing process.

After collecting the juice from 4 lemons, they added water and mixed.

After adding a bit of sugar, it was ready to go!

CHEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the remaining lemon rinds, we invited WF to create art.

Throughout the study, Paulina introduced Spanish words for the names of the colors and fruit being explored. As they juiced, they sang “turning, turning, turning…” The conversation continued after lunch when the older friends journaled about the recipe from this morning.

Other WF News!

Our chrysalis hatched this morning!

For lunch today we served melted ham and cheese on whole wheat tortillas, corn on the cob (thank you, Lisa!), pears….and fresh lemonade!

Have a great day!

We had such a great science afternoon that I am writing a quick second blog so you can see and talk with your kids tonight about the cool things that happened.

Outside, Owen found a huge preying mantis. The preying mantis allowed me to hold him for just a minute and then we examined him for quite awhile on a bucket. In the picture, I’d like to believe that he was surrendering to his admirers, but it’s more likely he was saying “Back Off!”.

Now we have to wonder if the preying mantis is one of our babies from the “Preying Mantis Fiasco” of 2009. We had gotten a sac of preying mantis eggs in fall 2008. The egg sac lived in science room in a jar until late May 2009 when I needed the jar for another science find. Thinking the egg sac was a dud, I put him on the kitchen window sill. However, if I had done my research about this, I would have know that the preying mantis hatches in early June. Alas, one morning Melinda opened WF with around 300 preying mantis babies running around the kitchen! Of course, we captured and released them into our garden and sent around 150 back to the farm.

A little later, the we closely examined the WWF Monarch Butterfly that hatched earlier in the day.

Inside a few other cool things took place this afternoon:

Our WF Monarch chrysalis was moving back and forth on its own. It is clearly ready to hatch.

We took grapes off their stems in anticipation of making juice with them. Thank you Nickersons for the grapes and idea. (Would anyone really mind if we tried our hands at wine…just a thought:)

We had our regular snack, but I wanted to see how the kids felt about pumpkin smoothies and whether it would merit being a WF snack food. And I really wanted a pumpkin smoothie for myself! So I whipped up a batch and we did a taste test. Overwhelmingly, the children said they loved them. Kathy, Annie’s mom, asked that I post the recipe:

Pumpkin Smoothie Recipe

1 c pure pumpkin

2 frozen bananas

1 c stonyfield organic french vanilla

1 1/2 ice cubes

1/2 tsp or so of allspice

and some sweetener to taste: for kids I use honey or pure maple syrup, for me I use some splenda because I’m sensative to sugar.

Fun day to be a WF teacher!

Have a wonderful evening,

Tami

Today we started our morning with paint: toes and water color pictures. Earlier this summer, Miss Melinda had promised the children that she would paint her toe nails sparkly purple at the end of the summer. True to her word she came to work yesterday with bright sparkly purple toes! Today she brought the nail polish and had some time with each willing child to paint their nails purple.

While Melinda was painting toes and fingers, six children at a time gathered at the art table for some water color painting. We talked about the proper technique to get the most color from the water color trays and how to control the paint on the paint brushes. Children also worked at writing their name on their paint pictures.

This morning was also YMCA swim lessons for the older children. This meant we had our maiden voyage in the Weehicle. It was a great adventure for the children to ride in the BIG new van!

While at swim today, Kai had an exceptionally great swim day and met a few new swimming milestones: he dove 5 feet deep into the water to retrieve a diving ring (multiple times) AND he did a perfect form jump dive off the side of the pool. Both amazing accomplishments for a just turned 5 year old!

Miss Laurie is still out sick today. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Reminder: Tomorrow is farm on the new revised farm schedule. This means we have Kai, Owen, Jane, Macy, Annie, Ada, Simon, Alma, and Arleigh schedule to go. Please remember to arrive no later than 9:15 dressed in layered clothes. The forecast is 71 degrees with a 30% chance of showers.

For lunch today we had whole wheat toast, egg/hash brown casserole and watermelon.

Enjoy your day!

Some of you may have heard the wonderful news. This weekend we invested in a 12 passenger van (2007 Ford E350XL) for Wee Friends field trips. It can transport 10 children at a time and the car seats are all loaded and ready for us to take off! Those that have seen me each Tuesday loading the car seats in my Honda know how happy this makes me.

With the Weehicle, I have changed the WF farm schedule to take more children each week and you will find the revised schedule in your cubbies. The WWF trip stays the same. On most weeks I will take Melinda or Laurie with me to the farm, leaving just a few children to enjoy small group activities back at Wee Friends.

Inspired by the conversations about Sleeping Beauty and roses, we gathered as many different plants and flowers as we could find in our backyard and put them in a tub. We set out paint and invited Wee Friends to use the plants/flowers as paint brushes.

Stephen and Nate were particularly interested in exploring the plants without paint. Stephen identified a bug in the tub! Many friends made a collage of painted images with the flower/plant brushes. Alma chose two plants and kept the images they created separated on her paper canvas.

 Completely independently, Nate and Umi sequenced like shaped Magna-Tiles creating a standing rectangular track.

Another math manipulative came off the shelf – The Peg Board. Macy, Alexandra and Ada spent time pushing pegs into and out of the board, creating many shapes and patterns. Kai is working on Kindergarten math lessons. Today he drew lines on a grid, counted to 18 and practiced writing the corresponding numbers.

 We read another adaptation of Sleeping Beauty (by Kinuko Y. Craft) and compared/contrasted the story, characters and illustrations to the Disney version we’ve been reading at school.

Jane and Annie enjoyed creating their own music today and danced with roses.

We filled a tub with warm soapy water and added plastic fairies/ princesses and other small princess toys, a dolly, rose petals and morning glory leaves. Melinda commented that among the many sensorial activities we experience, water play is always the #1 choice!

For lunch, we served whole grain flat bread, ham slices, butternut squash with tomatoes and applesauce.

Enjoy a restful weekend!