Animals in Spring

Some are hatching! Some are growing! Some are changing! And it's been an adventure at Harmony's House this month to watch, study, and play with animals. We worked with critters indoors and out.

We looked at bird nests, seeds, and local bird figurines in our play.

We got brave and found many earthworms, slugs, beetles, ants, a lizard, and even a salamander in the damp earth under our playground mats, not to mention the Daddy Long Leg we caught in the playhouse.

We studied pictures of a variety of caterpillars, talked about their defense mechanisms, and made our own models with play-doh, beads, and toothpicks.

We watched for birds.

We pretended to BE birds in an extra large nest!

We visited birds on the farm! We saw real ducks sitting on their nests, with an abundance of eggs. We pet chickens and got their breakfast ready for them.

We visited the growing piggies who are always hungry! Good thing there is a variety of available food in the springtime for animals to eat.

We adopted classroom caterpillars and have watched them grow faster than seems possible! All of our caterpillars have successfully formed cocoons.  

We've floated our duck toys in the pond and learned a new song:

"Ducks in the pond, QUACK a happy song!

Mother hens cackle the whole day long.

Birds in their nests, and wind in the treetops,

All join in singing, a happy song!"

We have hopped Little Bunny Foo Foo through the forest many many times.  <3

We made our own nests for the birds with baskets and clothespins and pretended that corks were the eggs!

Our butterfly habitat is prepped.  Now we are just waiting for our butterflies to emerge! It is so hard to wait!

Just today we were very creative using tree slabs, bricks, and logs to build a big duck home. It was unseasonably chilly today and it seemed fitting that they should have somewhere warm to go to huddle inside together. What was most beautiful though about this plan was how collaborative the children were. Almost every child helped in someway to build this, by carrying bricks, coloring them with chalk, finding the ducks, and placing them carefully inside. 

Spring is here, animals are busy, and so are we. <3

Too Much Fall Fun, and NOT Enough Time!

Ms. Harmony loves all the fun changes that fall brings!  There is so much to do and enjoy! This post shares some of the ways we've been actively learning about fall.

Apples are ripe and ready to eat!  We not only tasted apples, we learned about the parts of apples, and made beautiful apple prints.

We used scented rice, funnels, bottles, and acorn toys in the Explore Table.  This smelled amazing!

We built homes for fuzzy forest friends and made sure they had plenty to eat!  Fall is an important time for animals in the forest because soon they will face food and shelter scarcity during winter.

We colored leaf prints by taping the paper on top of the leaf and doing rubbings with crayon.

We cooked with acorns we gathered and sand.

We noticed that the weather got cold, and so did the water in our table outside!  We changed the materials from water play to bubbles!

We shook up sensory bottles with googly eyes, bugs, and bands!

We made LOTS of art with play doh, googly eyes, paint, fuzzy sticks, pom-poms, stickers, and more!

We sorted bears into "families" which helped us practice color identification, size and color differences, and counting skills.

We applied our knowledge of fall leaves and forest animals by painting a forest scene in fall and telling a story about the animals that live there.  They were looking for food, building homes, getting camouflaged, etc.

We talked about Halloween being a fall holiday just weeks away!  We played with lots of funny things like slinkies, bracelets, pumpkins, and googly eye glasses!

We danced with fall leaves, tossed them in the air, and pretended to rake them into a pile!

It always seems like a race to do all the fun stuff each day.  I wish that the preschool hours could STRETCH out so we could pack more into the program... so I leave it with you at home to keep up the fall celebrations.  :)  

Welcoming Fall at Harmony's House

We are so excited about the cooling temperatures!  We are anticipating the leaves changing colors and beginning to fall.  Our older students remember this season from last year.

One of our outdoor table choices has been to paint glue on these twigs.  Then we applied tissue paper leaves.  The finished "trees" turned out beautiful!

We will be learning more about how animals on the farm and in the forest will be preparing for winter.  In the House Area, it has been so fun to dress up like different animals!

Friend "Elephant" dressed up like the "big, bad wolf!"

Friends "Kite" and "Alarm Clock" dressed up like pig and cow.

Finally, we've been exploring a new way to paint at the art easel.  We have used paint rollers with different textures to mix red and yellow paint.  What I loved about this picture was seeing the oldest and the youngest painting side by side.  The mixed-age environment provides the children so many opportunities to learn from friends in different ways.