October started with beautiful, sparking sunny days and cool, crisp weather. This was just the right weather for lots of nature walks, and the children loved searching for colorful leaves as we rambled around the neighborhood and over familiar paths. The red leaves were the most popular, but the children collected a variety to wave around, watch blow in the wind, or to show to parents. Our nature walks include a stretch of flat tarmac, and the children love to run races and

April began with plenty of showers, so hopefully our flowers will be extra beautiful in May. Rainy days can still be fun, though. Some of our rainy days we spent clipping flower pictures from a seed catalog and creating lovely flower collages. This activity provided some opportunities to talk about shapes and colors while honing fine motor skills as the kids cut and glued the images. Another rainy day gave us time to make fingerprint flowers. The children practiced drawing

Our 6th annual tie-dye day was a great success although we had to postpone it until the first days of August to ensure that all the children could participate. The children did a fantastic job creating their tie-dyed masterpieces and helped with nearly all the steps involved. They picked out their favorite design, helped moisten the shirts with a spray bottle, named and selected the colors they wanted to use, and carefully squirted the dye onto their shirts. The end products

July is often a month families enjoy beach visits, so this month we chose to learn about beaches, underwater creatures and the ocean. There were plenty of opportunities to learn both inside and outdoors. Our circle time activities for the month centered on starfish, turtles, and fish. The children's favorite was a fingerplay about starfish because they got to take turns picking up my hand at the end and pretend it was a starfish. The fingerplay went like this: Five little

March arrived in grand style with lovely warm breezes and a promise of spring. We made it outside as much as possible, especially celebrating the opening of the sandbox and mud kitchen. All the children learned about using the sand respectfully so everyone has a good time, and before long, the children were making cupcakes, pies, soup, and all sorts of other goodies in the kitchen and making mountains, ditches, hills, and roads in the sandbox. Outdoor time also focused on pl

February may be a short month, but it does not lack for holidays, and we celebrated! Groundhog Day: We started our day reviewing what we learned about hibernating animals in January. We came to realize that groundhogs hibernate, too, and if they come out early, it's likely that the cause is warmer weather (among other factors), and warmer weather means an early spring. The next thing we did was make a graphic organizer to show how many of us thought that the famous groundhog

January's focus was on all things chilly-snow, ice, icicles, snowflakes, and more. The children and I had lots of fun learning about winter weather, states of matter, and how to dress properly for cold weather. We learned a little about how some animals handle the cold weather by hibernating or migrating, and we made a wonderful bear cave to practice hibernating in ourselves! With the winter weather keeping us indoors so much, we stayed active through a variety of games. O

I'm pretty certain that our enthusiastic celebration of the new year could've rivaled the revelers in Times Square! The children got lots of wonderful gross motor movement as they learned how to twirl can-style noisemakers. It was a little challenging to master the circular motion needed to make the noisemakers work, but once we figured it out, it was extra noisy fun! Taking big breaths and blowing hard were two skills the children worked on as we celebrated with roll-out pa

There was a slight chill in the air this morning, so we focused on some big-body movement games to warm us up today. After our morning routine, the children and I had lots of fun setting up a pretend grocery store. There was so much wonderful cooperation from the children involved in this- the children worked together to clean up all the toys and put them in the proper baskets, then to move the baskets to an area away from where we'd be playing grocery store, and most impor

This morning we had a wonderful time after our morning routine. The children and I worked together to make clothing matches as we played dress-up with a set of magnetic dolls. We made up stories all about where the dolls were going to go and why they were dressed the way they were. Our favorite story was about a doll that liked to go out in the rain and stomp in puddles. She also liked to feed the ducks bread and talk to her friend the frog. Once the dolls were all dresse

Today the children and I did some more exploration of our underwater theme. After our morning routine, we worked on creating some shiny, eye-catching silver fish. First, we worked together to wrap some paperboard fish with aluminum foil. After that, each child used markers to decorate the fish. In the end, each fish had its own unique and special look, and they made a lovely, shiny school when hung on the wall. After that, we had lots of fun pretending to be on a beach. W

Our day started somewhat gloomy, but after our morning routine was finished, the sun had begun to peep out from between the clouds and we headed out for a nature walk. We had barely left the neighborhood when we spotted a rabbit munching away at some grass. The children crept as close as they could before the rabbit darted into the underbrush. It was so interesting to watch the rabbit's nose wiggle as it chewed stalks of grass! Next the children pointed out some beautiful o

We've been working hard on our frog, caterpillar, and bee fingerplays in the morning, and the children's favorite appears to be the caterpillar rhyme. Their favorite part is going to sleep as a caterpillar, being covered by a playsilk, and then awakening as a butterfly complete with colored "wings" as they stand up and wave the playsilk behind them like wings. After our morning routine, we set out for the wonderful new park. Along the way we saw many wild and interesting th

Ah, May! This was the nicest day we've had in May so far- the birds were singing, everything outdoors was flush with new growth, flowers are blooming, so we just couldn't stay inside! After our usual morning routine and some music time during which we sang several animal-noise themed songs, we slathered on sunscreen and set out for the park. The children love to picnic at the park, and we brought our morning snack to enjoy. I am so proud of how nicely the children are able

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo was tons of fun, and I'm pretty sure the kids liked the activities I planned. We ended up spreading the activities over two days since we ran out of time the first day. After our morning routine, the big kids and I worked together on scissors skills and cut construction paper triangles to turn into a colorful banner. We talked about the proper way to hold the scissors (thumb in the little hole, fingers in the big hole) and practiced the open-close-o

May Day lived up to its reputation and then some- we had a gorgeous, sunny day to celebrate the stirrings of spring and the coming of summer. During calendar, we talked about how nice the weather is getting- green grass and flowers are everywhere and baby leaves are peeping out. We talked about how we could have a special tea party to celebrate the coming of summer, and how we would have to use nice manners at the tea party. After our morning routine, we washed our hands an

Today seemed to be particularly suited to dress-up, so after we moved our calendar tag to the last day of April and finished our last April circle time fingerplays, we moved right along and suited up! First, the children picked the perfect dress-up outfit. One was a mermaid... ...one was a princess... ...one wore a cape (and did lots of spinning around)... ... and one was a mix of a few dress-up items! The children and I came up with a story sort of like The LIttle Mermaid i

With another cold and rainy day on our hands, we knew that the best way to beat the blahs was to get creative with an art project, move our bodies to some music, and try to work in some fun learning, too. We began our day with our regular calendar and weather time. We had lots of fun doing our circle time rhyme about rainy days that goes like this: Pitter patter raindrops Falling from the sky, Here's my umbrella, Hold it up high! When the rain is over, The sun begins to glow

More April showers today meant a day dedicated to working with watercolor painting. We began our day the usual way with calendar, weather, and circle time. It was particularly fun for the littles when they realized their beloved "Tim" needed a full wardrobe change from sweatshirt and shoes to rain gear. After circle time, we moved toward our big project for the day- watercolor painting to investigate color mixing. Each child had the opportunity to enjoy uninterrupted time

We started our day with our regular calendar, weather, and circle time activities and then the children and I decided we wanted to read lots of stories. Perhaps the dull gray clouds put us in the mood to curl up with some good books. We read Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, Ten Little Fingers, Mommy Loves Me, Just a Mess, and The Pout Pout Fish. Soon after I finished reading to the children, they were ready to move, so we put together an obstacle course. First, the childr