News From the Outdoors:
The Nature Detectives took full advantage of the warm weather this week by spending lots of time outside exploring Woodend and noticing signs of Fall. All around us, things are falling off the trees…black walnuts, acorns, seeds and colorful Fall leaves. With that in mind, on Monday the Nature Detectives hiked through the woods and collected signs of Fall. Later, in the classroom we made labels and displayed our finds near the school entrance in our Nature Museum!
No tree is too over-elming for the Nature Detectives!
Fawning over some deer bones.
On Tuesday we kept up our nature collecting ways and collected leaves for a leaf pressing art project. We also had our inaugural Naturalist hike with Ms. Lisa who took us out into the woods to look for different types of fungi growing around our school. The Nature Detectives were able to spot a wide variety of fungi and even found one tree with three different fungi!
PM Naturalist Hike with Ms. Lisa.
AM Naturalist Hike with Ms. Lisa.
We wrapped up the week by exploring a new area of Woodend, the clearing behind the stumps and the woobly logs. While there the AM class spotted an upside down turtle, flipped it back right-side up and observed it slowly emerge from its shell! Later when the PM class visited the same spot, we were happy to see that the turtle had gone on its way!
Let’s Shell-abrate!
Both classes welcomed a couple of new faces to our school this week. The AM class were happy to welcome Casie to the Saplings whilethe PM class had their first visit with our weekly Thursday volunteer Ms. Susan, who read the kids a book and took us on a hike to explore the trees of Woodend!
Fun girls with fungi!
News From the Classroom:
As busy and hard working as we were outside, the Nature Detectives were equally busy in the classroom this week! While past favorites like the farm stand, playdough, and Hi-Ho Apple-O! were back again, we also had some new activities as well! The Nature Detectives made use of some new blocks and rose to the weekly block challenge to make block structures with roofs.
You’re Unbe-leaf-able!
Farm stand open, be sure to bring your reusable bags!
The kids used their various nature collections to make their museum displays, create colorful leaf prints, and even began the process of making their crowns for the Fall Celebration! On Thursday we also reintroduced an annually favorite game, Sneaky Snacky Squirrels!
Working on Journals
Hard at Work on Journals
In addition to all the art, Fall celebration prep and all the fun hands-on learning centers in the classroom, the Nature Detectives also worked on their Journals. For our first page, the kids were asked: “If you were a squirrel at Woodend, where would you hide your nuts for the Winter?” The kids then dictated their answers to the teachers, and added an illustration to the page. Throughout the year, we will add more entries to the journals with more open-ended questions for the kids to think about.
Creating a Museum Display.
Now you seed me, now you don’t!
Books We Read:
We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt by Steve Metzger
Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert
The Busy Little Squirrel by Nancy Tafuri
Weekly Top Hits:
Falling Leaves (Tune: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star)
Falling, falling, falling leaves
Mother Nature did you sneeze?
Red Ones, Yellow Ones, Orange and Brown
Big Ones, Little Ones, on the ground
Falling, falling, falling leaves
Mother Nature did you sneeze?
ACHOO!
The Leaves on the Trees (Tune: Wheels on the Bus)
The Leaves on the trees they blow in the breeze
blow in the breeze, blow in the breeze.
The Leaves on the trees they blow in the breeze
Until they all fall down!
Spoiler Alert:
We’ll be doing more prep for our Fall Celebration!
Silly Cone Valley
Audubon Nature Preschool 