News from the Outdoors

The Detectives dove straight into our fall exploration this week as we continued to prep for our celebration on Thursday! We noticed the leaves starting to cover the hiking trails, as well as the weather finally becoming more chilly. On Monday, with some sun, the Detectives noticed the frogs were still out at our pond. Both classes were able to catch one and observe it up close!

 

 

On Monday, both classes enjoyed our first Monday Mindfullness class outside! Caroline came in for the morning class, reading us The Very Busy Spider and talking us through taking deep breaths to calm our bodies. The Detectives practiced different ways to be mindful with our breathing, and how we can use that trick when we feel busy as well!

 

On Tuesday, the classes took a walk through our Japanese Maple grove up by the mansion. We noticed that those trees are still mostly green, learning how leaves actually hold their fall colors year round, and react to the changing sunlight.

 

On Wednesday both classes enjoyed our weekly naturalist visit. The kiddos were challenged to a fall scavenger hunt, looking for colorful leaves, falling seeds and more. We ended the hike by counting our objects and making our own fall leaf storm by popping them up into the air on a parachute!

 

To prep for our celebration crowns, we also looked for deer signs around Audubon this week! We were able to spy lots of deer clues along our hikes, as well as real deer along the way!

 

News from the Classroom

This week we continued our celebration prep inside the classroom! On Monday, we finished our deer crowns by adding our hand print antlers and acorn eyes. Adding to the fall theme, we worked on cork stamper leaf art, as well as practiced mixing the colors of leaves in finger paint.

 

For the block challenge this week, we opened up new, balancing, squirrel blocks! The detectives got to expirement with gravity by trying to build tall trees for the squirrels to climb. We also continued the squirrel theme in the dramatic play, where the woodland animals came out to play!

 

We added cocoa mulch to the lab table this week, where the detectives got to hide their own bugs and acorns! We opened up a scale in the discovery table, to help measure the weight of the acorns and walnuts, as well as continued to play with construction sets and Sneaky Snacky Squirrel.

On Thursday, both classes enjoyed our first celebration of the year! We dawned deer crowns to sing our fall songs, before enjoying snacks, stories, and pumpkin painting inside the classroom. A big thanks to everyone who made it in, the kids had a blast!

Books we Read

The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle

The Best Gift of All by Jonathan Emmett

Have You Seen Trees? by Joanne Oppenheim

Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel

 

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!

Wait and See

I’m a nut (3x)

That’s me,

Gonna grow into a big oak tree,

I may be small,

but someday I’ll be tall,

wait and see!

Brown Deer

Brown deer, brown deer, shake your white tail (2x)

Use your hoof to smash a nut,

Much it up and fill your gut,

Brown deer, brown deer, shake your white tail 

 

Spoiler Alert: Next week we are learning about squirrels preparing for winter!