News From the Outdoors

The Nature Detectives experienced it all in the last few weeks at preschool, from t-shirts to snowflakes! The wacky winter weather provided lots of interesting ways to explore Woodend as well as the opportunity to hunt for more fairies and gnomes.

 

We explored the sanctuary looking for winter fungi and fairy and gnome homes. We discovered gnomes hiding all around Woodend including the lookout, the meadow and the amphitheater! For one of our naturalist hikes, we hiked around Woodend spying different types of fancy fungi. We found lots of different types of shelf fungi and the children enjoyed loudly gobbling whenever we found colorful turkey tails!

 

Both classes enjoyed building large gnome homes next to the mansion. The kiddos worked on building structures they could fit into as well as transforming them into space ships and bear hibernation stations!

Another exciting addition to our outdoor play has been the Red-shouldered Hawk that has taken up Woodend as its new home! “Hawk Alert” has become an often overheard phrase as we have seen it perched in trees as well as soaring above the meadow.

 

We also enjoyed playing in snow this week! With the flurries of snow we learned more about the snow drops that have been popping up all over Woodend. Blue Crab led us on a naturalist hike where we learned that these little flowers are not only poisonous to the deer, but also split like garlic bulbs to reproduce.

 

News from the Classroom

We continued our fairy and gnome fun indoors this week, examining rainbows and learning about kindness and love. For our Mindfulness Monday lessons, we learned new ways to calm our bodies, as well as talked about filling our kindness buckets through the story, How Full is your Bucket?

We did two experiments this week at preschool. First, we created rainbow artwork on which we placed four large mushrooms over night. The kids observed the mushroom spores fall onto our artwork, leaving brownish prints behind. Our second experiment also involved rainbows. The kiddos hypothesized what would happen to five white carnations when they were each left in brightly colored water. Each child made a guess and we watched them over the week soak up the watercolor paint and slowly change color.

At the art tables, we created two class books this week. In tune with our kindness ideas, the classes created Helping Hands stories. Each child came up with an idea of how they can use their hands to help those around them to which they added a set of their hand prints. On our last day at preschool, the now resident fairy and gnome experts created field guides from our studies. Both classes also enjoyed our recycled rainbow project in which students sorted and pasted recycled objects from home on the corresponding color of the rainbow. The beautiful creations are displayed on our classroom door.

 

Around the classroom these weeks, we played with rainbow color connects, as well as opened up the light table to experiment with colored cups and gems. We created magic potions in the lab table, as well as built on our fairy and gnome homes in the block area.

We celebrated love at preschool this past week by mixing up a batch of Love Potion #9 to sip on! The kids worked together to add all of the smoothie ingredients before watching it all mix together in the blender. The creation station open for kids to make cards to send out love into the world!

Books we Read

Charlotte and the Quiet Place by Deborah Sosin

Children of the Forest by Elsa Beskow

No, No, Gnome! By Ashlyn Anstee

Slop by Margaret Reed MacDonald

Rainbow Fairies by Nicola Baxter

Weekly Top Hits

Deep and Wide

Deep and wide

Deep and wide

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide (da, da, da, da, da, da)

Deep and wide

Deep and wide

There’s a fountain flowing deep and wide

 

Rainbows in Bubbles (Tune: She’ll be comin’ round the Mountain)

I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles yes, I do!

I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles yes, I do!

When I look up towards the sun,

I see rainbows everyone,

I’ve got rainbows in my bubbles yes, I do!

Spoiler Alert: When we come back, we will be learning about dinosaurs!