Tea parties, swimming, and roses

"Mine is the month of roses, yes, and mine
The month of marriages! All pleasant sights
And scents, the fragrance of the blossoming vine
The foliage of the valleys and the heights
Mine are the longest days, the loveliest nights
The mower's scythe makes music to my ear
I am the mother of all dear delights
I am the fairest daughter of the year"

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This is quite a lovely month here with excited shrills and splashes filling our very warm days.
We enjoyed a tea party last Thursday. Thanks to Finn and Charlie's mom for sending honey muffins to accompany our tea....I think we just may add this to our weekly routine. Thursdays at 4 p.m.
Swimming in little pools has been a new experiment this year and the children have had wonderful fun floating all sorts of boats and pouring water into a variety of cups and pitchers.
Our themes for the month include bugs, boats, summer solstice, and roses.
If you have roses growing in your garden and could share some with us, we will be using them for many activities in the next two weeks.
We will also be making little wooden boats on woodworking days and doing many hands on projects revolving around bugs as well.

Books include:

The Rose in My Garden by Arnold Lobel
Wanda's Roses by Pat Brisson
Nora's Roses by Satomi Ichikawa
The Sleeping Rose by Angela Elwell Hunt
The Blue Roses by Linda Boyden
When the Sun Rose by Barbara Helen Berger
The Magic Rose Garden by Sandra Woods
Linnea in Monet's Garden by Cristina Bjork
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting

Remember to pack sunscreen, hats, bug spray, and swim wear!
Happy weekend to you.

Mud, worms, and lots of rain today = perfect fun

A wet, muddy, and rainy day here which translated into a lot of splashing fun!!
We had an extensive circle time in the playroom with singing, stomping, stretching, and learning new rhymes and songs.
"Here we go Looby Loo"
"I like to eat apples and bananas"
"Over in the Meadow"
"Here's a branch of snowy May"

Today we read:
Mr. Gumpy's Outing by John Burningham

This story is about an older man who gets out on his boat for a peaceful ride. Then some children and many interesting creatures want to accompany him. What happens when the boat gets too full of people?
We talked about being a good friend which ties in nicely with our new emphasis on SHARING and TAKING TURNS. This is a difficult concept to grasp and the children are working hard on this.

The second book we read today was:
Share and Take Turns which is an excellent introduction to the different ways in which we can share with our playmates. It is geared for ages 4 - 8, however the ideas present some very useful tools we can begin to use.
Talk and Work it Out is another book in this series published by Free Spirit Press which is also a helpful guide with some new strategies for peaceful conflict resolution among little ones.
We will be working extensively on these issues in the next few weeks and I highly recommend checking out the books at the library or buying them for your own use at home to reinforce the concepts.

We also read:
A Letter to Amy by Ezra Jack Keats

This was a perfect story for today because it's about a little boy who is writing a letter to his friend, inviting her to his upcoming birthday party. He puts his letter in an envelope, puts on a stamp, and goes out to put it in the mailbox when suddenly, the wind and rain swoop it away. He chases it all over town.
Inspired by the letter idea, we immediately set to work on writing our own letters to family members, put them in envelopes, and affixed post- it star shaped "stamps". Several children took turns working at the "post office" and took the letters, sold stamps, and carried the letters around to different destinations.

Playing outside today was incredibly exciting with light rain falling down, many huge puddles in which to splash, and joyful singing. I am sure you realize how muddy and wet everything gets and it is my hope that the children will all come with rain boots, pants, and rain jackets on days like this!! It sure makes things easy to manage when there is a full rain suit that covers all the clothes. Then we just slip that off and the clothes underneath are as good as they were initially.


New binders are coming home for parent newsletters and articles of importance on such topics as television, sleep, eating, play, toys, and warmth for your young child. These are just some of my favorite resources I have collected over the years and hopefully you will gain some valuable insight from them as well. I started off with a few printouts of the effects of television because this is such an important issue in the lives of children. There is definitely a difference in the play value among children who are not exposed to this influence compared to those who are even slightly exposed. I have been working and playing with children for twenty years now and I see firsthand how drastically play changes after a child has viewed movies, cartoons, or even so-called "educational" programming. Play becomes focused on characters that have been seen instead of their own ideas and it becomes increasingly harder for them to listen attentively during circle and/or story times. We want our little ones to think creatively and come up with their own imaginative ideas at this crucial period of their development. Thank you for taking the time to read these pages. A new article will come home in your child's bag every week that you may add to the binder.

Stephanie Norander recently reminded me of a great book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Even though it seems initially geared for older children, many of the skills and tools can be tailored to your child's age so that they can begin to understand the principles in a simplified form. It also helps us, as parents, to begin to talk to our children in a way that will encourage, support, and strengthen our connection with them and help foster positive interactions and responses from them when we speak to each other.

Do you have old magazines such as National Geographic, nature themed, Missouri Conservationist etc. that you no longer need? Thanks to Jennifer Harp for tucking in her latest issue of the Conservationist. We also get that here, but it's nice to have duplicate copies when there are so many beautiful photos. The children were enthusiastically picking out flowers to arrange into a spring collage this week.
We do various projects with cut outs from magazines and always appreciate any donations you have.
This week we are looking for extra buckets, shovels, dirt, seeds, and little wooden chairs you may have. If you happen to see some at secondhand stores, please let me know.

Have a peaceful and fun weekend.

Happy May

May is off to a wonderful start!
Our focus has been on Spring, Seeds, and Manners and we have tied our stories into a variety of activities.
Books we have read include:
The Carrot Seed by Ruth Krauss
I'm a Seed by Jean Marzollo
Muncha Muncha Muncha by Candace Fleming
Carrot Soup by John Segal
Mrs. Rose's Garden by Elaine Greenstein
A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds by Jean Richards
And the Good Brown Earth by Kathy Henderson
Jody's Beans by Malachy Doyle
One Watermelon Seed by Celia Barker Lottridge

These stories have been so fun to read and fill our days with wonder, inspiration, and many possibilities to make related connections.
There is a recipe for carrot soup that we will be making, we have been planting seeds and watching them sprout, sorting, classifying, and counting seeds, matching seeds to their fruits and vegetables, cutting open lots of fruits and vegetables to observe the seeds with a magnifier, talking about gardens, finding pictures in magazines of gardens, plants, flowers, vegetables, etc.

Drawing lines and designs in cornmeal has been a captivating sensory experience for the children as they will spend quiet focused time tracing through the cornmeal with sticks, fingers, scoopers, cups, measuring spoons, and little cars, rocks, stones, and shells. This is a great pre-writing skill and also a very calming activity as well.

Our roads have become more extensive with chalk drawings illustrating towns, houses, driveways, parks, rivers, and community places, such as stores and smoothie bars. We have even included plots of land for planned gardens with the children making suggestions for the types of plants they wish to start.

Happy Birthday Banon!

Today we celebrated Banon's birthday with a special birthday story, a birthday book made by everyone, songs on the grass, and bug, flower, and fairy catching!
Thanks to Banon's mom, Meredith, for bringing over the bug nets...the children had a magical and fun time with these!

HELPING

There has been a new recent interest in helping each other here.
Someone may get stuck on a bike across the yard and another child runs to help. We are learning how to be a good friend. Good friends help each other.
Cooperative play is a growing concept happening as well. Pushing and pulling each other in wagons, riding together on a bike, driving cars respectfully behind one another, and taking turns with the basketball and hoop are all new pursuits.
We have also been talking about good manners, especially at meal times. When we see good manners being displayed, we acknowledge it.

Washing Day

Today was washing day!
Did you know that there is a specific domestic activity happening here based on the day of the week?
Each day has its own "job" that we do with love and care.
For example we may do dusting on Monday, washing outside toys/clothes on Tuesday, bread making on Wednesday, woodworking and sweeping on Thursday, and inside toy cleaning on Friday.
This type of work for a child helps them connect with the natural rhythms of the days of the week in a tangible way. They may not understand that today is Wednesday, but they know that it is bread making day and that the next day will be a time of woodworking.
Therefore, young children have a framework of time and feel a security and peace in knowing what will happen and what to expect.

The car washing today was wonderful fun and everyone earnestly helped to get many vehicles shiny and clean!

Projects

You may be wondering where all the artwork is going that your child is creating here.
There are always lots of projects happening and we have decided to do a few different things with them.
First, we are in the process of making our own books based on the stories we hear and read together. We read or hear a story for usually two to three weeks to let the ideas fully internalize. Then we will act out the story and do a variety of related projects based on the themes we are learning.Then we also draw a special picture as a reminder and this is what we are using for each "book". The collected drawings and projects will be sent home during the last week of May.