from the mouths of babes...

We had been working on measuring inches, so I should not have been surprised when J.P. “weighed” bananas at the museum, and told me they weighed 3 inches.                                       

Applesauce and more

 I blogged on Thursday about many of the things we've been learning this week, but could not leave out our grand finale - making applesauce!

I asked our families to please send in one apple this week, and we made two graphs about it; which day they brought the apple to school...

...and what color apple they brought.

The kiddos were very involved in the graphing process, one child even insisted that her parents go buy a yellow apple, so it would not have zero!

On Friday, we made our applesauce.  I called the children to work on it one or two at a time, and of course we started (and ended) with washing our hands.

I showed them how to use the vegetable peelers, holding the apples with one hand, placing the blade of the peeler flat on the apple, and pushing it away from themselves, then showed them how to use a knife too.

They worked really hard to peel and cut their apples, and then put the pieces into a large pot, ready for me to cook.

You can really see the concentration and determination on their faces as they worked on this new skill.

This child let me help me him peel an apple, but once it was peeled, grabbed the pieces and sat in a quiet spot to eat them.  Apples taste delicious raw too!

I did the cooking, then served up warm, fresh, cinnamon applesauce for the kiddos for snack.

 Lots of thumbs up from the children!  My favorite thing said about the applesauce?  "Can we have seconds on applesauce?"  (Yes!) and then a few minutes later, "Can we have thirds?"  Oh yes!

One more special surprise on Friday was an invitation to pick tomatoes at my friends' home again.  With so many new children here, most of the children who got to go and pick this time had not been to do it before, and were tickled with the new experience.

Kid quotes from this visit, "Can I eat one?" and of course, "Can I eat another one?" and even better, "Hey! I actually LIKE tomatoes!"

I like tomatoes too, and I really love seeing children connect with their food, learning to prepare it, and to appreciate healthy and delicious vegetables!  The attitudes and preferences they learn now will be with them for a lifetime - yeah for tomatoes!

From the mouths of babes...

B., almost 4 years old, told me, “At the end of my movie there are monsters.  It’s fiction, that’s not real.”       

From the mouths of babes...

At the zoo we were looking at waterbucks, an African deer.  “Are these cantaloupes?” asked K.

 

Back to school week

The first week of school is always crazy, busy, and exciting - for the children AND the teachers.  Here's a peek at some of the things we've been doing...

We put injured animals in an "ambulance" and made /a/ sounds as we drove it around.

 We made uppercase letter A crafts, cutting out the shape, writing our names on it, and then adding a poem about alligators and an alligator paint stamp to it.  We also made lowercase a crafts that look like apples with ants crawling on them.

 We made new friends...

and played in the sand.

 We found new perspectives, new ways of looking at the world we're in.

 We tried out all the playground equipment, from swings...

 ... to the climbing gazebo...

 ... and of course the slides!

There were new things to try out, like pattern blocks...

                                                             ...dinosaurs...

                                                                                              ... and other math manipulatives.

We threw bread for the ducks that live in the pond behind my house...

 ... got messy

 ... and found quiet places to hang out with friends.

 We ran ourselves ragged - and my dog Patriot too!

 We took off our shoes and felt the sand squishy and soft between our toes...

 ... and played with colorful ice on a hot afternoon.

 That meant negotiating with friends for the toys, cooperating and sharing.

 We mixed, poured and dripped the melting purple ice water, fascinated with the cold, the color, and the process.

 We found yummy ways to cool off too!  We all know what it means when Ms. Paula starts singing her "Pop, pop, popsicle" song.

 We read about astronauts, and dressed up in an astronaut costume...

 ... made a page for our abc album with stamps and stickers of things that start with the letter A.

 We hunted for roly pollies, and collected them in a container so we could check them out.

 We dug with trucks in the dirt at the sensory table.  Did I mention we got dirty and messy?

 We each made a page for our class book, Up On Top, a variation of Dr. Seuss's Ten Apples Up On Top.  Class books are our favorites to read, because we helped to make them!

 We told which kind of apple we each like the best, and made a graph to show which we think is the yummiest flavor.  Several friends signed "equal," because red and yellow both had 4 votes!

 Next we had a blind taste test, trying out (peeled) pieces of green, yellow and red apple, and deciding which bowl of apples tasted best.

 When Ms. Paula revealed which flavors were in each bowl, we found out that many of us prefer different kinds of apples than what we thought we did.  We did some clever thinking, and decided that when Ms. Paula goes to the store, she should probably buy red apples the most often, because the most people like red ones the best.

We played in the water table, and of course, got completely soaked.   Good news!  It is very hot, and the water helped us to feel cool and comfortable outside.

 We enjoyed the sunshine, but most of all...

                                                                      WE HAD FUN!

By the way, as of this writing, it's only Thursday.  We still have to make and eat our applesauce tomorrow - but that's another post.