Leaf People

During our march through learning about creation, we took some time to talk about plants.  Being natural living things, plants are fantastic specimens of art.  In class we read the book Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert.


This author used leaves to create birds, fish, cows and other animals.  Great idea!  So we took a box outside to the playground and filled it with leaves we could use to make our own Leaf People. (We certainly can't limit ourselves to just leaf men!)

Unfortunately we didn't have sweet gum balls and acorns as embellishments like Ms. Ehlert did so we had to improvise with the next best thing: google eyes.

Firetruck Fun

A big highlight of October is the annual visit with firefighters and their firetruck and ambulance.

There was much talk about hoses and water and ladders and axes and smoke. Yay!  Each year without fail, the children are AMAZED to learn that firefighters wear seatbelts!!

The children were also very interested in the "rolling bed" in the ambulance.  They all knew that an ambulance takes a sick person to the doctor very quickly.

It is always exciting to encounter our community helpers in person.  Preschoolers are a bit too young to understand the value of 911, but they are old enough to learn what to do in an emergency.  If a firefighter ever comes to them, it is important that they don't hide.  They need to jump right out and let the firefighter see them.  It's a good lesson to reinforce at home.

Puzzles and Games

One of the skills we measure at School for Little Children is whether or not your child solves puzzles. 
What does that mean exactly?
When we think of solving puzzles, most of us narrowly think of working jigsaw puzzles.  Jigsaw puzzles ARE a kind of puzzle, but there are so many, many more!
At school, we take the w i d e view of solving puzzles.  To us, any toy or manipulative with pieces that need assembly or ordering or nesting is a puzzle.  Just look in the photo above. One Bunny is matching egg halves to each other.  Another Bunny is ordering pegs by size, shape and color.  Also on the table are beads for stringing, and pattern blocks to create pictures on mats.  ALL of these are puzzles!!  And they all need solving.  It is important to give the children a variety of puzzles to solve so they can exercise different cognitive skills with each attempt.  Lucky for these kiddos our closets are stocked with fun activities for them to try each week!