Pumpkin Patch Field Trip!

Arriving at the Pumpkin Patch.

(If you notice at the end of this post we have a picture at the same table...but you can tell we are a little drained of energy!)

With our Pumpkins and Farmer Phil. He taught us all about organic produce: how he doesn't use any chemicals on his plants and how the pumpkins are a little lighter in color due to this. The pumpkins we picked are the best ones to use in pumpkin pie.

On the Tractor Ride

The kids were pretty facinated by this big tractor so we took a picture by it before we entered the corn maze.

Visiting the Animals.

Farmer Phil brought out some food for the kids to feed to the goats.

They all LOVED getting to pet the rabbit

The Geese and the Duck were very LOUD which just cracked the kids up after the got over the initial shock of the honking!

Ready to eat our snack and go home! I told them to all "lean in" so I could fit them and their pumpkins into the picture and laying their heads on the table was the end result. Although I will say that had it not been only a 10 minute car ride home, we may have had a few sleepers!

What a fun day!

The Star In The Apple

Our second week of October our theme was "Apples". We learned about the different parts of an apple and read the story of "A Little Red House with No Window and No Doors and a Star Inside" and then we cut open and apple for each child and they got to see the stars insided their apples. After this they took out their apple seeds, counted them and taped them to their apple diagram.

Artist for October: Rembrandt- Our Own Self Portraits

Our Artist for the month of October was Rembrandt. We read a fun book called, "Rembrandt and the Boy who Drew Dogs" and we learned about Rembrandt's fixation with painting "Self Portraits". The kids enjoyed drawing their own self portrait after we discussed how a portrait has lots of details, and how we could add detail to our pictures (eyes, mouth nose, ears, hair, eyelashes, eyebrows, teeth etc etc.). We also discussed how different shapes could be used to make different parts of the picture (oval for faces, circles for eyes and noses, lines for hair, sqaures for teeth). It was fun to see the results after having this discussion as I could see how hard they each tried to add extra details to their picture!

First Week of October: Things that Grow

Our composer for the Month of October was Mozart. We learned about how Mozart played the violin and the piano and how he started playing the piano and writing music when he was only 5 years old. We also learned that one of the songs he composed "Ah-Vous Dirai-je, maman" is a tune that we recognize as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". The kids had fun scarf-dancing to a Mozart rendition of Twinkle Twinkle.

During the month of October we studied "Things that Grow". We started off the month by learning about the life cycle of a bean and the kids each chose a seed of their own to plant. We planted: raddishes, carrots, and onions. We have spent time each preschool day this month checking on our plants and watering them and currently everyone has something pushing up through the soil in their square so they are very excited about this.

Family Trees

After our month of studying people we had fun today in preschool finishing up our "Family Trees" This was a 3 step project. 1. Taking pictures with disposable cameras the first week of preschool 2. Painting our "Abstract" trees using Feet and Hand prints (the feet created the trunk and the hands created leaves...if you couldn't tell!) 3. Taking our developed pictures and cutting and gluing them onto our trees. They all worked so hard using the scissors and gluing their pictures in place.

One at home Suggestion for those leftover pictures that were sent home with your child: Let them create their own book using their pictures. Have them glue the pictures onto paper and underneath each picture have them dictate what they would like to say. Staple the book and keep it on the bookshelf for future reading. They LOVE having their own book to read and it reinforces reading and writing skills when they see their own words in print.