All Aboard!

We learned a lot about Freight Trains today. The book I used is called, Inside Freight Trains by Donald Crews. It is a wonderful book - some of the pages slide open to reveal what is inside each car. We set up a train at preschool. The driving wheel turned into a train with chairs behind it. The favorite thing to do was to punch the train tickets. One of the teacher assistants helped with turn taking (to be the engineer with hat included) and all went swimmingly!! (This group did amazing with turn taking.) 

Here we go!!

Here's the preschool train!

And there was other train playing too.

Getting dressed up, adding cushions, phones, purses, etc.
are all essential for riding the train you know!

Applesauce!

Homemade applesauce. There is nothing like it. We made it today and there was not a drop of it leftover. It's easy to make. All you need are cooked apples and an applesauce maker (that's not the technical name of it). The children really, really liked it!! By the way, I cooked a variety of apples: Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Honey Crisp and some Gala. 

During circle we thought of things
we've learned about apples.
Forgive the lack of sentence structure!

We are ready to make some applesauce!

Turn and crank.

The children decided that the core, stem and seeds
may not be as tasty as the juicy
goodness of the applesauce.
One child exclaimed, GROSS as he saw
that stuff ooze out of the end....

I cooked a smaller second batch of apples.
Some children wanted turn #2 to crank
the machine. 

All gone!!

We are full of applesauce!!
(12 out of the 15 kiddos loved the stuff!)
WE LOVE APPLES!!

Stomp!

Even though we are talking about apples this week, the sensory table is full of acorns and buckeyes. Inside each of the hard outer shells are the nuts that squirrels love so much. We did some stomping today to discover what was inside these hard shells. 

The smaller acorns were easier to crack open.
Ms. Larisa had to use a hammer for the
buckeyes. They have a really hard outer
shell.

Stomp. Crack!

Look what we discovered inside!

More stomping...

It took some powerful stomping
to crack these shells!

And the children were good helpers cleaning
up the broken and empty shells.
We put the nuts on the playground outside in hopes
that squirrels will find them.
We'll check next week to see if they are still there!

Happy Stomping!! 

Halloween!

There was a calm excitement in class the last few days -- getting to wear costumes to preschool is pretty awesome.

These gals wanted to use my
special teacher wand and tiara.

Do you recognize us?
MWF group

TR group

elephant city

Building can be a quick task or it can be more deliberate, intentional and complex. Today is an example of the latter. One cool thing about team work is the collaboration and language that is taking place. Many ideas coming together. Negotiations and compromise are a must. It usually starts out with a few children building, then others join in and add their part, and then before you know it you have an elephant city or a skyscraper. (They couldn't quite agree on what it should be called).

The process is important.
Each piece has its place.
Deliberate. Intentional. Complex.

Getting there. But not quite ready.

I was ready to take the picture
and then a child decided it needed more...
so the orange cones were added.
This is when the discussion of what
it should be called was occurring....
Team work. Collaboration!!

Getting fancy

Some children were getting all fancy in the house area on Thursday. They got all dressed up and were ready to go...... but hadn't quite decided where it is they were going, but they were ready!!

The expressions here are priceless. 

Teachers need to get all fancy too.....

worms

Big, fat, juicy ones. Oh how they wiggle and squirm. Some children dug right into the dirt and others stood back, cautiously watching. Overall they were very fascinated with the little critters. 

24 squiggly, wiggly night crawler worms.....

Let me just look first and then I'll touch them. 

The teacher was strongly encouraged
to pick one up, but the child bolted.