In The Orchard! The beginning of my favorite season!!

I LOVE fall!  The change of the season here in the Midwest is full of color and wonder through the eyes of a little one.  Experiencing seasons with a preschool child is like seeing  it all for the first time.  I love watching their eyes glimmer with awe while holding a fallen leaf that is changing from green to red and then to gold.  

It is the perfect time to teach colors, textures, and shapes.  It is the perfect time to teach about seasons, months, and holidays with so many of the heavy hitters right around the bend.  It is the perfect time to again experience the beauty of the hillsides, farms, and valleys that we ran around barefoot in just a month prior.  

Fall in the Ozarks is miraculous....so, of course, we will learn about every aspect in Pre-K!

Twigs, seeds, leaves, and little ones!

'I love fun!  Looks at those busy hands and happy kiddos!  SWOON!!!

Our "Into The Orchard," theme from Mother Goose Time has been packed full of science, math, literacy, sensory, music, movement, and social/emotional skills builders

We are learning a new seasons song, "All The Leaves Are Falling Down!"  (sang to London Bridges)  All the leaves are falling down, falling down, falling down!  Orange, red leaves all around, it is Autumn!

It's simple and easy to learn.  We also cut out orange and red leaves and practiced these colors while singing our little tune, practicing our yoga tree pose and "falling" our leaves again and again!  

We then JUST picked up the orange leaves, and then the red leaves to make certain even our bittiest babes were getting hands on experience with our color study. 

During Creative Arts we again used the color red while painting with our fingers and brushes, our little red apples.  Counting the seeds we placed in the middle allowed us to sneak a bit of concrete counting practice into our Creative Arts time.  (We count everything!)  We observed that when we mixed our blue and yellow paint, we made shades of green (see how I was able to sneak a bit of science in there!)!  We then used our newly created color to make the leaves for our apple and OUT CAME THE GLUE!

Glue is a toddler obsession!  

We give them a bottle and let them SQUEEZE!  It puddles, squirts, and drips, but it is a vital part of the learning process. 

"As children draw, paint, and make collages, they are learning about the world (color, shape and size of objects). When they use paints, glue, and markers, children are planning, experimenting, and problem solving. As children mix paint, they learn to understand cause and effect. Art gives children chances to make decisions, and to learn from the experience of making choices about their art work."

All hands ON!

We studied Johnny Appleseed with apple seeds, pots, plants, creative arts, and a sweet new book, "Johnny Appleseed!"

GEOGRAPHY!  

This cute little book not only served as an opener for our creative arts project that allowed us to give Johnny a face, put a pot hat on his head, give him clothing placement, but it also had math and GEOGRAPHY!  This book listed three states!!! 

During the reading of this book we also noticed that it introduced skip counting by 5's!  

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!!  

I am in LOVE!!!  Seriously, each of the apple trees had five apples.  As we came closer to the ending, it had six trees with five apples each.....do the math!  We were able to count to 30 together, then skip count by 5's and reach 30, all in a book about Johnny Appleseed!!!

This led to an oranges and cherries patterning activity and even I left feeling a bit smarter! HA!!!

We are observing seeds, roots, trees, fruits, completing patterns, making art, painting, growing our awareness of people, history, places, and events; coloring, recognizing letters, numbers, while learning new chants and songs!!  

It's all in a day of play!  

I wish you well and I hope you get to play today. - L