September 2021: Our School, Our Harvest, Our Feelings
School Exploration
So many new spaces to discover this school year!
The children had a wonderful first month of preschool here in the sunny Ogden weather. They enjoyed exploring all of the play options within each of our inspiring school spaces. So many new friendships have been budding during free play time, group activities and circle time discussions.
They’re joy and laughter and curiosity was contagious to their teachers as they discovered new spaces and creative play items and even tested the boundaries of what is appropriate behaviors here at SimpleLife. We are so excited to watch this new crew of little humans grow throughout this school year!
Monthly Mindful Focus:
Feeling our Feelings
One of the first things that students learn here at preschool is that though not all behaviors are allowed, ALL feelings are welcome! We have spent this month focused on noticing, labeling, and expressing our feelings. Starting a new school experience can bring a lot of big emotions!
Each day when they arrive, children check in with their feelings and place their stick person in a corresponding place on our feelings chart. This powerful skill of checking in with our emotions is something that takes practice. We observed that in the beginning most of the children automatically came in and placed their stick person in the smiley “happy” pocket. But as time went on, children began to gain the confidence to place their person in any number of pockets, including “mad”, “sad”, “tired”, “silly”, etc. No wrong answers here!
Harvest Exploration
All our hard work in the gardens has paid off with a bountiful harvest!
What a fun and delicious time of year it is around SimpleLife Preschool. Much of our harvest came from seeds that last years’ classes planted in the spring and cared for through the end of the school year. Now after a summer away, they were amazed to see how big everything had gotten, especially the towering mammoth sunflowers they planted form tiny seeds!
Children learned about where our food comes from and how it grows. At the beginning of the month, before taking the children out to harvest, we loved leading a circle time asking them how they think different fruits and vegetables grow. It was tricky! Some children guessed that perhaps pumpkins grew underground or that melons grew on trees? Then we got to outside and learn by picking things ourselves. We found carrots, beets, and potatoes underground. We found berries on bushes and beans on vines. We found apples and nuts on trees and tomatoes on plants. What a delight it was to learn by interacting directly with nature. Not to mention it was delicious too!
Fruit & Veggie Exploration
An in-depth study using our five senses.
We explored the variety of fruits and vegetables we harvested by cutting them open, touching, smelling and tasting them. And just like the master artists of old, we couldn’t resist making still-life drawings and paintings of our beautiful garden treasures!
Even the teachers learned something new as we tried to categorize our produce into “fruits” and “vegetables” categories. Did you know that there is another category called “fruit vegetables”?! Its for all those things that don’t quite fit either category like tomatoes and pumpkins! Curiosity and life long learning are two core values of SimpleLife School!
The children especially loved learning about fruits and vegetables by discovering all the yummy things we can do with them. We made fruit and vegetable smoothies to go with our popcorn (that was a fun picnic!) We cut, baked, pureed, and re-baked our pumpkins into warm cookies and we picked fresh grapes and dried them into raisins. When food and science mix, delicious learning happens!
Art Exploration
Clay Pinch Pots & “Stickies”
Though children have access to art materials each and every day during table time, our first official art project of the year was a clay exploration. Children were shocked to learn that clay was made of dirt and that things around their house were then made from clay. Who knew that things like dishes, toilets, sinks and tile could be make from…..dirt!
It was such a sweet pleasure to watch these little fingers working hard to make their pinch pots. The children were surprised that “real” clay was much different to work with than play dough. The children worked through their delights and frustrations and were proud of their little pots. Now it has been a lesson in patience, waiting for them to dry and get fired in Miss Jenny’s kiln!
Another fun exploration was discovering the many ways we could stick things together. Science and art overlapped (as they often do) as the children experimented with glue, tape and staplers to come up with a project that didn’t have any parts falling off! Many children found the stapler was by far the most fun though it couldn’t be used for everything, children found out that alas things like macaroni and buttons can’t be stapled to paper.
Cooking & Cleaning Day
SimpleLife’s first official Cooking and Cleaning Day was a huge success!
In true Montessori style, children were given responsibility to clean and care for their school. We hope that the children will be able to have as much fun taking on some similar responsibilities at as they are having at school.
Wiping, scrubbing, sweeping and moping were music, giggle and laughter filled activities here are preschool! And what’s the best reward for some good housekeeping? Some yummy baking! So we filled the house with the smell of fresh baked cookies and the children are already looking forward to our next Cooking and Cleaning day!
