Make New Friends, But Keep the Old

This week was very exciting for our Thursday/ Friday crew. Two new members joined our class! Cadence will be joining our 2 day preschool group, and her older sister Olive will be assisting the teachers on those days as a junior helper. We were so happy to see how instantly they connected with their new classmates, and we are so thrilled to have them join our community!

This week, we continued to celebrate the beginning of autumn. The class did a beautiful job decorating their own nature crowns using recycled boxes and materials found in nature (leaves, flowers, seeds, acorns, miniature pinecones and more)! We also introduced the process of felting by creating felt acorns! The class loved seeing the soft pieces of felt transform as we rolled it into balls in warm soapy water. They looked so beautiful when we glued little acorn caps on them! These will be adorning our fall nature table and will be used for various activities before being sent home. :)

Some of the class's favorite books this week were "Goodbye Summer, Hello Autumn," "The Apple Cake," "Apples and Honey, a Rosh Hashanah Story" and "It's Apple Picking Time!" We enjoyed lots of apple and autumn themed songs and poems at our circle times this week as well. One of the highlights of our week was making our own homemade applesauce! Everyone loved using the old fashioned apple peeler/ corer to prepare the apples, adding in the cinnamon and maple syrup, and of course smelling and tasting the results of their hard work. Seconds were had by all!

This group loves getting out and exploring, so each day this week we enjoyed taking our lunch out of the classroom and having a picnic! On Thursday we enjoyed picnicking at Remick Farm and on Friday we settled at Remick playground.

Next week, we plan on introducing some gentle phonics lessons through stories and hands- on activities, and we also plan on reflecting on our first month of school by looking through photos of some of our favorite experiences and adding entries to our portfolio journals.

Goodbye Sweet September, and Hello October!