The Dolphins have been spending a lot of time in the sand area digging trenches and holes and filling them with water. They haul the water from a large container that catches the rain. This is important work. They have made dams, and watched flow, as the water moves from one area to another.

They have built bridges, and celebrated when a large toy, or even themselves, can make it across without getting wet.

Some children worked hard in the mud kitchen fixing food for the workers.

There is nature all around us when we are outside. Look! Look! A bug!

Look very carefully and you will see a beetle on the tree bark. We looked it up on Teacher Ellen's phone to see what kind of beetle it is. It is a stink bug.

This class loves to dance. Sometimes it's King and Queen dancing, and sometimes it's Super Hero Dancing. This time it was ballet dancing.

Just look at these beautiful moves and how serious the girls are.

We have been discovering the Legos. This boy was so proud when he built a tractor.

Oh, and check it out now: a witch is driving the tractor! How silly!

We have been doing a lot of exploring with balls and ramps. Here we are using a ramp for cars that have been dipped in paint. At first the cars went too slow, so we asked how we needed to change the ramp.

The decision was to adjust the ramp so it was higher. The children directed us to make it like this. But, oh, no! Now the cars crash. We finally figured out how to make the ramp so the cars went at just the right speed.

Time out for a little computer work.

We also experimented with building towers out of boxes. It took some experimenting to figure out which boxes work best on the bottom, and which ones on the top. It is challenging for the Teaching Parents not to give the children the answers, or make the suggestions, but ask open ended questions instead. "Why do you think your tower keeps falling over? What could you do differently?"

After learning about tower building, we added a pendulum to knock the towers over. The first day we had to figure out how high to build the towers so that the pendulum would reach them. The next day the children suggested we add rope to the pendulum so that it hangs down lower. It was hard to get the pendulum to go where we wanted it to. Sometimes it just swung around the tower in a circle, but when it knocked it down, we all cheered.

More ramps, this time with painted marbles.

We had to collect all of the marbles from the tub after we rolled them down the paper. It looked really cool.

We also used gutter and drain pipe to make a ball ramp. It was hard to figure out how to make it all work (and challenging for the Teaching Parent once again not to solve the problems for the children). So much learning while we have fun!