What a great family of children in the Dolphin class. They have been learning a lot since the start of the school year. One of the main things we have been learning is about how to be a friend. This includes how to join in to play, how to take turns and share, how to seek out a friend, how to listen and solve problems, how to handle emotions, and so much more.

Children learn best through their play. Through play they have the opportunity to try out many of the things they observe in their lives. Through play the begin to make sense of the way the world works, what people do, science, math, literacy, and social learning.

Play is fun and comes naturally to children. Look at this little girl's experiences with the Magna Tiles. Through manipulating them in a way that was pleasing to her she learned about shapes, and patterns, and fractions, and magnets.

We do a lot of our learning outside at ICP. Here the children are working in the garden. They have gathered rocks to mark off a planting area. They are observing the new baby sprouts, as well as what is happening to the older plants as fall progresses.

We took our clipboards and pencils outside and made observational drawings of something that we saw in the garden. Three year olds are still learning how to draw shapes, and how to make their drawing represent something that they have seen or know. We provide lots of opportunities for them to have a try at this kind of drawing, and each child brings to it just where they are in their development, which can be a very wide range.

Our school is located on what was once an old farm. There are some very old fruit trees on the property. One old apple tree had a huge crop of apples this year. The children were fascinated with how the branches almost touched the ground. They were challenged to walk on the roly-poly apples that had fallen on the ground. We picked a bucket full of apples to take into the school.

We washed the apples, and a Teaching Parent peeled them, Then we cut them into little bits and put them in a pan to make applesauce. We added sugr and cinnamon and a bit of water and cooked them until they were soft. Then we tasted the applesauce. It was yummy!

One day we discovered a large spider in the mud kitchen sink. It was trying to climb out, but it could not climb on the slippery walls of the sink. We caught it in a bug viewer and took it inside. During Choice Time the children had opportunities to closely observe the spider with their eyes and a magnifying glass. We looked at a good book about spiders.

We made models of the spider using playdough, making the eight legs and eight eyes that spiders have.

We also made observational drawings of the spider, labeling it's parts. Not every child was interested in trying this activity, and that's ok. At ICP we try to meet every child where they are in both their interests and development. Remember that large range of development that is normal for 3-4 year olds? Not every is interested in this kind of work yet.

Other children were fascinated with creating Oobelek, a non-Neutonian solid. This was made using corn starch and spray bottles of colored water. Using a spray bottle helps strengthen and develop the muscles needed for writing. It also is an opportunity to become aware of how to aim your spray bottle so that it does not spray the child across from you at the center. What happens when you add just a little water? What happens when you add more? What happens to the different colors?

What happens when you scrape it with a spoon? What does it feel like when you touch it, hold it, squeeze it? What happens when you spray more water on it in your hand? So much learning!

One day the snack parent brought whole apples she was going to cut up for snack. Instead, we got out the spiral peeler/slicer. The children were fascinated with what happened to the apple peel, and also to the apple. How did the machine work? Why does it have that spiral crevice down the stick? What happens if I turn the handle one way, or the other? How did the apple core come out? Do the apple peeling taste good peeled like this? The learning happens in a fun way, under the guidance of the Teaching Parents. Teaching Parents learn to value their interactions with the children, and how to ask open ended questions that help the children discover their own answers. We adults try to remember that we are learning right along with the children.

One day we visited the Wildlife Sanctuary across our parking lot. We took bags to gather fall items. We touched the trees, and looked up into their branches.

There were so many wonderful fall treasures to find. Look at this huge leaf!

We harvested potatoes from a recycled compost bag. We had to dig through the dirt to find the potato treasure. There were all sizes of potatoes hiding in the dirt.

Inside we had to wash the potatoes. It took some scrubbing to get the dirt off, but we cooperated and worked as a team.

See all of the different sizes and shapes?

Of course we visited the pumpkin patch. Farmer Karen was driving her tractor. She was carrying a large box on the front of the tractor. She was getting pumpkins from the field to sell.

We followed the tracks the tractor made. We got to get up close to the tractor and look at all of it's parts. The wheels were bigger than we are!

Look! An animal in the field! Is it real? We went to investigate. No. It was not real. What kind of animal is it? Why is it in the field? We talked about it and guessed and decided it was a coyote there to scare away birds and animals that might eat the pumpkins.

We explored the pumpkin patch. There is a large vineyard on the farm. We walked through the rows of grape vines. The grapes had already been picked, but once in a while we found some grapes on the vines that looked more like raisins. There were workers taking down netting from the vines. The netting was to keep the birds from pecking at the grapes. A couple of children pretended they had beaks and tried pecking through the net.

We bought a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch and took it back to school to carve. We took out the seeds and pulp from inside the pumpkin. It was slimy. Some children liked this job, and others did not.

Then we carefully removed the seeds from the pulp. The seeds were very slippery. We washed the seeds and roasted them and ate them in circle. Some of us loved them, and some of us did not. That's ok. We are learning that it's ok to feel differently about things.

As a part of learning about the fall and what happens to the plants and animals around us, we made a habitat or home for some woodland animals. We made trees, and nests, and food for the animals.

We carefully observed them to make sure they had everything they needed.

Some of us especially liked the squirrels. We get to watch the squirrels outside our preschool window when they come to the squirrel feeder. They also eat the bird food from the bird feeder, little rascals.

The mud kitchen is always popular. We use what we find on the playground for ingredients. Besides dirt or sand and water, we use pinecones, rocks, pine needles, grass, moss, and more. These two friends are gathering the fallen fruit from the Arbutus tree (food for the birds and not for people).

The fruit comes in different colors depending on how ripe it is. The unripe ones are hard, but the ripe, red ones are quite squishy and were fun in our mud cooking. Just think about what the children are learning as they play in this area: measurement (how many scoops of water or dirt are just right, and how many are too much?), viscosity (why is this soup so watery, and this chocolate so thick?), math (counting how many things to add to their cooking, or how many bowls or spoons they will need to feed their friends), language (words to describe what they are doing and how things feel), and, of curse, social skills (inviting guests to come to the restaurant, asking someone not to put things in their bowl, coordinating their efforts to cook together).

Another day we actually became the animals in our habitat. This meant we had to think about how they moved, where they lived, and what they eat. This boy was a slug. He knows that slugs slime along on one foot.

These girls were squirrels in a nest. They made their nest up high on a table. They made it cozy and warm, and they found some nuts and food to eat.

This girl chose to be a fox. She made her home in a cave under a table. Oh, she was a busy fox, and she gathered lots and lots of things to bring into her den.

This slug knows he eats plants, and he enjoyed a delicious pretend lettuce leaf for his supper.

We learned about safety. We learned to make sure everyone in the car has their seatbelt on. We learned about smoke alarms, and why we need to get out of school or our homes and head to our safe place when the smoke alarm goes off. We counted the smoke alarms in our school, and in our homes, and we found a safe place at home and school as well. We visited the fire station.

There is so much to see and do at the fire station, but the most important thing is learning about the fire fighter's safety gear and why he or she needs it. We learned that if we see a fire fighter all dressed up in her or his gear they are there to help us, and not to be afraid of them.

We went on a fall scavenger hunt. We had a list of things to look for.

It was fun, and hard, to make a mark in the boxes next to the things on our list.

We found a piece of a dead tree with holes in it. We can see each other through the holes!

We found the bird baths in the Wildlife Sanctuary and cleaned them out.

We went back to the garden to see how it was changing. There were still flowers on the vine tunnel. These are edible nasturtiums, so we all tasted one. Some liked them, and some did not.

The carved pumpkins from the classroom had been brought out to the garden. They were squishy and covered with mold. The decomposers are working to turn them back into dirt.

We love to listen to stories in class. Often we have tummy time in circle when Teacher Ellen reads us stories. Lying on our bellies supported by our elbows strengthens the muscles at the brain stem and helps with developing self-regulation. We are also calmer, and wiggle less, and we are learning how to be respectful of our neighbors and make sure they can see, too.

Our fall quarter Eco School goal was Sustainable Food. We learned about red light and green light foods. Red light foods are foods you only eat a little bit of. They do not help our bodies grow strong and healthy. Green light foods are foods we can eat a lot of as they do help us grow strong and healthy. We made a poster of both kinds of foods.

We also played farmer's market and sold healthy fruits and vegetables. We sorted them by color. Then we put the ones we wanted into our grocery bags. Everything cost one dollar, so we counted how many we had in our bags, and then gave that many dollars to the person at the cash register. Lots of math skills.

On pizza day we all brought our favorite pizza topping. We sorted and graphed the toppings, deciding what we had the most of, and what we had the least of. This was also an opportunity to learn what kinds of things our friends like to eat, and who likes the same things, and who likes different things. Then we used real pizza dough and shaped our pizzas, choosing what we wanted to put on top. We baked them up in the oven and had them for snack. They were delicious!

Learning about our families is an important part of our social studies. Each family has it's own culture, and for young children, learning about culture starts by learning about what they are most familiar with, their families. We had lots of grandparents visit on Grandparent's Day. The children get to share their school with their grandparents, and the grandparents get to share what they liked to do when they were little. They both get to play and do all of the activities together.

Outside play was fun,

and so were tea parties in the housekeeping center. This is Great Grandma enjoying her tea.

We had baked cookies to share with our gusts during snack,

and we got to put frosting and sprinkles on them. Mmm!

A dump truck delivered a large load of rich, black compost for the garden. It is important to feed the soil of the sleeping garden over the winter. We worked together to load the garden cart and buckets to carry it over to the garden.

Look at our dirty helping hands! We laid newspaper down on some spots of grass where we want to plant herbs and flowers in the spring. Then we covered the newspaper with a thick blanket of compost. What will happen to the grass? What will happen to the newspaper?

Ice Day! We all froze fancy ice at home and brought it in to preschool. It was all different shapes and sizes and colors and had such different things frozen into the ice. We stacked the ice and made an ice castle. We sprinkled the ice with salt to help the pieces stick together.

The salt changed the ice. Holes began to appear in it. We use eye droppers to squirt colored water into the holes. We drew pictures of who would live in an ice castle.

As it got colder and frostier (and even snowy!) outside, we played different ways to keep warm. Look at this amazing fireplace we built in the housekeeping center!