Dear Families,

We had quite a day yesterday filling our hours with all things “trees”!

In the morning we went for a trail hike. Looking up, down, and all around we came upon a variety of things from uprooted trees and a yellow caterpillar to a lone mushroom, lots of lichen, moss and flowers of varying colors. This morning we read Sue Williams’ story I Went Walking, converted the title to We Went Hiking and created our own version of the book based on what we saw during yesterday’s hike.

We also worked on two art projects that focused on trees but in very different ways. First we took a look at the painting Tree of Life by Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. The children then painted their paper gold, let it dry, and then with brown paint created the tree trunk and swirling branches to mimic that of Klimt. Later in the afternoon, they worked with oil pastels to add design elements to the branches as Klimt had done. The results are hanging in our room – please come take a look!

Our second art project was making leaf prints in a most unusual way. This involved the children pulling a fresh leaf from their BCD trees. In general, we ask the children not to pull leaves off of their trees, but in this instance we needed fresh, healthy leaves that would have lots of chlorophyll within their veins.  Once back inside, they each placed a leaf on some cardstock, covered it with papertowel and then gently hammered the leaf to release the chlorophyll. All of that hammering resulted in some beautiful prints.

We ended our day working with Mrs. Allentuck’s fourth grade class to make tissue paper flowers to be presented to all of the grandparents and special friends who are visiting on Friday. We made close to 100 flowers!

Enjoy the long weekend with your children.

All the best,

Kay