Dear Families,
We continue to watch in amazement as our apple heads transform into leathery, wrinkled characters. “They’re old people,” someone said recently when viewing them upon a windowsill. We were able to read a book by Elisa Kleven called The Apple Doll, which beautifully told the story of a little girl who loved an apple tree and decided to make one of the apples her friend as she begins a scary transition to school. Soon her class is filled with beautiful ‘Grandma’ and ‘Grandpa’ dolls. It made me realize that children rarely have the opportunity to play with ‘elders.’
Tan and wrinkly apple faces!
I have shared pictures of my grandmother with the children recently as we have begun to anticipate the special visits of Grandparents’ Day. They were very interested to see my family and to look at my grandmother as a little girl, a teenager, a mother, and as an ‘old lady.’ We have also been checking on the progress of the long strips of apple skin we saved from our apple crisp project. These, too, have transformed over time into remarkably sturdy leathery strings. I always like to ask ‘why?’ Why do you think this change has occurred? What does it feel like? What do you notice?
Examining the strips of apple skin. “It got so hard!” “And it could really be a string.”
When I ask the children to look closely, they often get a magnifying glass. They are such helpful tools to see small details and to help focus and slow down! “I see dots here.” “Feels hard.” “I’m not going to eat this now.” I remind the class of how our block of clay was as hard as a rock and then after days in water it became soft, ‘gooshy,’ and eventually dissolved into ‘paint.’ When we scooped the clay out of water to create sculptures it became as hard as a rock again.
Someone brought me this dead wasp to examine. “I’m so brave!”
Everyone took turns looking closely with a magnifying glass. I am so proud of the children for noticing the tiny details of their world!
We have been spending lots of time observing the watery world of our fish. There are ‘scientific notebooks’ for all the scientists in our class to write down their observations next to the tank. Sometimes these are lines like the bubbles that continually rise. Sometimes they are swirls of color like the motion of fish. At circle time we have been singing a funny song about fish and the children imagine swimming and floating (and riding a bike!) through a huge fish tank or ocean that is our entire class!
Looking closely at our friends in their watery world.
Documenting and writing in science notebooks. “I’m a very good writer.”
Ollie makes a fish tank out of the blocks.
“All the little fishy went swimming in the ocean. Then they got on their bikes and pedaled up a hill. Until one little fish said, ‘Wait a minute. We can’t ride bikes! We’re not people. We’re fish!’ Let’s go swimming, let’s go swimming…..”
We continue using our song about Farmer Brown’s apples to learn about adding and subtracting. The children love to participate by erasing an apple and counting how many are left.
We saw what the numbers 1-5 look like.
Helping Colin collect all the real apples outside. Too many to count!!
I am looking forward to our trip to Sonya’s cafe’ next week and to our special day with grandparents in our class. It will be such a joy to share the children’s accomplishments and routines with our visitors!
Happy October!
Sarah
Quiet reading time.
Trying to catch leaves before they touch the ground.
Playing with shadows.
