Hay Bales in the Playground

We are always looking for new things to add to our playground. Early in October, Miss Marta had the idea to add bales of hay to switch it up for the fall. At first we piled the hay for climbing and gave the children the opportunity to explore it. 

 

The next week, I rearranged the hay to make little huts or crawl spaces. I added pumpkins, play dishes, and dolls. We decided to call it the pumpkin patch. 

The children immediately started using the covered spaces as houses.

 

 They took the dolls inside the "houses".

And relaxed on (comfy?) pumpkins.

They also spent time carrying and rolling the pumpkins. 

 This week, Miss Erin turned the area into a boat by rearranging the hay. She added a sail, fishing rods, and paper plate fish.

Fall Leaf Necklaces

Autumn is here and, although we live in San Diego where not many trees lose their leaves in the fall, we were able to find a good number of very pretty leaves during a walk around the neighborhood. 

After our walk, we used plastic needles to sew the leaves together. 

The children asked to add beads to their necklaces. 

Beautiful!

Pine Cone Turkeys

A few weeks ago I was taking a walk and found a whole bunch of pine cones that had fallen from a tree onto the sidewalk about a block from the school. Later in the day, I went back with some of the children to gather up the pine cones. At the time I didn't have a plan for them but I was sure they would come in handy with the holidays coming up.

Today, we used some of the pine cones to make Thanksgiving turkeys. I showed the children how to squeeze some glue onto them and tuck feathers into the pine cones.

Then we added eyes and a little piece of orange pipe cleaner as a beak.

Aren't they cute!

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Thanks for Thanksgiving

Thanks for Thanksgiving by Julie Markes is my favorite Thanksgiving book. The illustrations are beautiful and it reminds us of all things we have to be thankful for. After reading the book today at circle time, we went around the circle and each child said what he or she is thankful for. I wrote what they said on feathers that we put on our class turkey. 

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Handprint Turkeys

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without hand print turkeys. 

We smeared ours with glue and added colorful feathers. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Painting with Pumpkins

We have some pumpkins left over from Halloween that we decided to use for our painting project today. Instead of stamps, we dipped the mini pumpkins in paint and used them to make prints on paper.

The pumpkins were a fun alternative to paint brushes. 

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