Dear, Wonderful Parents
I often start these little posts jumping right in to what the children are doing and playing. Today, however, I'd like to share a few short thoughts with you.
First, I would like to thank each and every one of you for making this a memorable, pleasurable year for our little group. This group would not have had so much fun and learned so much without your everyday loving support. From those special items your children have brought to share to just making sure your kids were able to make it to preschool on time daily (and believe me, I know how much work and discipline it takes on the parent's part!), I have felt very grateful for the structure you've provided your children. This has enabled them to come to school ready to learn and play together.
And I couldn't imagine our Plumtree year without any of your children. Their individual contributions more than certainly made the whole greater than the sum of its parts!
Please know, too, that this is our last blogpost. We're all off to new summer adventures, new preschool adventures and so much more...
Over the last two weeks, we've been talking about bugs, which means all those creepy critters outside, skittering around on the ground. We've read some great books which have clear pictures of all sorts of bugs, how they move, the parts of their bodies and what they eat, which is usually other bugs. Our Morning Gathering has been a silly time these days as we sing little songs that celebrate what bugs do ("Out in the Garden", "The Fuzzy Caterpillar", to name a couple) and what we do to bugs ("Bringing Home A Baby Bumblebee"). The children laugh and giggle when we sing about 'squishing up a baby bumblebee' (instead of licking it up, though, we wash our hands) and the caterpillars in the garden going "munch munch munch". Our songs stay with the children; later during playtime, B calls to me "Hey, Hazel, I singing the bumblebee song for all my friends. 'I love him, my my momma be so proud of me'". Later, V sings "Way down south in Baltimore, B is wearing a dress", a combination of "Eliza Jane" and "Mary Wore a Red Dress".
What's been best, though, has been our outdoor explorations and walks. Last week as we headed out, a neighbor waved us over to see a bee swarm, docile and collected, on a tree. This was beautiful timing as we'd just read "Honey in the Hive" earlier. Hanging from a branch, the swarm was an impressive, quiet cluster. The other bugs we've seen have been bees visiting the rosemary in the front yard, roly-poly bugs, spiders hiding in the tall grasses, some with gray egg sacs hanging from their black abdomens. We compared this with the wooly-looking silk egg sacs the spiders have hung in various places in the backyard. We've lifted up big planting pots to discover small black beetles and deep reddish-brown millipedes, feet scurrying frantically to find another hiding place. Worms galore reside in the composter, and baby slugs are found here and there throughout the back garden. We've only spotted a few ladybugs; our seasons are a little late this year, and the usual ladybug larvae we'd see around this time has yet to be spotted anywhere. We read "Miss Rumphius", a lovely story of a woman who sows lupines everywhere in order to make her part of the world more beautiful, and then went on a "Lupine Walk" to find the beautiful blue and purple spikey flowers. We touched the undersides of the delicate leaves of hostas, with their nearly-quilted looking patterns, and stroked the soft, velvety seed pods of spent peonies. Rose petals were collected, then forgotten in my pockets ('Oh, Hazel, you hold them' say the children, and I remind them I might forget they are there, which inevitably happens, as the children are more interested in collecting them up than they are in keeping them).
Outdoors, we've had a lot of nature play. The children have continued their game of "Going to the Bird Festival", pretending they are birds and flying all over the backyard, from one cedar round, a path around the peas and Children's House, and onto the other round. The Plumtree House has been a 'shelter' for the birds, and it seems very fun and real for them when they pretend to 'lock the doors' and 'close the windows' to keep themselves safe.Sometimes B and V switch off being the Mama and Baby Birds; T is a bird of unknown character, never saying if he's a Daddy bird or child. The Crocodile Chase is a daily occurance, with the children sharing the role of being crocodile. The sandbox is still being used as a place for "planting", small stacking cups are filled with sand and adorned with a stick or dried fern frond as a "plant" to be watered repeatedly. A mysterious 'soup' has been concocted of sand, water, lemon balm, sweet gum pods, pinecones and clover. The peas are beginning to form pods, at last, and so we might find we have a handful for snacking on by our last days of school. Sadly, our carrots experienced some sort of plight, slug or drought, we are unsure. So at present, one lone carrot sprout remains.( I am guessing slugs, though, as my zinnias in the front appear to have suffered a similar fate.)
Our art projects have been a blast and we've explored some new activities. We've painted with yellow and black to make all sorts of bees, with colorful buttons for eyes and wax-paper wings. The children got a chance to try sharpening crayons to create shavings for a wax paper melt (we added sequins for fun) to make dragonfly wings. Then, they used glitter glue to decorate the body and their beautiful creations flew on home. We've also offered some sticker sets (fuzzy 'monsters' or robots, their choice) to make pictures with, play dough (where the children wished themselves many happy birthdays) and lacing butterfly cutouts, with yarn, beads, and sparkly markers for decorating.
The play has been very reflective of the children's days. Here, have a look at your children, playing school.
V asks B: "Can I be the teacher? " She leads the others in our "Hello Song", says "Hello to Hazel" and points to self.
T: "Are you Hazel, V?"
V: "I'm Hazel. Pretend Hazel."
She then leads the group in singing "Eliza Jane", finishes, then tells T and B that they can "get up and play", and proceeds to tell the children what they can do. Over at the Housekeeping, B tells V: "You can be the cooker". "Okay" says V.
T heads off on his own, deciding to roll nuts down one ramp. When they begin to rattle across the floor, I suggest using inverting the second ramp, so that the angle allows some nuts to go up and back down "Just like a skateboarder". This sparks up T's favorite interest, and for the next while, T stays engaged with figuring out which nuts will roll far enough (not the almonds or Brazil nuts-- too flat) and learns that too many nuts on the rug will cause the other ones to stop rolling when they bump into them. So the walnuts and hazelnuts slide down; pretty soon B is over there, wanting to roll things down the ramp as well.
Spiderweb play has been one of V's repeated requests, and this was big fun. We last played this in autumn, and I watched as this activity changed, developing into a new game. V asked each child "are you a spider or a fly?" and then they scrambled after each other under the web of yarn we'd strewn all over the kitchen. The children were repeatedly 'stuck' in different areas, and we all decided that it must be hard for bugs to get out of webs.
Apparently, too, there's been some sort of base-jumping going on with a couple of dolls in the blocks area. Our crane truck shape sorter has a long string on the front; T tied a dollhouse boy to it and let him 'jump' off several times, complete with sound affects. V decided that was pretty interesting, so a string of yarn was offered for her doll. (This was also a great opportunity to talk about never, ever tying any strings around our necks when we are playing, as the dolls were first hanging by their necks. I helped to re-tie the strings around the doll's waists, to emphasize this point.) The children came back to this play several times over the last week.
Something lovely has happened at school where all of the children are taking turns leading the play, and many circle games have emerged as the three play together. Many times I have heard the children singing "The Earth Goes Around the Sun", walking swift circles over the rug. Several times we've had "ice cream cones" sold on the rug. There have been fewer block creations and more songs, like "Hi Little Airplane" and so many pretend "Morning Gatherings" that they have quite displaced most of the usual play there. They have also worked as a team a few times as we do a "Letter Card Hunt", where the lower-case letter cards are hidden all over and the children collect them up, then we match them to their corresponding upper-case mate. We've also been playing a simple game of dominoes in the mornings, working on matching up either fruit pictures or picture/number dominoes, depending on which set we use.
Next week will bring more fun: we'll celebrate B's birthday on Tuesday, make popsicles for our last day celebration, and many open-ended activities will be available. Please know that you and your little one are welcome to join us at 1 on Wednesday for popsicles and a few silly songs before we say goodbye. The little books of our year together will be going home that day as well, as will the contents of their cubbies and their mailboxes. The ending of each session is a beginning of something new for each of us, and we are sure to have good fun over our next two days together. See you then!
