Forest School Highlights!

We were so excited to go back into Golden Gate Park for a week of Forest School! Friends that have been before were very excited to keep exploring and revisit favorite areas. It was a first for some of our newest friends, and they were equally excited to see what everyone else has been talking so much about! Forest school stories and requests come up very frequently back in the classroom, especially since this week has been postponed a few times, so let’s get into it!

Probably the best part of Forest School is the freedom. Seeing the kids fully immerse themselves into the nature in our own city backyard is pretty amazing. They are right at home. We pack very minimally for these treks, as everything we need has to fit into 2 wagons and be pulled by teachers wherever we go. On any given forest school day we cover as many as 10 miles! And that’s not including all the extra running in circles and tree climbing the kids do! Haha. The kids get special packs that carry a drawing notebook, pencils, a magnifying glass and plenty of space for whatever they want to collect throughout the week. We bring a few books for storytime and plant/bird/bug identification, and of course all our food and water. But, even without toys, or any other “kid stuff,” they are fully open and engaged, in-tune with their bodies, and at total peace with their surroundings all day long. It’s amazing.

The kids are extremely passionate about climbing trees. Every morning at circle time we plan out our day, discussing with everyone what we want to see and accomplish. Without fail, finding new climbing trees is mentioned at least 3 times. We could probably spend an entire day at some of our favorite trees in the park, but the desire to keep exploring usually wins out.

Caves. What is it about caves that makes them so mysterious and exciting to young children? The darker and narrower the better. As we hiked along the trails, there was often discussion about finding caves and when one was possibly spotted, we had to stop and check it out.

At some point before forest school, we read about about treehouse and fort building. Some of the kids got very interested in that idea so we also discussed wanting to build our own. We hiked around in search of the perfect building tree, and once we found it we got to work collecting materials! We worked on it all week, coming back every day to check up on it and always being impressed that it was still there! We hoped that an animal might more in when it was done. We also found several forts throughout the park that were built by other people! One looked like a teepee and was strong enough for us to climb to the top too.

And we can’t forget the fishing! The kids loved to stop at every body of water, look for ducks (and crocodiles!) and pretend to fish. They would search for their favorite sticks to use as rods, and some would even attach leaves or moss to the end to use as bait. They would “catch” all sorts of things!

The benefits of being out in nature are huge for all ages, but especially important for young preschool aged kids. The positive effects on social, emotional, physical, and mental development are amazing to see, even after just a few days out in the forest. We are so lucky to have such easy access to the outdoors!

Trip to the Grocery Store!

We have been very interested in what Teacher Becca makes us for lunch and where the different ingredients come from, often asking if she grew it, if it came from a farmer, or just the store (and sometimes asking which store!) Recently some of us have been interested in helping do the shopping for the school and so our dramatic play area turned into a Grocery Store! We loved being able to shop for different items and load carts or baskets and bring them around the classroom. Checking out was always fun, and we loved sliding each item down the conveyor and then scanning. We often then went to the mattress or the Pikler Triangle to load them into our “cars” and take them home. It’s amazing to see how much kids enjoy real life tasks, and how much they observe and model from us!

After shopping a lot there (where products are typically overpriced), we decided to head out to Whole Foods to practice in real life. Upon arriving, we split up into teams of four and each group was given a list and a shopping cart. Our teachers prepared the different lists with item names and pictures that we would recognize and eat often at school. As we walked around the store with our carts, we made sure that what we selected matched the picture on our list before placing it in the cart by comparing the two and discussing with our teammates. One of our team members then checked off the box next to the picture of the item we found, which made identifying the remaining items to find easier. Once we collected all our items, we proceeded to the checkout, where we put our items on the counter for the cashier to scan and then we bagged them in our shopping bags.

Through this real-world, hands-on experience, we have mastered the series of steps associated with shopping; worked on our picture-object correspondence; and most importantly, honed in on our cooperative skills as we discussed and made sure to agree upon which aisle we’re going and which products to purchase. We had so much fun shopping for Teacher Rebecca and hope to do it again soon!

Art Classes at Manos SF!

Every Wednesday we head down to Manos SF for a fun art class with Teacher Edurne! We are always excited for the projects that await. This year we have decided to focus on color, and we have been talking about the primary colors, how they create all other colors, and what we need to use to make them. It’s been fun to work on mixing our own blends! The first week, we were given just the 3 primary colors (plus white), and combined different amounts to see how many other colors we could create, both on our paper, then on the wall!

After working with paint, the next week we moved on to play dough, to try and combine the different primary colors again, this time needing to pay more attention to the amount of each color to use. It was harder to get the exact color we wanted. When making orange, we learned we had to use a lot more yellow than red, or it would still look just red. And although making brown is really easy with paint, it was very hard to do with play dough!! (somehow we missed pictures of this activity, oops!)

And we also got lucky one week, arriving a bit early, and seeing a fire engine parked in front of Andytown! We walked over to check it out while waiting for the class before us to finish, and one of the awesome fire fighters came over to let us check it out!! We were so excited to go inside, and see their gear. He even brought out his big axe to show us and rang the bell!

Celebrating Our Planet for the Climate Strike!

We always celebrate and love our earth, and on the day of the climate strike we decided to go to our beach and do a clean up! Because it was a Friday, we met Teacher Jessie there for some beach yoga first. It turned out to be a beautiful hot day, and we had so much fun! In yoga, we loved being able to dig our feet into the warm sand and we did a lot of ocean and earth inspired poses. Teacher Jessie taught us an earth chant too, in celebration of the strike. Afterwards, we cooled off running through the waves getting braver and braver to put more that just our toes in. Some friends got almost completely soaked!

Then we got to work, collecting as much trash as we could, so it wouldn’t wash away. We were very focused on the idea that sea animals could die from all the plastic and we wanted to help them. We had a big trash bag that we filled almost halfway in just 30 minutes! We were excited with how much we were collecting, but were also reminded how bad it is, that there is so much. Teacher Becca said we probably collected close to 4 pounds of trash. We saw quite a few other people also doing beach cleanups which made us happy, and we decided that we should bring a bag everytime we go to the beach not just on special days. The teachers thought this was a great idea!

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Fall Forest School Half Days!

While some work was happening in the school, we got out of the way to do some half days in the forest! It was good practice for our new friends who haven’t been with us yet in preparation for when we do full days in the Forest later this Fall!

A lot of our friends who were there for when we did forest school in the spring, noticed and mentioned all the changes in the areas we were familiar with. There weren’t any weeds and grasses growing, and lots more dry leaves on the ground. Some of us found it hard that we went to the same places! We had fun climbing trees and finding sticks and bark to build with. We found a lot of different feathers on the ground too and we were very interested in trying to figure out who they belonged to. We are starting to gain more and more confidence in navigating our way around, and the teachers don’t need to help us as often to find our way to our favorite places. We went back to one of our favorite “climbing trees” from last year that no one could actually figure out how to climb. Except this time, a few of our friends did it!! We were so excited for them and cant wait to come back again and see if even more will be able to.

And of course we can’t forget about our music and yoga sessions in the forest. We loved getting to do these classes outside in the grass. We focused a lot on the nature that surrounded us, singing lots of earth and flower songs with Charity, and doing a lot of nature poses with Jessie. In both mindfulness with Charity and Savasana with Jessie, there was an extra layer of calm and peace it seemed, with the nature sounds around us and the fresh air breeze.

A New Backyard!

During the summer break before our new school year started, we had the backyard reinvented! The brick patio is no more, and now we have a much larger grass play area complete with the highly anticipated hill instead of stairs! We were so excited to finally see the hill all finished, and immediately started running up and down it, rolling on it, and attempting summersaults! Along with the new grass, we also have become a barefoot school and it is so fun to be out there running and crawling around barefoot!

We also got a new mud kitchen, which adds some more storage space in the area, and has given us extra inspiration! We have loved having more access to the dirt (which got filled in with fresh play soil), and the different bins and containers to use. All of our pots and pans have a place to live, and we are learning to organize and clean our work space after using it so that it is inviting to the next friends who may come to play.

But probably the most exciting part of the new backyard has been the new blocks! We immediately were drawn to them, exploring the different sizes and shapes, wondering why they had holes and bumps and how to connect them together. We turned the flat ones into surfboards and “surfed” down the new hill.

We moved on from there, starting to connect blocks together creating vehicles (trains, cars, and jetskis), We used the round pieces as tires or steering wheels. While the blocks do stack together, we were more interested at this stage in building 2-dimensionally mostly on the ground, not yet ready to think about more complex 3-D ideas.

We continued to explore and broaden our scope of ideas, and realized we could build much bigger and taller structures too, and it inspired even more group play. Originally we were individually focused, watching our friends build too, and maybe copying some of their ideas, but thinking on a smaller scale for ourselves. Now we were starting to build together, creating castles and houses, for us all to use together.

They even used the wheelbarrow to help carry blocks to the upper yard and build a “stage” in the back for them to have a charity-inspired concert. They used some of the blocks as instruments, making a drum set, keyboard, lots of guitars, rocks became their microphones, and they even had a security guard and stand!

It has been so fun for the teachers to watch the kids’ imaginations grow, and see how quickly their play has evolved. The goal with these new blocks was to help inspire more open-ended group and collaborative play. They have been used in so many different ways, and they will continue to constantly find new ideas and ways to include them. Their large size encourages them to ask friends for help and work on communication skills to explain what they might be trying to achieve, the knobs and holes help reinforce math and spatial awareness, and their open-endedness inspires critical thinking.

May 6th-17th Happenings!

Dramatic Play

Ready for Take Off! We have been talking about our trips and building lots of airplanes, so this area turned into an airport! We love handing out tickets and going through security with our luggage before boarding the plane! The big map has inspired us to think of lots of fun places to travel too and the pilot always lets the passengers know where the plane in headed. The dress up materials have gotten us excited to be pilots but also flight attendants! We love pretending to bring the passengers different drinks and snacks and making sure everyone has blankets and a place for their luggage. Speaking over the “intercom” to the passengers and crew has been one of our favorite things to do too!

Block Area

We have gotten very interested in building tracks with the ramps, and discussing how fast or slow things go depending on the design. We tested lots of different ways to try and make the balls or cars go all the way to the end. Once we were even able to get them to go all the way to the wall on the other side of the room! Most of the time they crash or fall off the tracks, but that’s been fun to laugh at too, and we enjoy the process of trial and error!

Nature Area

Our classroom has been filled with lots of chirping! All of our chicks have finally hatched and we had the opportunity to hold and pet them! After much discussion and debate with our peers, we named the chicks. The yellow one is called Egg-Head. The two all black ones are Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The two gray ones are Happy Fluffy and Fluff Ball. The dark gray one is Foxy Doxy, and the black and yellow one is Elsa. We love watching them each day and are constantly amazed at how fast they grow!

Quiet Area

We have been reading lots of books related to airplanes and still love reading books about chickens. We’ve also had fun revisiting our All About Me pages and discussing them with our classmates. Sometimes, we’ll play with the babies, read books to them, and pretend to be their mommies and daddies who need to feed them and change their soiled diapers.

Art Area

At Manos, we have created animal masks and electric toothbrush robots! For our masks, we determined which animal we wanted to make and carefully cut pieces of tape and the paper plate into varied shapes and sizes to create the physical attributes of our chosen animal. We then stuck the the pieces together with tape and the result was a room full of creatures of all kinds. We had lots of fun showing our friends and teachers our masks, and it reawakened our excitement for Halloween. For our robots, we molded play dough into a face of some kind and stuck it onto the top part of the toothbrush. Each one of us took the caps off of three markers and the teachers helped us tie it to the toothbrush. Undoubtedly, our favorite part was when we turned the toothbrush on and the robots started moving in repeated circles!

At school, we have been drawing treasure maps as well as creating images with magnetic shapes. We love drawing pictures of our family and doodling whatever comes to mind. We also really enjoy the sensory table that is currently filled with oats and insects. Sometimes we collect the bugs and sort them into separate containers, and at other times we hide them in the oats or create oat-houses for them.

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Gross Motor

Our energy is channeled in many different ways when we play inside. We rock our bodies to and fro as we maneuver our boat, play catch, and squirm between chairs and under the tables in an unofficial obstacle course! We also have been practicing toe-ga and several other yoga poses, such as ant pose, plane pose, boat pose, plank pose, and lighthouse pose.

Music Area

With Charity, we have been singing and dancing to our old favorites, including “Lemonade,” “The Amazing Rocket Ship,” and “The Creeper Walk,” to name a few. We’ve also listened to the different sounds created by the flute and recorder and practiced doing the tango with our scarf! We sing Charity’s songs throughout our day, and especially love pretending to be Charity. We’ve also been creating our own songs by playing a melody on the piano and making up the lyrics as we go. 

Outside

April 22nd-May 3rd Happenings!

Dramatic Play

Since we love creating pretend food for our friends and storefronts to sell it in, this area became an Ice Cream Shop! We had so much fun making different cups and cones with all the different flavors. The toppings were also very exciting to add on top, and we even had to-go containers if anyone needed to take some “home.” We practiced our selling skills using the cash register and collecting money, though we still have more fun handing it out! We had to be very careful when scooping the ice-cream out of the container so that it wouldn't spill, and then packed it down tight so our friends wouldn't lose it either. We loved getting to make our friends, teachers, and parents ice-cream and everyone definitely left our shop with full bellies!

Block Area

We can never go wrong with the trains and train tracks! We love putting the tracks together to create different routes for our trains to travel continuously on, sometimes short circular ones and other times long, winding ones. As some friends build the tracks and work to ultimately create a loop, other friends enjoy playing with the figures in the doll house. We have also taken a special liking to the ramps. We lean them against the shelf at various levels and roll balls down them, taking note of how fast they go. We occasionally add in bumpers so that when one ball goes down the ramp, it can hit the bumper and get accelerated onto another ramp.

Nature Area

Our anticipation to see our baby chicks continues to grow each day, especially since we all got to see them growing inside their shell during candling! For almost all of the eggs, we got to see glimpses of the yolk, air space, developing eye, and veins! We are hopeful that they all will hatch! 

Quiet Area

We love perusing through our All About Us pages and telling friends about the pictures and illustrations on our personal page. It is fun looking at their pictures and learning about their family members as well as the places they have gone. With the unceasing excitement of the chicks’ arrival, we have been reading lots of books about them to learn about their development. Some books we have reread countless times are: “Where do Chicks Come From?” “Eggs to Chickens,” “Hens for Friends,” “Who Hatches the Chick?” and “Chicks and Chicken.”

Art Area

In celebration of Earth Day and taking inspiration from Teacher Charity’s song, “We Love Everyone,” we worked collaboratively to illustrate the Earth, using paint for the vast land and ocean and adding different creature stickers as final touches. At Mano’s, we have created our favorite animals out of boxes! First, we painted our boxes. Next we painted some features of the animal we were making, and finally, we added ears, noses, and other identifying parts of our animals with feathers and pipe cleaners. It was rather exciting seeing the different animals our friends made and felt like we had a mini zoo when we brought them back to the school! We also had fun cutting up colored paper into different sized and shaped pieces to use in making our own collage. After carefully cutting the paper and selecting which to use as well as where to put it, we pasted it onto a piece of white paper. Each of our collages looked very different from that of our friends, and so it was interesting hearing our peers discuss their creations. Some friends made a collage of their face while others stuck to a more abstract piece. Either way, the whole process was amazing!

Gross Motor

We are still enjoying our rocking boat, and riding it with all of our friends! We often plan out where we are going to go and always try to go as fast as possible. Lately we have been taking our treasure maps with us too, and pretend to be pirates or treasure hunters. During yoga, we have been practicing lots of different poses, especially loving all transportation (boat, plane, train, street cleaner) as well as animals. Teacher Jessie brought her drumagain and we have been loving playing it along to the chant rhythm.

Music

Because of our dramatic play area, we of course had to do the Ice Cream Song! We definitely have our favorite songs that we continue to always request and love doing, though it has been fun to try out some new ones too! We love when Charity comes every week and then practice throughout the week on our own too. We have lately been using the pianos to play charity songs nad many of us have gotten really good and knowing the tunes and the lyrics.

Cognitive Area

The magnatiles are still so fun and engaging and we have enjoyed building lots of boats, airplanes, houses, and vehicles. We especially love to get small items, often the alphabet letters, or the people and animals from the block area, to put inside our creations and them enjoy knocking it down and revealing everything inside!

Outside

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March 18th- April 5th Happenings!

Dramatic Play

We’ve gone fishing! We now have a lake at school where we can take the boat out to go catch some fish. With the magic of magnets, we pick up the fish and put them in our boat. It is really silly when our friends pretend to be fish or sharks and we have to catch them with the big net! When we are feeling adventurous we make a treasure map and head out to sea in search of the treasure. Sometimes we can convince our teachers to come along for the ride too. We enjoy spending our time in the boat fishing, paddling, reading, and singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”.

Nature Area

We love the Science Viewers. It is so interesting to see different places around the world. We love the volcanos, Grand Canyon, and natural disaster slides. We choose our favorite picture and then share it with others, so that they may see too. 

Quiet Area

We have been getting a lot of new books in our library, lately. We love reading in groups and hearing our friends’ ideas of what they think is going to happen. Some of our current favorites are, “The Bug Zoo”, “Whose Egg”, and “Ocean Meets Sky”.

Art

We’ve gone on two exciting art adventures with Teacher Edurne this month. First we attended the Monet exhibit at De Young, where we viewed his paintings of water lilies, gardens, and bridges. We were in awe at all the colors and details he included in his work and inspired to try to do the same in our own illustrations. On our second adventure, we visited the Legion of Honor, where we saw Auguste Rodin’s sculptures and had the opportunity to walk through the inside of a palace. We loved Rodin’s “The Thinker” and “The Clenched Hand” and tried to imitate these particular sculptures with our own bodies. The highlight of the trip, however, was seeing a real mummy in his coffin and drawing his tomb from our perspectives. Back at school, we have been enjoying creating treasure maps to take outside and loving playing in the spring garden themed sensory table.

Gross Motor Area

Our new balance beam has been so exciting and challenging. We like to see if we can get to the other side without falling. If we do make it across, it is so fun to jump onto the mattress. For yoga class, we have been practicing our favorite songs, “Black Dog in the River”, “Go Plane Go”, and a few others. Teacher Jesse also brought one of her special drums and let us play on it! It was so fun hearing the music we all created.

Music

Our teachers have been so engaged in Charity’s jam sessions that they forgot to take pictures of us! Regardless, we have had lots of fun singing and dancing to “Flower Power,” “Peanut Butter and Jam,” “Happy Fluffy,” and the Earth song.

Cognitive Area

Lately, we have been practicing identifying letters with the alphabet board. When we want an extra challenge, we try to sound out words we know and arrange/spell them phonetically with the alphabet letters. At other times, we continue to find different ways to construct various objects using the Magna Tiles.  

Outside

The rainy days have passed and with that we’ve been engaged in all sorts of play outside. With the excitement of getting chicks, we have been building farms with the blocks and using the rocks as pretend animals. We also build pirate ships with canons to voyage into the sea with our friends, as well as bridges on which we carefully walk across so that we don’t fall into the ocean! Similarly, we’ve been working with our friends to construct boats with sails and magic doorways with the pipes. Our pretend play then takes off from there! We sometimes pretend that the pipes are torches and march around with them, or that they are wrenches to fix our broken tricycles. When we’re not constructing, we like to water the plants in our garden and go on a bug hunt, searching for spiders, worms, and butterflies to examine. We have lots of fun going on the swing (which often becomes our car) with our friends and get a good workout when we take turns pushing the crew that’s onboard. Continuing our passion for art, we love drawing and discussing what we’ve illustrated with our teachers and friends. Each and every single day, our outside play is endless!

Spring Forest School!