Parents Help with Music and Singing

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have great fun when visitors come to visit and lead us in singing.   Thank you Jess and Kristen!

Fall fairies, dragons, birds and gnomes play

Fall time fairies, dragons, birds, and gnomes

We had our Fall Play at preschool just before Thanksgiving break.   The fairies, dragons, birds and gnomes were preparing for their long winter nap by making their houses beautiful and cozy. They were nestling in with lots of leaves and foliage to make the beds for themselves and their babies.  We played Pachelbel Canon and danced around the forest trees placing leaves and our animal babies in just the right places to stay warm for the coming rains and snow.

The children made up their own dance and movements and all the forest creatures took part.  It was a busy and bustling time of unfolding  a beautiful fall scene.  By the time the whole forest was decorated and painted with color it was time to go back to sleep for the winter hibernation.  We will wake up again in the spring!

Cooking Fun

This is Jessua helping prepare the cooking project.

When the weather changes we start to think about more cooking projects.   We make a basic biscuit dough and cut our apple or pumpkin cookies.  We take turns adding the ingredients and measuring enough for everyone to roll out and cut their cookie.  This time of year we also like to carve pumpkins and scrap out the seeds to salt and roast……..then we eat!!!

Falltime Nature Outings

A very special time of day is when we go out and explore in nature.  This time of year is very magical; we search for leaves, acorns, chestnuts, and eat apples from the school orchard.  We have a special trail that takes us by a pond where we find huge bullfrogs and cat tails too.  We often bring back our treasures and make lovely artwork collages or we just take the treasures home to enjoy.  Acorn bread will be how we use the acorns we find this year.  We will boil them, dry them and grind them and then try our hand at making bread. Yummie!

Another joy we have on our outings is just running and enjoying the space around us.  We have many paths we walk on.  We, also, visit the goats, the cows and chickens.  What fun we have wherever we go.

Running during our nature outing

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Superconscious Play

Our Dramatic play time involves developing many habits for happy, harmonious living.  During the day we have many times of pretend and make believe games.  It is such a delightful process to watch and a very natural place- in a pretend world- for this age.  As the children develop wonderful stories about their play it creates and opens their view of life and prepares them for tasks later in life.  Sharing, taking turns, problem solving, developing kindness, patience, caring and love for all creatures are just a few skills we can mention.  Learning how to communicate needs, thoughts, feelings and desires with words begins here, too

Dramatic Play

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Uplifting storytime

 Some of the best stories and subsequent discussions come  while we read during  snack and lunch.  On this day we were reading one of the Jataka Tales.  These are stories from India that relate qualities pleasant and unpleasant with animals as the main characters.  Each story has a high-minded theme and yet is ‘acted out’  by animals, an easy inspiration for this age child.  One story we love to read and act out is about the ‘Braggy Peacock’  when a peacock shows himself to be only thinking about himself, and how he appears to his friends the other birds.  This shows the children, in a way that is easier for them to understand, the danger of not having friends if they only think about themselves.  Another favorite story, that shows the value of good social skills is,  ‘How does a Dinosaur say Goodnight’.  The children laugh as the dinosaur goes thru many stalling techniques for not going to bed.   Laughing at how it looks when a dinosaur does what they may do at times.  Stories like this offer a safe way to look at behavior that they recognize and allows them the chance to evaluate and change it as they laugh at the same time.

Education for Life Preschool Curriculum

The curriculum in Education for Life is offered to our students to foster learning from life and for life, with attention to fostering the development of every facet of the child-physical, social, mental and spiritual.  opportunities for growth are provided daily in such areas as creative expression through the arts, positive social skills, physical development, reverence and appreciation for all of life and foundation skills that will lead to academic skills in the future.

Besides learning ‘quiet bodies’ as in the picture we practice spiritual activities as listening to uplifting stories, singing uplifting songs, spending time in nature, walking, gardening, looking for nature’s beauty everywhere. Learning respect, reverence and appreciation for the earth, plants, animals, rocks, water and all forms of life.

Another fun activity outside-sand!

 

 

School Starts

Looking forward to starting school again on September 5!

quiet bodies