French Knitting

Each week, we like to have an ongoing project that we consider a "homesteading" project.  This means  that it has something to do with the improvement or care for the home.  This week, we worked on French knitting.

The first step was making the spools, which involved toilet paper rolls, decorated tongue depressors, and duct tape.

Once the spools were made, the kids took turns getting hand-over-hand help in wrapping the stitches, grabbing one at a time, and carefully pulling it over the top of the prong.  This took some very fine motor skills, and the kids did great.  They caught on, and watched as the tail slowly emerged from the bottom of the tube (spool).  The steps for French knitting went like this:

1.  Wrap around each prong 2 times (one over the other)
2.  Grab the bottom loop and pull it over the top; do this all the way around.
3.  Grab the "tugger" and tug a few times.
4.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.

This project required fine motor skills, patience, good listening skills, and provided some sensory stimulation as well.  There is also value in working side-by-side with an adult who is walking through the process with you.

Chicken week!

Our month's theme is Creatures In My Back Yard.  Well, in our back yard, the most popular creatures are the CHICKENS!! The kids absolutely love playing with/chasing/caring for the chickens.  We think they are quite likely the most lean chickens in town, for all the exercise they get.

We learned (and perfected, I might add) the Chicken Dance.  We read funny books about chickens who forgot they were chickens and acted like people.  We made crafts with feathers (one of which the real chickens actually came to check out).  We sewed stitches with feathers, and made rooster puppets.  We used our big yard space to explore how chickens move, how they use their beaks to eat, what they eat, what they won't eat, where they sleep, etc.

Some days, I think that one thing these kids will surely remember forever about this place is the chickens and their warm, smooth eggs.

Marbled Fall Leaves

The kids loved this project, and the results were quite beautiful!  The first step was so fun and exciting: filling the tub with shaving cream!  They couldn't believe it.  Comments were flying about how it smelled, all the things it looked like, what it must feel like. . . Second step was adding paint.  We talked about what colors we should add if we are making the leaves look like fall leaves.  Third step was another hit: stirring it up!  In fact, they did not want to stop stirring.  The way it stuck to the stir sticks, and the way the colors transformed. . . it was mesmerizing!  Then, we took leaf shapes (pre-cut card stock) and pressed them into the colored shaving cream.  When we pulled them out, they were beautifully marbled!  What a fun use of sensory and art modalities.

Squash decorations

What you get when you combine a couple squash varieties with yarn, toothpicks, leaves, buckeyes, and a few capable little hands and minds.

Song of the week

I'm going to try something new: posting a song each week for any of you readers to enjoy or maybe even learn yourself.

Here's one by Red Grammer: I think you're wonderful.

Preschool Pesto

There was still a lot of basil left in our gardens that hadn't been used.  It was getting colder, and we talked about how if the air gets too cold at night, it makes it so the basil cannot grow anymore.  One way to use it up: Preschool Pesto!

The kids absolutely LOVE working in the kitchen.  They are so engaged, and consequently, they are learning so much.  We picked a whole bunch of basil from the garden, and brought it inside.  After spreading it out, a bunch of little fingers helped pick off all those leaves and get them ready to wash.  One kid didn't want to pick the leaves, so his job was to be a basil watchman.  He watched the leaf pile for any leaves that didn't look green enough (too yellow, too black), and take them out.  Once they were washed, we packed them into the food processor.

Kitchen work is packed full of math problems for preschoolers: counting, measuring, setting timers and temperatures, etc.  Sometimes, it's fun to just put a little of this and a little of that in, without careful measuring.  We added to the basil: a little parmesan cheese, a little olive oil, some sunflower seeds, some salt, a little more olive oil, maybe some more cheese. . . (you get the picture).

The blending is always fun for them, and a good chance for them to practice their turn-taking skills.  They keep track of whom is going when after whom.  Usually, they are pretty accurate.

I must say, it turned out to be pretty delicious!

Weaving with 3-year-olds

I didn't really know what to expect.  Enthusiasm? Ability? Apathy? Well, with this age group, if you introduce a new idea and a new tool, you're pretty unlikely to be met with apathy.  The kids picked up the skill of weaving quite well.  Not only that, they loved it!  What a thrill it is to learn a brand-new skill you have never tried before, and to master it.  They started counting how many strands of yarn they had woven, calling out, "I've got 5!"  "Now I've got 8!"  (emergent math skills, yes?)

If you'd like to try weaving with your young friends, these simple boards were wonderfully effective.  They are rectangles of cardboard.  On two side, I cut slits about 1 inch apart.  I strung yarn back and forth to make the form.  I think it's important that the yard on the form are about an inch apart, because it makes it easy for fingers the size of preschoolers to pinch (fine motor skills, refined) in the space in between them.

In order to learn the skill, we practiced over-under-over-under (also learning a valuable mathematical skill).  The tricky part that I do not feel is essential for learning (especially the first time) is that you start each strand the opposite that you started the former one.  Some kids got this, and others didn't.  I consider them both successful.

And, to be clear, also successful are the kids who chose numerous other materials to weave in and out and over and under in anything-but tidy rows.  Even balls of various objects represent success.  They made something to be proud of, and used their own vision and creativity to do it, and that's what matters.

Loose Parts

The kids spend so much wonderful, creative time with our loose parts.  We have a pile of logs, bricks, boards, and this fall we've had hay bales.  They sustain their interest in these things for long periods of time.  They build and tear down and build again and pretend, pretend, pretend.  Their creative minds are working hard, and loving it!  How many things one board can be: a ramp, a slide, a bridge, a bed, a table, etc, etc.

One part of the Reggio philosophy that we have latched onto is to assist the children in feeling ownership in our space.  We do this by setting up opportunities for them to do some kind of "work" to benefit our home.  Most recently, some of the kids chose to paint our lose parts logs.  They were wonderful before, but oh, how beautiful they are now!

Frosty Art Choice

At Green Apple Garden, we do drop-off outside, whenever possible.  We also stay outside until snack (when it's too cold to eat outside).  This means our science and art choices are outside.  In the warm months, this is pretty straightforward, but it is posing a challenge in these frosty mornings.  It's a new challenge to do a nature-based craft outside in the cold (and wet) morning.  This one was a easy, relaxed one.  The day before, I had watercolored a simple nature scene.  Taking the dried painting out to the table, the kids collected beautiful leaves, and placed them and replaced them in various positions on the scene.  It's wonderful, in moments like these, to just watch those wheels turning, like the colors of fall.