Look at our garden and our root viewer! Everyday we notice a big change!
This morning we started our day with a walk. We walked around St. Mary's grounds to look at the beautiful tulips and growing plants all around. Then we walked back to school to play in our play yard. The children worked on watering the flowers, sweeping with our stick broom, and also did some free art on the table under the umbrella. They love having the art materials available to them during their outdoor time and often run back and forth from playing to coloring to playing again.
We came inside for lunch- chicken, mashed potato's, macaroni and cheese, bread with honey and milk and went back outside for a tree walk. Everyone including AJ and Elia got a partner (no stroller!) and walked as quietly as we could around the block. We stopped to look at a tree stump and some different kinds of tree's a long the way. We found a lilac bush that had some blossoms and a little baby tree that was newly planted. We talked about the parts of the tree and found a big tree with roots that were above ground and bark that was really thick.
We practiced naming the parts of the tree on all different types of tree's and found some beautiful flowers in the yards of our neighbors. We love seeing all the different colors, and shapes.
When we got back to school we read the story "The Very Busy Spider". We practiced our long poem a couple of times and then our star poem and then sang goodnight to each friend by name and snuggled into our sleeping mats for a quiet rest.
We aren't sure what our afternoon plans will be, we might continue on with a couple of spider web activities in our classroom and then spend the rest of the afternoon outside.

I've talked to a few of you about this but we're becoming incredibly strict about play guns/swords/fighting, etc. Any guns or swords or fighting play (power rangers, super hero's, pirates, etc.) will result in an immediate time out. We've never allowed guns or swords but the children continue to think it's an OK thing to do around here so we've had to get strict. We just don't think it's appropriate behavior for little 2-4 year old friends to be shooting each other!
We work really hard on using kind actions, words and behaviors and respecting each other and shooting, killing or attacking people with pretend weapons doesn't really follow those things we try to teach the children. We're really limiting the movies the kids are allowed to watch (no Peter Pan, or any other movie with any violence...which is a lot of Disney movies surprisingly!) We've taken away the Pirate flag and pirate toys and aren't allowing any sticks to be picked up and played with. I know it sounds extreme but trust me as soon as they figure out that play fighting is not acceptable behavior at Preschool they find much more appropriate things to do! I've already seen a big difference in their play in the last week. Children that typically would be playing pirates or bad guys the entire outdoor time are now watering the garden, building with logs, or having sand castle building contests. It's a peaceful environment rather than one that's filled with fighting.
Please work on no fighting, swords or guns are home. It's confusing to children to have such different standards but you can imagine the chaos and inevitable injuries if we allowed 12 children to play fight all day.