Hiking the trail

beautiful, beautiful grounds of St. Mary's

seeing shapes in the trees

feeling the tree bark and trying to figure out if the bark on this one is rough, or smooth.

Listening to the inside of the tree. Anything in there?

Tree bark rubbings

Tree bark rubbings

Sand castle building

swinging

More sandcastles! The children love working together to make whole villages out of sand.

Climbing tree's! This is the best tree climbing park in the world!

eating our yummy picnic lunch!

We had a busy day today! We enjoyed a long outdoor free play on our playground this morning, the weather has been so nice lately!
We came inside for music class with Ms. Carol. During music class we learned about the orchestra and focused on the woodwind instruments. We started by talking about what makes an instrument a woodwind instrument. Next we got our rhythm sticks and tapped them to "hi ho melody". Then we watched a short video clip of people playing wind instruments and played an instrument matching game. Next we learned about the music symbol the "rest" as we moved our bodies while the music played and then quietly found a music rest symbol on the floor to stand on whenever the music stopped. To end our music class we played our favorite instruments to the song "We are great musicians".
After music class we packed up and hiked to our favorite spot again for a picnic, playtime, and art time. It was so much fun. The children are getting really strong- and are great little walkers. We still have to remind them to stay on the grass side of the sidewalk rather than the street side- but they do really well.
Milan wore a pedometer today and walked over 9,000 steps BEFORE nap time! Is that not unreal? I always tell people in interviews that we walk a long way- but didn't realize it was over 9,000 steps just in the morning! And today was one of our close walking destinations!
This is the reason our little ones have to have good shoes on! :)