With our cool spring mornings and warm afternoons, we've been having so much fun getting outside, turning on the water and getting to work in the garden and yard. We have reached the point where the woods are too viney and full of poison ivy to be walkable, so we have brought some other "loose parts" into the play yard. We have some new pieces of lumber and some terra cotta "tunnels" which have inspired all kinds of new "construction work". We spent this week practicing going around our May pole and singing our songs. For children at this age, they are not worried about getting the whole May pole wrapped up, nor can they skip and weave around it, but they tend to walk slowly, mesmerized by the colorful ribbons. It's a sweet way to mark the arrival of Spring and the transforming of our outside space into the green and growing garden of Summer! As children (and as adults), it's comforting to celebrate the yearly changes of season. Knowing that Spring always follows Winter is such a wonderful comfort, especially as parents dealing with the variety of illnesses which take up residence in our homes during winter!

We've been working on some scissor skills in the mornings. Scissor cutting is a pretty complicated thing to learn and children need different opportunities in order to figure out how it works. One can put scissors properly into a child's hand, but it's only the child who can figure out how to properly angle their wrist and the careful speed of opening and closing their fingers. I allow children to work through the process like little scientists figuring it all out. When babies are learning to use their hands, they learn to grab and close their fingers long before learning to consciously release their grip. This is why in order to get a baby to drop something, you have to offer them something else to hold. They simply cannot think "let go" and do it. In the same way, when learning to cut, children have to consciously think to open up their hands again, and they often close again too quickly. So, over time, we'll just be experimenting with cutting paper, play dough, grass, string...and learning as we go!

Our new circle time is about a caterpillar who of course eats and eats until he spins and spins a cocoon, falls asleep and wakens as a butterfly. In addition, the children have been finding many worms outside and putting them in our garden, so I found it only appropriate to do a few little worm and garden fingerplays with them. Here's a few: 
Under a stone where the earth was firm, 
I found a wriggly, wiggly worm. 
"Good Morning" said I, 
"How are you today?"
But the wiggly worm just wriggled away!

Five little peas in a pea pod pressed.
One grew, two grew, then all the rest.
They grew and they grew and they would not stop, 
Till the five little seeds in the pod went POP!

A tiny worm wriggled along the ground.
It wriggled along without making a sound. 
It came to a tiny hole in the ground,
Then it wriggled inside without making a sound. 

It has been a very busy spring indeed! We are now firmly set in our growing season, with lots of planting and digging happening outside. For our Spring's Birthday celebration, the children made baskets with wheat grass growing inside. It was a good setting for their homemade "egg cup planter" and felted butterflies, to go along with our story for that week. We told of a little Easter egg who is never found and fears he's been forgotten. As the seasons change, he becomes cracked from an acorn falling on him, but he's given a cozy blanket of leaves and snow. After a cozy winter's rest, he finds Spring has arrived and he has new life inside of him; in the form of forget-me-nots growing in his shell! He is then visited by busy bee and finds happiness in the springtime meadow. 

The children have also heard our story of Old Mrs. Gnome, who tends a beautiful garden. One night, a fairy mother flies into the garden and sets her baby fairy down into a tulip to sleep, while she goes to dance nearby in a fairy ring. The fairy mother knows she'll be safe in Mrs. Gnome's garden. Mrs. Gnome awakes to the sound of tinkling bells, so she goes out into her moonlit garden to see where the sound is coming from. She finds that it is the crying of the little fairy baby, and so she rocks the tulip gently and the baby falls back asleep. She watches over the baby and the fairy mother returns. It is a sweet story of happy reunions. The children enjoyed peeking into our own tulips as well. 

The children's play has truly expanded to include deeper story plots. They have begun to arrange stories using our silks and blocks, animals and people. Sometimes they repeat the stories I've told, and sometimes they create their own. The ability to storytell allows the brain to work in a flexible manner, allowing for creative thinking of course, but also problem solving and abstraction. When others become involved, it requires collaboration with others, with many people working through ideas and problems together.