We've had a very busy past two weeks. During the week of September 15-18, the children were busy washing apples, using our peeler and slicer to prepare them for applesauce, using the mill to smooth out the cooked apples...and we ended the week with our Apple Celebration! Parents joined us after lunch to try out the apple cake and applesauce the children made over the course of the week. Everyone went home with a small jar of apple butter which they had helped cook as well. 

Our story for the week came from our recent fingerplays and was about a little boy named Pucket who tried so hard to reach the apples on the tree near his home. As he's reaching, "one little apple hanging up so high, it fell down and bumped his eye!" But then he realizes there's an apple for his apple basket. This keeps happening until one rolls all the way to his home and "there it was discovered by a funny little mouse". Our stories are short and I use homemade hand puppets to tell them. We repeat them for each day of the week, this is because children need the repetition to absorb the story and relate to it. In addition, they are at an age of language development and hearing the small songs or poems in the stories over and over allows them to repeat it for themselves and perfect their own language. Humans have used songs and repetitive poems to learn language for much of our history. 

We have been able to take our afternoon walks in the forest once again, to a dry creek bed behind our nursery. The walk there requires careful stepping over roots and brambles, a difficult feat for legs that are maybe 18 inches long at most! There is a cave formed by vines and excellent, steep hills for climbing. The children love using the twisted roots to help climb up the steep slope of the creek, and then slide down! Parents have had much laundry to do. It will be nice to watch autumn slowly take over the forest. 

During the week of September 22, we met a new story friend, a little gnome named "Old Gnome". We will hear a little story about Old Gnome each month! It was Old Gnome's birthday this month, so our story was about him picking blackberries for his birthday party, when he planned to make blackberry tarts, jam, and pies. He has to deal with a pesky raven, however. He sings a little song as he wobbles along that goes
Jam cakes, jam cakes, 
Blackberry pie and tart bakes,
Blackberry syrup, pancakes, YUM!
Ripe juicy blackberries in my tum!

We have our fresh hay bales to play with outside now, and the weather has still been warm enough on most days to play with the water. Inside, the children enjoyed breaking open pistachios to have with their snack, though for some, the nut cracking became the actual snack time. Nevertheless, it was an immediately rewarding fine motor activity! 

This week, as we continued with our songs about apple picking, our finger plays about apples, and our story about an apple tree, we worked on making some applesauce from our apples. The children loved working the apple mill, and nibbling the peels. After giving an apple a spin, they chopped them and added them to a pot. I cooked the apples and the next day the children ran the apples through a food mill to make a nice smooth sauce to enjoy with our bread. We have a little part of our morning circle time about making apple sauce that says, 
  "Chop, chop, chop, and put them in the pot", then 
  "Stir, stir, stir, and cook them till their hot"
  "Scoop, scoop, scoop, scoop some in a dish" and finally, 
"Eat, eat, eat, mmmmm, apple sauce is sweet!"

The story from the past two weeks has been about a young apple tree growing in Mother Earth's garden who wants to be a star like the ones he sees at night. He likes that his flowers in Spring look a little like stars, but it's not quite the same. Mother Earth tells him that he too is special and to wait. Soon, his apples have ripened and many of the animals come and nibble them, and the tree wonders if this is why he is special. But Mother Earth calls the Autumn fairies and has them gather the rest of his apples. Then she takes one and cuts it open. I take out an apple and slice it as well saying "Take an apple big and round, don't slice down, slice through instead. Open it up and you will see, a star inside, for you and me!" Mother Earth shows the tree that there's a star in every apple, but not only that, each star has seeds inside, baby apple trees tucked safely in their star house. For the apple tree, this is just the icing on the apple cake. 

With fresh sand in our sandbox, fresh dirt in our mud kitchen, and a couple of new tricycles, we were back in business for the second year of Appleseeds! The children warmed right up to being back in school. Compared to last year's start, there has been more action from the very beginning this year! The children are now strong enough to move around the big blocks with ease, so they built large trucks, houses, or even just piled them in the wagon to haul around. The mud kitchen was utilized right away to produce cupcakes, pies, or just some mud for trucks to move around. The garden has been getting a thorough watering each morning, and children love picking the red tomatoes. 

We have been continuing with a bit of our summer rhythm by starting outside while it's still cool. After a good morning playtime, we clean up our toys, and join together for our circle time. I am using the full circle that I had prepared last year, but the fun part is that we can do the WHOLE circle together. Last year, we only did one short part, because that was about all that the children could handle. But now they are eager and excited to do the whole thing. Our circle includes a farmer who gets on his horse and gallops away, but then look! Our horse is limping! What shall we do? We take him to the blacksmith who makes a shoe for him, and the children love singing and acting out "I am the blacksmith good and true, best of work I always do. All day long my hammer goes, ringing, ringing, ringing so, with Rickerty-tickerdy, tickerdy, tick..." Once the blacksmith has made a shoe, we put it on the horse. For this, the children practice touching opposite hands and feet as they say "Pitter, patter, polt, shoe my little colt. Here's a nail, and here's a nail, pitter, patter polt" Fresh horseshoes on, our horse can gallop again and off we go into the orchard to pick apples and make applesauce. 

August summer camp wrapped up our summer at Appleseeds. We still were able to be outside for the better half of the day, and the children enjoyed taking a little walk down the road to feed some chickens and roosters nearby. Each morning, the children would get a pair of scissors and cut some grass, put it in a bucket, and bring it when we went to feed our feathered friends. It was a great way to get in some fine motor practice with scissors, but with a definite purpose of feeding the chickens! 

Inside, we worked on a few special summer crafts to grace our gardens. One week, the children painted clear, plastic plates that we attached to wooden garden posts, making a colorful "flower" for decoration. Another week, the children carefully painted tiny pots and strung beads to make a little garden bell. By the last week, we had exhausted our chalk supply, our sandbox, and our well-loved tricycles. It was time for a break and a much-needed supply of fresh sand, fresh dirt, and new tricycles for our playground.