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!
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!
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