Fabulous walk!

Hello and welcome back from the weekend! The Birch room took a walk today and it was full of excitement and fun! 

We began the morning by making choices in the classroom. Some students built a puzzle while others created juices at the light table using cups and water cubes. The Birch kids practiced signing in their names, as well. They are getting very good at writing their names...keep up the good work, Birch friends!

After playing outside on the playscape, we decided to walk to downtown Webster to observe construction happening for a new bank! As we sat, the students noticed several things about the construction:

"I see pipes. They use them to hold the building up."

"Some pipes are also in the ground so water can go through them."

"I see trucks and two big tractors."

"That's a lot of dirt!"

"I see a lot of cones. There is an orange fence to keep people out and safe."

We look forward to walking back to this area to see the progress of the building the new bank!

As we continued our walk, we noticed a firemen cleaning the ambulance outside of the firehouse. He invited us over to take a look at the firetruck! Each child took a turn going through the fire truck.

 

The firemen also showed us some of their equipment on the side of the truck and explained the purpose of the materials and tools. 

We ended this spontaneous visit by going home with new firemen hats! Thank you, Webster Groves Fire Department!

Forest Friday Fun

We began our walk to the forest today going an extra block up the street to see some construction.  There are a few houses on Gray that are being worked on.  We saw one house with "lots of ladders around" it. 

And one of our favorite houses, the Gingerbread house, had an addition put on and we watch the roofers put a new roof on.  We saw how they were keeping their bodies safe by being tied to the roof so they wouldn't fall off.

We continued on our walk to the forest.  We decided to stay at the top of the hill in the shade and enjoy the cool breeze.  Before we even got to the pergola the kids noticed a HUGE mushroom growing on the base of a tree.  "Its a bunny foot mushroom!" "It looks like bunny feet."

 

While climbing the tree a friend really wanted to get up there like her peers.  She tried and she tried, but she kept slipping off.  Her friend said, "Here I'll get off and help you."  The peer got off and talked her friend through getting up the tree. "Put your foot here and your hand here.  Then pull up. You have to put both legs over the branch."  The friend got up the tree and was so proud of herself!! I love seeing kids helping each other out!

Under the pergola the kids played house and family, spies, and collected a pile of sticks for a campfire. 

 

 

"She's the little sister.  We have to wake her up." 

 

Capering day

We love capering! There were some exciting activities happening this morning in all of the classrooms. Make sure to take a look at the other blogs to learn more about our capering day!

Spruce: http://afcspruce.blogspot.com/

Maple: http://afcmaple.blogspot.com/

In the Birch room, students did a variety of building and designing. Students built rocket drones and structures with the legos.

One student used the lego container for a house and built furniture and a family!

AD: "This is the bed and this is the makeup stand. This is the mommy, sister and baby."

EP: "This is a rocket drone!"

A group of students designed with shapes at the projector.

"This is a yeti!"

Over at the building area, the students were asked "What can you create with these materials?" It was neat to see the variety of structures that the children created! We had several towers, built in unique ways. Some students used the small tubes for the main support of their structure while others used white cubes to hold up their buildings.

One group of students created a tower almost as tall as the lantern! They were so close to building their tower to the lantern and it fell down when the last pieces were added.

The students were not discouraged and tried again, this time using a different system for holding up their building.

We ended our morning by enjoying the beautiful weather out on the playscape. Have a great night and see some of you tonight at family chats!

Building Outside

Happy Wednesday Birch Room! We began our morning by exploring a new book about bridges.  We talked about the BEAUTIFUL pictures we saw in our book.  We discussed what the bridge was going over, what the bridge was made of, who uses the bridge and where in world the bridge was located.  We also worked on identifying numerals and counting out the right number of blocks.

 

We wanted to get outside before the rain so we did just that!  A group of kiddos took their love of building outside with us.  They began collecting logs, stumps, rocks and pieces of plants to create a snake house.  The spice (pieces of plan) with tell the snake to come in.

 

"This is a BIG house"

"Look what we rolled over here! It took us like 16 minutes!"

They also added a few bug friends, rolly pollies, a grasshopper and a slug to their snake house. 

We ended our day with splitting into smaller groups.  Some children worked on a birthday canvas for a friend who has a birthday coming up. Others explored more color mixing with eye droppers.  We also had Nurse Ann help with our hearing screening.  Ask your child if they heard the little birdies in their ears.  They all did a great job!