All About Leaves

"Do you remember what we collected yesterday?"

"LEAVES!" we said.

Free Play

When we arrived in the classroom, we saw that Pauline had set up the table. She had put big leaves on it- these were the leaves we collected from the park yesterday.

"I want to color!" A suddenly said.

"Me, too!" E agreed. So Pauline took out our markers and crayons and she gave us a different sheet of paper this time- it was big!

The girls sat across each other and took a leaf each. They traced its outline on the big sheet of paper. They used both big and small leaves, and some colorful markers. Both of them really made some nice drawings!

When they were done, they noticed that Pauline took out some Halloween decorations and started putting them up around the room. A was watching her and then she had a great idea of using the leaves! She took some tape and began sticking the leaves on the window and sliding door.

"These leaves for Halloween!" A said. E thought it was a great idea, too, and she also started to put up some leaves. They looked beautiful against the glass! You have to see the pictures to believe it! They also put up some cute Halloween stickers.

After that, the girls requested to play with the "house" again, and they took out the food toys. E and A took turns to be the mommy and the baby.

"I will be the mommy, and then you can be the baby," A said. "Okay, baby, come here! Go inside the house!" she said, and E went inside the play tent. After a while, Ayame said, "Now you be the mommy and I will be the big kid."

"Mommy? I'm finished! What are you doing?" A said.

"Wait, I'm a little bit busy," E told her.

Circle Time

We sang our "Good Morning" song to start our circle time. Then we sang "Go Away Big Green Monster" to practice for Halloween and danced around the room while Pauline played her ukulele. Of course, the day won't be complete without a request of "Let It Go"!

Pauline took our bag of leaves and we closely looked at them.

"I see a... trou," A said. In English, it meant a "hole".

"I see a dot," E said, and pointed to the tiny dots on the leaf.

Next, Pauline took out a bigger leaf.

"This is a mommy leaf!" A said. When she saw a bigger leaf, she said, "This is the daddy leaf!"

"What's this- oh, numbers!" E said when Pauline took out a plastic jar filled with magnetic numbers. She and A started taking out the numbers from the jar and identified them. Pauline said we can use them to count!

"Hmm... how many leaves do you think are left?" Pauline asked. The girls both shrugged. She said that we can use the magnetic numbers to count the leaves.

The girls put the numbers in order, and Pauline played a guessing game with them. She asked the girls to close their eyes as she secretly hid a number. The girls were able to guess what was the missing number!

Pauline also asked us to match the number of leaves with the number she will pick. First, she picked three, so A put three leaves beside it. Next was five, and E put five leaves. Then it was seven, so A put seven leaves. The last one was nine, and E put nine leaves. After that, we counted all the leaves inside the bag- there were thirty- five! What a big number!

"Do you know what thirty- five looks like?" Pauline asked. A got number 5, and E took 3 then they both arranged it as 35. Wow! They're right!

Park Time

"Which park do you want to go to?" John asked.

"Small park!" E said.

"Yes! Small park!" A agreed. Pauline said she wanted to go to the big park, hehe.

Off we went to the small park, and played tag again with our teachers. We noticed that some of the equipment we were playing on was actually exercise equipment, and E noticed some pictures with directions on how to use them. We all giggled as she tried to copy the poses in the pictures!

"You can't catch me!" we heard A tell John. "John- John! You can't catch me!"

"Are you sure?" John asked and he chased after her while she burst out laughing.

Meanwhile, E was picking some acorns and she hid them in her hands.

"Guess where are the acorns?" She asked Pauline. She giggled as Pauline kept making a wrong guess.

We went back to school after playing for a long time, and told our teachers that we were hungry!

"I have pasta for my lunch," E said. It turns out, A also has pasta! Yum!

Afterschool Program: Young Mozarts

John started off our music session with a finger play called "Johnny Whoop!" finger play. Then we did some rhythm exercises using the tambourine and maracas. We had to follow the rhythm patterns that John made and following the steady beat. We also learned about music dynamics (soft and loud sounds).

We also did some dancing as we sang "Shake Your Sillies Out". We did other music and movement activities such as jumping, crawling, rolling on the floor, clapping, and tiptoeing. E's favorite was "Go to sleep!" and was always asking John to go to sleep! H also requested some songs like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", and the "ABC" song.

We read the book "Room in the Broom" by Julia Donaldson, and created magic our own magic wands. It made us excited about Halloween!

"There are lots of scary stuff in Halloween!" H said. "Spiders, monsters, and ghosts!"

That concludes the third day of Fall School. How about you? How was your day?

Love,

All the happy Lighthouse children