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Sunday 21 October 2012

Fall Fun

Well I lost the camera somewhere on our way home from our Thanksgiving weekend (or it is still in a bag somewhere waiting to be discovered).  So I have finally downloaded all the photos I've been taking off my camera.

Over the past two weeks it has been all about fall around here.  Leaves, pumpkins, harvesting gardens, and more leaves!
Leaves, toadstools, pinting with leaves
After Thanksgiving (here in Canada) the boys played in leaves a lot.  We have been using our sandbox trucks to push them around, raking, filling tarps to take to the compost pile, jumping, rolling, throwing, using snow shovels... We also made little toadstools to look like Super Sam's house from our stories.  I had found some paper-mache mushrooms on clearance at the end of the summer.  We used red and white tissue paper to decorate them for the nature table. The next day the boys used leaves to make prints.  They experimented with a few different painting techniques and even painted with some pine needles.

We have visited many farms over the last month.  Early in the month we went to Robinson's Farm (one of the daycare boy's grandparents own the farm).  Over the summer and early fall we also went to Frootogo for apple picking.  Recently we have been to Parkside Farms and Simpler Thyme organic farm. Of course we also harvested our whole garden plot and cleaned it up for the winter.  We ended up with a tone of green tomatoes.
Ducks at Simpler Thyme Farms, Chickens at Parkside Farms, playing with toy phones, Another visit to Parkside Farms
It was such a delight for me to visit Simpler Thyme farms as the lady who runs it is so kind and lovely to talk to.  We also met up with another family from our area who is doing Waldorf Homeschooling.  TJ played soccer with their boys for over an hour in the cold wind and can't wait to do it again!

We have made are more contact paper and leaf collages to hang in the window. On a particularly busy day for the daycare we made collages of fall coloured material and yarn.  Lots of baking has been going on.  I used up all the green tomatoes to make 2 apple-tomato pies, 1 bunt cake, 2 loaves, 4 dozen muffins, and froze the ones that ripened.  I'm now working on the apples next.

One day we went to Parkside Farms with our cousins E and baby J.  The children all picked out some larger pumpkins to decorate.  When we got home we made fun faces on the pumpkins with playdough. It was neat to be able to take it off and start again.  Then we pulled out some paint, glue and glitter for the kids to go wild!  TJ and MJ are so proud of their creations.  Cousin E made a great start on her large pumpkin, and even baby J liked playing with his.

decorating and playing with pumpkins
 In our stories (we are using the kindergarten lessons from Thinking Feeling Willing at Waldorf Essentials), Super Sam takes a little boat to deliver invitations to his Harvest Party.  We made little boats out of apple sauce containers and origami paper.  Once they tipped over TJ realize we could just use leaves from outside as the sail.  As a daycare we are hosting our own harvest party next weekend.  The children are excitedly planing and baking to get ready.
material collage, boats for Sam, clearing leaves with snow shovels
The weather has been on and off, but we are outside every day.  TJ has been working to move the log pile around and our rope swing is getting a lot of use.  We have had some on and off days too.  Now that everyone is getting used to each other we are learning to respect people's space and to use our manners.  Communication for preschoolers and kindergarteners is difficult but we are working on talking to each other (politely).  Behaviour around here is slipping and mommy is getting very weary, but I'm making steps to turn things around.  I'm hopeful to have a shift in the mood around here next week.

I'll be linking up to some great sites during the week.  I encourage you to check them out for more wonderfully inspiring ideas!

1 comment:

  1. So many fun things to do! Thanks again for linking up.

    ReplyDelete