FALL WEEK: PK-3

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Ana's Week

We were all about the outdoors and fall this week in celebration of my favorite season! Since we are soon to experience some fabulous fall celebrations, aka Thanksgiving and Halloween, we spent a week really delving into some of the traditional fall experiences Aria was too young to enjoy in earlier years. We concluded the week with a trip to the amazing Paradise Pumpkin Patch in Eufaula, AL, where we went on Hay Rides, fed and rode animals, played in bouncy castles, picked a pumpkin at the patch, and played in a corn pit!

My goal for the week was simple: let the week be fun and easy after the busyness of Aria’s birthday party and help Aria to learn that Fall is when the leaves fall out of the trees. Simple goals for the week, but both were achieved so I can count the week a success! At the start of the week, we made a fall sensory box with leaves, pine cones, acorns, gourds, and pumpkins. We were able to discuss traditional fall items and Skylar was able to join in the fun and play too! The sensory box will be something we use over and over in years to come (and we may use it as a Thanksgiving decoration)! We went on a walk at a local greenway since we have only one lonely tree in our yard, and we collected leaves of different colors in a bag. On our walk, we looked at the different trees, had the chance to talk to a local policemen, and Aria ran for a while so we can call it P.E. (why not?)! When we got home, we sorted the leaves by color, counted them, and marked the numbers on a list. At the end of the week, once the leaves were good and dried, we threw them out in the yard and jumped on them. We also used leaves like a paintbrush and painted a pretty page with fall colors. We painted little pumpkins bought at the grocery store and made sticker faces on the pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.

For lunch during the week, we made Nutella and jelly sandwiches (weird, I know, but that’s what Aria wanted to make) and cut the bread into leaf shapes with leaf cookie cutters. We also made no bake pumpkin cookies at the end of the week and brought them to the pumpkin patch to share with friends.

We didn’t spend much of the week watching fall related things since most of them are Halloween or Thanksgiving specific episodes (and I want to save those). We watched a few of the Curious George fall episodes and that’s it. We read a lot of great books, however. Aria’s favorite this week was the book Leaf Man, and we made our own leaf man to play with while reading. Such a fun activity! We also read Kevin Discovers Autumn, Maple (a great book for children with younger siblings), and The Autumn Visitors.

I absolutely recommend doing this week, but if you do, make sure to spend lots of time outside really enjoying the fall weather and the great activities the season has to offer!
 
Jessica's Week

Due to past success we did mini daily units this week to discuss different aspects of the fall season. Monday was all about apples: we ate them after nap as a snack and examined the seeds inside. Then we counted black bean “seeds” on a laminated Apple mat and planted the actual seeds from our snack out in the yard. I’m hoping to buy a real apple tree next spring and say it grew from her seed ;) shhh don’t tell on me!

Another day we spent going nuts over squirrels. We read “The Busy Little Squirrel” by Nancy Tafuri and made a paper bag squirrel. Then we created a tree from a paper towel roll and taped on some real leaves before stuffing a coloring page squirrel inside. We were able to use tweezers and our puppet squirrel to store up acorns we found for winter in our tree.

Leaf day was a probably Ts favorite this week because we had a lot of active play raking, jumping, running in them etc. Dave even made a leaf hay ride out of our riding lawn mower and pull behind cart stuffed with fallen leaves. We read “My Leaf Book” by Monica Wellington and pressed our own leaves into a booklet with different types/colors from our yard. We also included some leaf rubbings and painted stampings.
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I found another great book to compliment our next theme called “Pumpkin Day” by Nancy Wallace. It pairs lots of pumpkin traditions and scientific information such as how a pumpkin grows in a fun age appropriate story style. We carved our own pumpkin as a family and cleaned, seasoned, and roasted the seeds together for snack. While David did most of the actual cutting T got to pick a face design and help with the safety saw: http://www.target.com/p/halloween-pumpkin-carving-power-saw. While he finished the bulk of the cutting she painted a smaller pumpkin to keep from getting bored. 

Our fun field trip day completed the week on Friday. We went to Renshaw Farms with our local MOPS group in the morning for the traditional fall hoopla and then took a foliage train ride in the afternoon at Kiski Valley Railroad. T loves trains and they have tables in the cars so we could eat lunch while enjoying a leisurely 1.5 hr long ride. We finished out the evening with a trunk or treat event at Riverside drive in movie theater. All patrons deck out their trunks and hand out candy before a kid friendly movie is played. This was Taegans first trip to a drive in and I know it won’t be her last. Perfect way to make it through an entire movie with a wiggly toddler who’s also hyped up on candy!