Mud, mud, we love MUD!  The children found a most fabulous mud hole in the corner of the playground, where they discovered that by standing and wiggling back and forth, they could get thoroughly stuck.  It was great fun for them, though maybe not so much for your washing machines.

We learned a lot about waste, recycling, trash, and compost this week.  We read Where Does the Garbage Go? then sorted some waste.  We divided the waste into three categories – recyclables, compost, and trash.  We also read Garbage Helps Our Garden Grow: A Compost Story.  At the science table students made their own compost jars using food scraps, leaves, grass, and dirt.  We will observe them over the next couple of months to see what happens.

In the sensory table the children made some moon dough – a mixture of flour and baby oil – which can be granular like sand and molded like play dough.

The art table was busy with many different activities.  The children made tissue paper flowers, continued to sign the thank you cards for our classroom visitors, did some water color painting, made some beautiful Peruvian yarn art with Zeanny, and made art replicas by looking at a poster and copying it in their own style.

Some of the kindergarten students worked very hard on their world maps, tracing, pin punching, and coloring all of the continents.

During Spanish we learned about Peru, some of the art, customs, and climate.  Zeanny shared a story about an old lady who lives in a cave and sings a song to make it rain when it gets too dry.  She taught us the song, and some children had a great time singing it at recess time in an attempt to make it rain.  Another group sang for sunshine, and they must have been a bit louder, because the sun began to peek out by the end of recess.  We also read the story El Frijole de Benito, about a cat who plants a bean plant and waits and waits for it to grow.

Friday students were busy working on their world maps, doing map puzzles, assembling compost jars, making art reproductions, and creating little books.  Gerri Scott read Just One Bite, about what different animals eat.  The students were so busy working that they decided to delay recess.  It began to rain when were going to head out, but they were excited to do rainy day activities instead.