First Fires

 It feels like ages ago at this point, but the seasonally cold weather at the beginning of the week had us pulling out our Kelly Kettle (see pictures below) and making tea to warm up cold fingers. Going into the cold season is so much more difficult than coming out of it in spring. Our Kelly Kettle fires, along with some fire training and practice with safety rules, prepared us for our first fire of the season today. We prepared a magical brew that will transform normal cotton masks into...you'll have to wait and see!

Our Kindness Curriculum work this week focused in more depth on emotion recognition, the changing nature of emotions, and what to do when we experience strong emotions. Today your child is bringing home a "Peace Jar." Inspired by the book Moody Cow Meditates, a peace jar is a tool that can help calm angry or excited emotions. Ask your child to show you how it works, and practice using it at home! As we all know, accessing tools when we are emotionally unregulated can be very hard, but practice helps.

Finally, Halloween is upon us! We'll do some fun woodland animal dress up and face painting next Friday, so no need to send in Halloween costumes from home. If anyone would like to pick up a vegan Halloween treat for our class on Friday I'm sure the little wild animals would happily gobble it up. Let me know!

Enjoy some pictures from the week, and don't forget to sign up for conferences and upcoming fire tending opportunities!

We put some of the giant sunflowers from the playground in our sensory table, and they were quickly deconstructed. 

A favorite game this week: growling animal chase.

Doing some cutting, sorting and gluing. Scissors make great holiday presents, are a great way for kids to hone their fine-motor skills!

Bridget helps some students sort the paper pictures they cut out onto different posters. 

Driving in their bus

Farmer Sarah made pumpkin muffins with us on Wednesday, and they were delicious!

These kiddos love to count! Here they are, exploring some of our counting collections.

These puppets are trying to solve a social problem: whose idea should they use for play time?

The cold mornings at the beginning of the week meant that it was time to boil some water for tea. This is our Kelly Kettle. It can heat water up with a small twig fire in about 3 minutes!

Kristine boils water in the Kelly Kettle. The kids can help collect sticks and lay the fire in the pan, but it's a grown up job to light the matches and feed the fire. 

Another forest job: Weather Reporter

Kristine found a new treasure for the forest, and it's turned into a fairy house! The children love the small world imaginary opportunities here.

After using the Kelly Kettle to make some hot water, we melted some wax and dipped beautiful leaves. 

Making some forest decorations from wax dipped leaves, beads, and sticks. 

These buddies are working together on their decoration.

On Friday we made Peace Jars with our kindergarten friends. Ask your child how it works, and help them find a safe place to keep it at home. NOTE: the lids are on tight, but are NOT glued on. Handle with care!

Our first fire in the fire pit!

We made a special potion from black walnuts.

We sang a special song, put on special witch fingers, then each child dropped a white mask in and said...

"Magic Pot, I wish for a _____________" (some sort of woodland animal). We'll check next Friday to see if the magic pot could turn the white masks into animal masks. Stay tuned....