Hello, Autumn!

We are transitioning into autumn and our Seedlings are so excited about the seasons shifting and curious about the natural world around them. As we walk to the park each day we've been noticing the crunch of the leaves under our feet and feeling the wind blowing through our hair. We've also welcomed pumpkins into our classroom to work with and explore in a multiplicity of ways.

We get creative with painting our pumpkins! We mix the paints to make different colors and encourage our seedlings to get messy.

We then cut open our painted pumpkins to discover what is inside. We scrape out the pumpkins with spoons and notice gooey seeds. We feel the slimy pumpkin "mucus" with our hands and we even smell each pumpkin element!

Next we introduce a pumpkin hammering work with wooden golf tees and a mallet. The child must pick up a golf tee, find the small hole in the pumpkin, then place it inside. They then must use one hand to support the pumpkin and one hand to hammer all of the golf tees into the pumpkin. Finally, they can pull the tees out and place them back in the bowl. The child uses their pincer grasp to utilize the tees, arm strength to hit the tees with the hammer, and core strength to pull the tees back out of the pumpkin.