On Thursday, PK finally had the opportunity to go for a hike! After attending the fourth and fifth grade performance that morning, we headed for the tunnel right across from the Upper School. We were excited to see what our eyes could see, what our ears could hear, and what our noses could smell.

Entering the trail into the woods, we could already hear bird songs.

As we walked along, we saw old logs on the ground with fungi growing on them and trees with little hiding places. We talked about how those things are helpful to the creatures who live in the woods.

When we looked up high, we spotted some interesting things too.

Far above our heads we could see new leaves just emerging on the tall trees.

Then we came across these arched trees. They were compared to rainbows and we talked about shapes and how a big snow a few years ago bent them like that.

Soon we could hear the gentle sounds of the stream that runs along our path.

And we got to feel the soft and cushiony moss that grows in the shaded areas of the forest floor.

At the end of our hike, it started to sprinkle! We laughed as we hurried back to the tunnel and across the road to our classroom.

Even in our hurry we appreciated the tiny spring flowers along the walkway and we were thrilled to see a pair of bluebirds flying along our path.

We can’t wait to hike again! We headed out hoping to be able to do a “half-hike” ,and we were able to complete a whole hike, so we are definitely ready. In fact, we will be hiking each Thursday that we can in the weeks ahead. (Please dress your child accordingly.) We hope to expand the learning that we started this week by weaving in related books and activities, and Mrs. Larochelle will be accompanying us as well.

We’ve spent the past two weeks learning about spring and observing the changes around us. We’ve read about and seen that this is a time of green grass, spring flowers, and new life. We’ve also learned quite a bit about eggs, and so we made own nests with baby birds!

We carefully painted recycled toilet paper tubes; one pink and one blue. When they were dry, we added details to create our baby birds…

then gently placed them in a paper bag nest.

Simply adorable!

All of this learning about spring and eggs culminated on Tuesday when we had our BIG spring celebration, an EGG HUNT!

We lined up on the playground, and when the teachers said, “Ready, set, go!”, we RAN!

We each got to find ten special eggs to put in our bags to keep. It was amazing!

We hope all of you find the joy in your Spring Break next week and we’ll see you soon!

We’ve definitely had spring rain lately, so PK makes sure to get outside whenever we’re able. Sometimes it recess right outside our door first thing in the morning before a rainy day starts.

Other times, we get lucky and there are milder days with sunshine in between the rainy ones, and we get to savor long recesses on the playscape.

The wet sand is exciting to play with!

We love all the space on the playscape and being able to run and ride and swing to exercise our muscles!

And these spring rains bring the very first spring flowers, so it’s always good to remember to “stop and smell the flowers”, and to appreciate both the rain and the sunshine as we look forward to spring!

This morning PK attended its first Lower School Friday assembly. Today’s meeting was held on the playscape because Mr. Kohlman, a physics teacher here at FA, was teaching us about a newly installed pendulum swing that he had made.

We got a great seat right up front and listened intently as Mr. Kohlman explained what a pendulum was and how it worked. He showed us how the tire swing he’d made was a pendulum, and he explained the important rules of playing with it safely.

Two children were chosen to be the very first to ride it, so we could all see how it worked. Our Special Helper of the Day, Amma, was one of the people chosen!

Mrs. Estes helped Amma climb on board…

and then she got the swing going for the children.

The swing went back and forth and round and round!

At the end of assembly Mrs. Estes and Mrs. McCluskey even demonstrated for the children that this special swing was strong enough for adults! The PK class thought that was pretty funny!

The rain today prevented us from getting our playscape time that would have allowed everyone in PK to have a turn, but you can be sure that we’ll all play on the pendulum swing when we return after break. We can also look forward to applying the pendulum concept to creating some wonderful art with Mrs. Gath sometime soon as well!

We’ve had some special days in PK recently! February 6th was our 100th day of school and there was a special monster visitor right in our class. Together we put circle stickers on the friendly Monster until he was covered with 100 spots.

It was easy for us to see that 100 is a very BIG number!

And yesterday was Valentine’s Day!

In PK we celebrated with a special Valentine card exchange.

Earlier in the week we had each carefully decorated a beautiful bag to hold our cards.

For the exchange, we sat in a circle and one by one our classmates took turns delivering their cards.

We got to practice using good manners and patience.

We did a great job with this!

We were very appreciative of all the special cards from all our PK friends.

We couldn’t wait to look at all of them with our family at home!

Later at snack time we also had a little Valentine snack party!

There was all kinds of delicious, healthy food…

and some sweet treats too!

Everyone ate very well and enjoyed it all!

It was a sweet way to celebrate a special day with our friends.

Last Friday in PK we culminated our theme of hibernation by making hibernation cupcakes. To make these, we first mixed up yellow cake batter for the bear caves. Then we each got to put a spoonful of batter into a cupcake tin.

We added a little sleeping Teddy Graham bear on top of that.

And we put another spoonful of batter over the bear to complete the “bear cave”.

Into the oven these went to bake. It made the whole school smell wonderful! Once they finished baking, we let them cool down while we went out to play, had lunch, and rested. After rest time, we discovered it had “snowed” a little on top of the bear caves! We quickly cleaned up our rest mats and it was finally time to eat one! While we ate, we checked after each bite to see if we could find the hibernating bear.

Sometimes it was tricky to find them…

but we must be good bear hunters because we ALL found our sleeping bears!

And we must be good bakers too because everyone declared the hibernation cupcakes delicious!

This was certainly a fun way to end an amazing theme!

In PK we’ve been learning about winter! We’ve discussed all the ways this season is unique: the colder weather, the warmer clothes we wear, the shorter days and longer nights, and how we sometimes get SNOW!

We made some snowman art to decorate our walls.

This allowed us to practice cutting skills making stick arms and a carrot nose.

We used fine motor skills to paint a face and buttons with a cotton swab and black paint.

And little hands got a workout squeezing white glue snowflakes falling all around the snowmen.

Best of all was when we sprinkled beautiful silver glitter over the glue to make the snow shimmer!

This week we made more winter art. First we read two books with the same title of Red Sled, and then we had fun creating our own version of a scene from Lita Judge’s Red Sled book, the story of a bear who borrows a sled he finds and has quite an amusing adventure.

We started this art by finger painting a snowy background. We used white paint and a little blue and teal because we saw that the illustrators in our books used those colors to show shadows on the snow. We even sprinkled our wet paint with salt to give it the crystalized look of frost and snow!

The next day, we got to draw a face on a little die cut bear and then added it, along with a red sled and some snowflakes, to create a scene just like the ones from our book.

We were pretty excited to see our finished work!

We’re sure you’ll agree they’re adorable.

We are very proud of all our wonderful winter art!

Today was PK’s little holiday party! Because pancake turkeys were such a big hit last month, we decided to make a pancake Santa face for our special holiday snack.

This was another listening activity that started with a pancake for Santa’s face.

Then strawberries went on the top of that to form a hat.

Next came banana slices at the bottom for a beard.

Some ReddiWip for the fur trim on Santa’s hat…

a raspberry nose…

and candy eyes added the final details.

They all looked great and tasted delicious…every bite was eaten!

It was a wonderful PK way to celebrate the season with each other.

On Monday this week, PK had a special visitor, Mrs. Schwartz, from Falcon Club. She came to share about how her family celebrates Hanukkah. She read us a book and showed us her family’s menorah.

She even let some friends place candles in her menorah.

And some friends got to pretend to light the candles.

Later we made edible dreidels!

To make them, we stuck a pretzel stick into a marshmallow…

and then added a Hershey kiss using white icing or Nutella to stick it on. Delicious!

We have also been learning about Christmas this week and doing some VERY important work. No photos of that though because it’s TOP SECRET! Shhhhh!

In PK this month we are learning that this is a season of giving and even children can give. We’ll be like busy little elves making ornaments and decorations and a special gift for our family too while we’re learning about the December holidays of Hanukkah and Christmas!

There’s a menorah on our bookshelf and there’s a Christmas tree in our make believe holiday bakery.

But most exciting of all, there really are ELVES in our classroom now! Can you see them in the background?

Here they are up close!

We think you’ll agree that’s one cute bunch of elves!