Posted: November 30, 2017
Last week we had some rain and some areas of our forest space was flooded. Thankfully some cold temperatures froze the ice and the kiddos had a blast crushing it.
Mrs. Sweezey
The Battle Begins March 11th, 2024
Posted: November 30, 2017
Posted: November 28, 2017
In the recent weeks, our outdoor classroom has had a lot of changes. Besides the seasonal changes, the grounds crew has visited us again to help clean up our forest space and make us a hiking trail!! In this video I take you for a walk through the woods and talk a bit about the changes and the benefits for playing outdoors.
Thank you EGFN and the grounds crew! Mrs. Sweezey's K4 class appreciate all your hardwork and are grateful to you for making our environment clean and safe to play in :)
Posted: November 17, 2017
Fine motor skills is the exercise of the tiny muscles and movements in our hands and the coordination of our hands and fingers with our eyes - all skills that are important with reading and writing (and much more). Fine motor skills require a lot of practice and children can often get easily frustrated and discouraged when forced to put pencil to paper before they are truly ready. Mary-Dale and I make sure that we provide the kiddos with many fun, hands on activities where they can manipulated small objects, like Lego, play-dough, puzzles, and this Geo-board that Silas is playing with - to build those muscles!
Posted: November 17, 2017
Today was an indoor day and some of the kiddos were busy-bees in the block center. In this clip you can see that the kids added some personal design elements to their structure - pom poms, leaves, and pipe cleaners. Beautiful.
Posted: November 17, 2017
Climbing trees, building blocks, & "skating" on ice outside.
Posted: November 15, 2017
As we watched the kids run around and play - "come on, warm up the blood" - Mary-Dale and I observed that our forest space doesn't really have 'climbing trees.' They are thin, with high branches, and the ones we can climb, are old and have fallen, however, shortly afterwards, I caught Ms. Reesey proudly working her way up a cluster of trees. "Look guys!"
Posted: November 15, 2017
This week mother nature brought us cold and frosty days. As we made our way to the forest, the kids were quick to notice that the water in our ditch was frozen over and we were gifted with ICE!!! The kids spent a good chunk of their outdoor time walking, sliding, shimmying, balancing, and yes, falling. We discussed ice and how to carefully walk across it and how we can use our arms to help us balance. Lots of gross motor play!.
Posted: November 15, 2017
Remembrance Day!
Posted: November 3, 2017
It's about that time
** Click the above link **
Now that November is here, snow can really happen at any time, so I thought I would share a helpful video of how to dress warm in the winter. The video is very helpful and the advice easy peasy.
This is gonna be super important in the upcoming weeks - dressing appropriately for winter.
Quick tips:
- Always waterproof over water resistant - there's a big diff.
- Waterproof gloves or mittens (mittens preferably, they are not just easier to get on, but actually are warmer due to better air circulation from the heat the kiddos generate).
- Fleece, wool, or a synthetic material over cotton - cotton will not keep you warm if you get wet or sweat.
- The best foot insulators are wool socks because they wick the moisture away and a boot that is one size bigger will help keep your kiddos feet warm because the extra wiggle room helps with circulation and moves that heat around. Boots + bulky socks - the wiggle room = frozen ice bricks for feet aka. cold and uncomfortable kids.
