AFC PINE AM

  On this morning's walk the boys talked about SO many things they saw as we made our way around the neighborhood. This time of the year is great because we get to see so many beautiful colors, and to today's surprise, a bunch of people right outside our door doing some work on the road. Needless to say, the boys were thrilled with our long walk around the block.  "Look look!" W yelled as he ran his hands across the bush. The other boys gathered around and started feeling it too.  "Ouch!" B yelled as he he did not like the feeling of it.  As we turned to continued on our walk J's eyes got huge as he exclaimed,"A flower!"  W shared in his excitement, "A flower, look! Hey a flower!" As we made our way down the first stretch of the block, the boys noticed lots of big trucks coming our way.  "Oh no! A big truck!" I wonder where it was going? We continued on.  It wasn't before long that W and T were staring down at the sidewa...

  We finally got to play in some puddles this morning! Since it rained too hard yesterday to enjoy the rain, we decided that we could try again today. Some of the boys were more interested in others, but all in all it was fun to splash around and get messy.  J even found a new way to use the chalk! He picked some up and brought it over to a small puddle. J took his favorite color, green, and began vigorously rubbing the chalk into the pavement. It was like magic! The chalk sort of turned into a paste and the color became vibrant and thick. It was so cool looking! I always enjoy the different ways the boys use materials. So innovative!  Have a great weekend! 

  I am disappointed to say we were not able to go play in the rain today! Unfortunately it was raining way too hard for us to go out and splash in puddles. Huge bummer! Hopefully we can try again in the upcoming weeks. After snack is typically a time we settle down to engage in some more turn taking and calming activities. For the last couple of days the boys have been really enjoying playing this pancake game. Yes, you read right- a game involving pancakes!  The boys took turns carefully stacking one pancake on top of each other to create a giant stack, but occasionally it would fall over and we needed to start again.  The two boys tried their best to use the spatulas to put the pancakes on top, but it was so hard! There were many frustrating moments and many times we had to keep trying, but all in all the boys were satisfied being able to stack, flip, and "eat" pancakes. 

Wowie we worked all of those little legs this morning! We took a nice long walk with the Dogwood class down to the sculpture park. Always a good time at the sculpture park. Although the big ceramic bird is the main attraction, B, & T enjoyed playing amongst the growing bushes and grass. We named it "the jungle."  B was down on all four legs growling like a lion.  "RAWR!" He would exclaim as he crawled along the dirt.    T noticed B and started giggling. The two boys laughed for a minute before T picked up a stick to be an elephant!  "Trunk!" He yelled as he lifted the stick high into the sky. So creative!  B watched as T lifted his stick into the air like an elephant's trunk. He looked around and found a nice long stick and began to do the same thing.  The two boys stomped their feet and yelled "elephant!" as they giggled and stomped around. 

We have been looking forward to these warm days! This time of the year is the best for many reasons, but one reason in particular is all of the messy play we get to engage in. This morning out on the hillside we got to do all kinds of fun messy things.  To start, some of the boys picked up spray bottles full of colored water. This is one of our favorite ways to "paint" and talk more about colors. As the kids sprayed the sheet, they watched as the white turned into blue, red, green, and eventually just all purple.  J found that although the sheet was turning several different colors... so were his hands! He was cracking up as the green color stained his little hands.  With each spray he became a little more curious. He tested the colors out on the sheet first, but seemed to be dissatisfied with the product. That's when he started spraying his hands a little more. The colors were much more vibrant on his hands than the sheet! With green and purple hands J happily played wit...

  Happy Thursday! We ended our week with a pretty funny and happy accident in the beginning of our day. As you can imagine any time we play with playdoh it is inevitable some or all will fall on the floor. Not a problem since we tend to embrace messes. There are times, however, that playdoh is intentionally thrown on the floor and that's when things tend to get interesting... like today!  While playing at the table B, T, and W were happily making all kinds of molds, cut outs, and whatnot with their individual playdoh piles. After a few minutes, there was a decent amount of playdoh on the floor which T found particularly entertaining. He decided he too would put his pile of dough on the floor. I watched as he dropped it, climbed off his chair, and then deliberately stepped on it. At first, I was ready to ask him to pick it up off the floor and place it on the table, but then I took a moment to just watch and wait to see what happened.  T picked up his playdoh and brou...

  Finally, our day to play on the slide! It has been highly anticipated all week as the boys have been asking to go down the slide since Monday morning. But, before heading outside we had a little meeting with Ms. Kari where we focused on the word 'stop.' During our meeting we talked about different times we could use the word and then practiced stopping and going with our bodies. Always an interesting time! The boys put their jackets on and where ready to go right out and door and down the slide.  As soon as the door opened to the playscape the boys ran over to the slide cheering with excitement. There was one issue though... it was full of water from the snow yesterday!  "It's wet!" T exclaimed.  "Uh oh." W remarked as he saw the droplets of water rolling down the slide.  We came all this way to GO and ended up having to STOP! Did I think we would be practicing 'stop' on the slide? Absolutely not, but it happened to work out quite nicely since ...