Raccoons and Earth Day

 It was a raccoon-y time at Keep It Simple Farms.  On Monday the Tiny Treks Outdoor Preschool kids made masks and read stories about raccoons.  They went looking for raccoon prints in the mud and played in the woods.

On Wednesday we were talking about Earth Day.  We made crafts from recycled objects; container lids, wood bits, spools and practiced using tape and scissors.  We had a discussion about how we can make our planet better-recycling toys and clothes and things from the kitchen.  Picking up trash.  Then, we sang a fun song called:

Reduce Reuse Recycle Song ( sung to the tune of Have you ever seen a lassie)

Reduce Reuse Recycle, recycle recycle

Reduce Reuse Recycle It's easy to do.

Cause your world is my world, and my world is your world.

Reduce Reuse Recycle It's easy to do.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Quality Time in Nature

There was  lots of listening play today at Tiny Treks Outdoor Preschool.  We heard crows, compared the sounds of the small chicks with the grown chickens, and then we played sand castles by the river.  We made our own special leaf boats to sail on Bear Creek.  The water was flowing very fast today after all of our rain this weekend.

Farmer Leon  showed us a snake skin he had found on the farm.  The kids were having fun climbing up downed trees and enormous Douglas Fir Trees.  We are having fun watching the baby chicks become awkward teenager chickens.  

We, on the other hand, are far from teenagers and keep the wonder of childhood live by spending quality time in nature.

Nature's Art at Keep it Simple Farm

Tiny Treks Outdoor Preschool has been creating temporary nature art at Keep It Simple Farms.  It didn't take long before the kids got the hang of what we were thinking about.  They made rock piles, ferns and rocks and sometimes ferns and sticks.  And because they were children, they didn't feel compelled to make the art completely balanced the way an adult might.  They added a stick to the leaves and called it art.

Wednesday's class was so excited to find the art that Monday's class had created and now this week, to find some of their art still there and bummed to find some gone.  But then they quickly replaced the missing art with new art. The kids were wondering if other visitors at KIS are finding their art too!

See saw Majorie Daw

The Wednesday We had an amazing time these past 2 weeks at Keep It Simple Farms.  First with the flooding, which got into our boots and was really fun to splash through and play with.  We did lots of pretending.  We have an ongoing game of family going on.  The kids want me to be the youngest with the kids choosing to be mother or father, older brother, grampa etc.  Soon it is time for my "nap" and then they spent a lot of time making me "hot chocolate" "chicken noodle soup" and other yummy concoctions from the water that had invaded one of our usual spots.

We spent a lot of time talking about why there was so much water. (everyone remembered the heavy rains of the week before) and watching how differently the water acted.  The water was flowing quicker than normal and over the beaver dam and over other big logs in the stream.

When we got to the designated deer sanctuary we found a  small log lodged in a tree.  Perhaps the Monday group had hauled it there?  We moved it over a few feet and voila-it became a teeter totter!

Stick Animals!

Tiny Treks Outdoor Preschool found lots of water today and not so much mud as last week.

We managed to light the fire today and cook some marshmallows. Some got so squishy they fell off before we could eat them. But we got better with practice. It was funny to see them melt in the fire.

Afterwards we took some sticks to make stick animals. They were all very colorful.  Maybe they were chameleons and were matching the tablecloth! Or rainbow snakes.

 

 

Parents!  Please let your friends know about Tiny Treks Outdoor Preschool!  The next session begins on March 31st!  Here is the schedule below.  Payment for the next session is due by March 19th.

Please note there is no school during Northshore School District's Spring Break and also no school on Memorial Day. 

March 31 – June 9 – 10 weeks $270 (no school April 14 or May 26/Memorial Day)

April 2 – June 11 – 10 weeks $300 (no school April 16)

Sticks and Stones-for fun!

Sometimes it takes a group to carry a stick this big!  We had one child with a big stick and other kids feeling left out of the stick world.  When this stick was noticed in the stream-it just had to come out. Since it was 15 feet long it took 3 of them to carry it. The three of them lugged it all the way to the deer sanctuary and then deposited it on top of another stick pile they made called "the bench".

In the deer sanctuary we found deer scat (poop) and deer hoof prints.  I guess they really do use it as a sanctuary like the sign says!

Along the way we celebrated the Olympics by balancing and jumping off logs, finding spider webs, jumping in a puddle and running around trees.  There was also a rousing game of hide and seek with some big tic tac toe pieces I found in my garage!  Then some regular hide and seek. All to soon it was lunch and stories time.  And we got to eat in the sun.  Ahhhh!

Splosh!

Mondays have a theme of wood and trees.  We had a lot of fun talking about wood, and playing a memory game of what's in the bag? Can we remember? 

What are the things made of? What are trees used for?

Then we found the mud! We splashed, we mixed, we gave bits of wood a mud bath, we dug.  We put our fingers in it and sat in it. We then had to wash ourselves off with the hose!

We were having too much fun in the mud to find sticks to paint,  so we will do our stick craft next week.

Splosh!

And that's the way we roll at Tiny Treks.  If there is something happening nature-wise that we didn't plan for or the kids find something they want to focus on-our planning goes out the window.  We can always study about wood, but we can't always squish in the mud!