Four Seasons (Autumn and Fall Leaves focus) in Discovery

 

After welcoming Autumn in late September, we discussed the four seasons - Fall, Winter, Spring, and Fall (or Autumn!) - and focused on the season of fall and discussed the changing leaves, weather, and light.  For the older classes, our Words of the Week were BIG this time:  CHLOROPHYLL (the green color in plants) and DECIDUOUS (a tree or bush that loses its leaves each year).  Even though they are large vocabulary words, it's important to expose the children to these words early on and repeat them each opportunity we have.  They are sponges and tend to surprise us with their ability to absorb impressive details!  

 

Some of our centers involved making their own fall trees (using beads and pipe cleaners - and their eye-hand coordination!); a leaf matching game (for helping identify trees and their leaves); creating their own paper fall tree (for our artistic scientists); a color-and-scratch leaf test (that demonstrated how chlorophyll - green pigment - actually masks the true colors of the leaves - which are yellow, red, orange, brown, and shades in between); a four seasons matching game; and more!  

 

 

  

 

 

 

Our Toddlers and 2's had a wonderful time talking about Fall!  Our Word of the Week was AUTUMN (or Fall) and why we call this season "Fall" (leaves fall to the ground).  We looked at how a tree changes from season to season - when leaves grow, what color they are, and when they change and fall.  We even pretended we were trees and allowed our beautiful, colorful, fall leaves to drop and float down to the ground.  We talked about seeing squirrels scurry around, gathering acorns and other nuts, and burying their treasures for the winter.  We learned they will dig the food back up and enjoy it throughout the winter when no more acorns are falling.  We decided this was quite clever!  We discussed how oak trees can grow from the buried acorns the squirrels forget!  We again pretended to be squirrels burying our nuts for winter. :)  We talked about the importance of the leaves falling on the ground and covering the earth, and how many animals burrow  below the earth and leaves for the winter and stay warmer from the autumn blanket.  We discussed what colors we see in the fall, what changes we see happening, and how fall is different from the other seasons.  We learned that trees are still very much alive even though they lose all their leaves, as they wait for sunnier days.  My youngest scientists are always so intrigued, happy, and clever!

  

  

 

Book Suggestions:

 

The New Discovery Garden

 

We are SO excited to have a Discovery Garden this year!!  The Boy Scouts built a raised bed for us (it is near the playground area), as an Eagle Scout project, and we couldn't be more excited!  

 

Our first order of business was to fill the bed with rich soil (Thank you, Miss Marj!) and soon after, it rained and a bouquet of beautiful mushrooms popped up - so we had an impromptu lesson with the Transitional Kindergarten class on the importance of mushrooms!  This is the very best part of Discovery:  making fascinating, fun, everyday discoveries with the children that encourage us to learn as much as we can about the world - and the environment right - around us!  

  
Our second order of business was to plant our first (fall, hardy) vegetables:  garlic chives, cabbage, and Swiss chard - which are doing well (thank you, squirrels, for not eating the plants!) - and we also planted some flowers that the bees and butterflies love so we can get some helpful visitors to our garden!

 

Eastern Box Turtle & Garden fun in Discovery

These two weeks of October brought us a new, LIVE friend to our classroom:  a real, live Eastern Box Turtle!! Miss Sue, from the Transitional Kindergarten class, found a beautiful turtle in her backyard and let us 'borrow' him for a week!  The next week, we carefully placed him back in the same area, after feeding him well!

We discussed that Eastern Box turtles are fairly common in North Carolina (did you know it's the official state reptile?!!  Me either!) and are named for their ability to completely box up inside their shells for protection - and every single shell is unique, just like us!

 
Some can live up to 100 years (!!) and can stay in the same 2-4 acre area their whole life if they have all they need! (Which is why it was so important for us to return him to his home.)  We learned our friend was a male because he had RED eyes.  (Females have brown-yellow eyes.)

 
We learned that our turtle liked to sit in a shallow pool of water and relax.  We also learned he liked to burrow under leaves and pine needles, so we gave him plenty of soil, rocks, and natural materials to hide in!

 
We fed him plenty of earthworms, leaves, fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, and crunchy grubs.  This was the highlight of our lesson - watching him (and listening to him) eat! 

We also discussed the importance of a turtle's shell (keeping them safe from predators), that they are reptiles (and not warm-blooded like we are), and that he will hibernate (or bromate) in the winter!  In fact, soon after we returned him to the wild, he likely started preparing himself for hibernation.

The kids LOVED having the turtle in the classroom!  He won us over!  We were proud of ourselves for not touching him (Miss Marion used gloves when cleaning his 'home'), not tapping on his glass house, for speaking in calm voices around him, for feeding him so well, and for returning him to his wild home, where he belongs.  The kids were great with him.  They loved Mr. Turtle's visit so much.

Note:  The 2's and Toddler classes also got to see our turtle, but Miss Marion was so engaged in the lesson for our youngest explorers that she did not take pictures in those classes. :)  They got to hold their very old (pretend) turtles and learned about both sea and land turtles and even pretended to be turtles and curled up inside their own (paper) shell!

Book Recommendations:

FAB Five Senses

In the last two weeks of September, we talked about - and actively explored! - how we  use the Fab Five to learn about and discover our world!  The fabulous five senses - Seeing, Hearing, Touching, Tasting, and Smelling!  In our lesson and through our hands-on centers, we learned about how our pupils let light into our eyes so we can see; how we feel with not only our fingers and hands but all our skin, our largest organ; how our tongue and nose work together; and how each sense tells us important details about what's going on around us in our world.  Our Word of the Week was TEXTURE - the way something feels or appears.  Our centers focused on each of the different senses and I let the children safely explore using their senses - they had so much fun!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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