Thanks Week

It was an absolutely WONDERFUL fall with all of the delightful, funny, inquisitive, and sweet kiddos and parents in FH! I am so thankful to have had the chance to teach you all this fall, and alongside my fabulous assistant Erin too! Here was our last week of FH Fall:

Tuesday Froglets:

 

 Tuesday Frogs:

Wednesday Froglets:

Thursday Tadpoles:

Thanks again for all of your support this fall! FH IS a year round program so we'll be back January 8th for another 10 week session, and another 10 weeks in Spring! Feel free to contact me if you need more info! Happy Holidays everyone!

Forest Friends

This week we learned about our forest friends here in Hamlin, namely squirrels and moles. Since it was the big election this week, we also voted! The kids decided everything from which craft we would do, to which books to read, which direction to go in the woods etc!

Tuesday Froglets:

 Putting on a show at FH, throwing "squirrel popcorn" for the squirrels, telling stories, and Mr. H doing a penguin waddle! ;)

FH is a great place to stretch out our legs running down hills, and investigate all the fungi around us also!

 

 We played in the leaves and made little squirrels!

Tuesdays Frogs:

Voting, seed spreading and log riding oh my!

 

 Wednesday Froglets:

There was some marvelous teamwork going on!

 

 Thursday Tadpoles:

We danced, played with instruments, investigated mole holes, shared a bday treat, studied insects up close, splashed, and so much more!

 

 It was a great week for some leaf pile play too!

Bat Week!

For Halloween week we studied bats at Froggy Holler, and had some pretty raining weather too! 

Tuesday Froglets:

 

Tuesday Frogs: 

Wednesday Froglets on Halloween!:

We had a treasure hunt and treats thanks to some wonderful Moms!

Thursday Tadpoles:

Our flying bat project was inspired by Made by Joel! I highly recommend his site for cool projects to do with and for kiddos!

You can find even more info about bats from our local experts at Bats Northwest!

Leafy Learning at Boeing Creek

 This week we met at Boeing Creek in Shoreline, which was a new park for some students/families. We studied leaves, especially of the big leaf maple which is prominent in the park. It was a little wet to be making leaf crowns, but some groups got away with it. All groups had fun exploring in this new terrain!

Tuesday Froglets:

 

 Tuesday Frogs:

 Wednesday Froglets:

Thursday Tadpoles:

 

Arachnids Abound!

We had a lot of fun searching for spiders this week at Hamlin! We lucked out too, and really did find some beauties. Of course we also had to sing spider songs, read a spider story, look for other insects and such under logs, make our own webs and spiders, and play!

Tuesday Froglets:

Tuesday Frogs:

Wednesday Froglets:

Thursday Tadpoles:

Thursday we found a teeny tiny baby salamander! (Top right in the middle of the pic)

And tiny baby mushrooms on cones, it was a day of tiny wonders all around! I think these kiddos are now well adept at helping any frightened adults in their lives, shall they encounter spiders in their homes!

Trees of the Woods

Considering we have had a serious lack of rain this fall (80 days!), "Fun with Fungi" wasn't really possible! So, doing tree week and telling all my "tree tales" seemed like a great idea. We focused on Douglas Fir, Hemlock, Madrone, Big Leaf Maple, and a few others. We did bark rubbings, sang the Trees of Hamlin Park song, heard tree stories, and also enjoyed time in fairy valley building with tree parts, aka branches!

Tuesday Preschool Froglets:

This week this class did an excellent job working together, had fun in fairy valley constructing, and had a BLAST finding "sliding hill" and whipping up clouds of dust!

 

It was bath time after class for those kiddos! 

Tuesday K Frogs:

As a special activity this week the K kids threw "spears" down spear hill. They were excellent at following directions and got lots of turns, I didn't catch each of them in action, but here are many:

Wednesday Preschool Froglets:

This week the kids were really into posing for me! Here are the kiddos hiding (not so sneakily and popping out to scare me!) and up on the log being princesses and such:

They really enjoyed their fairy house building and made some impressive structures, and worked so well together:

And there was some amazing running! I didn't catch them all, but here are a few:

Thursday Tadpoles:

This group made funny tree puppets with their bark rubbings instead of in journals, had fun also with the fairy houses, and while we listened to music we played our stick "instruments":

Thanks for a treerific week everyone!