Wild things

That night in Max's room a forest grew.

And grew.

A Wild Rumpus.

Wild Thing Soup.

Wild Thing Face painting.

Tinkering Camp

This is the second year we have done Tinkering Camp. Originally inspired by Austin Tinkering School and other ideas I had seen on pinterest. I also gained some inspiration from an amazing book called Beautiful Stuff: Learning with Found Materials that I acquired years ago at a conference. Both years our Tinkering Camp has been rather laid back and full of exploring materials. I dream about someday disassembling larger items and investigating the insides, but for now its very open-ended. 

They were creating a house for the dog.

A machine...or engine... it changed several times.

A rocket ship.

An instrument.

Another instrument

Here is a video of all the instruments we made using tubes, rubber bands, and plastic coffee cans/lids

Fairies and frogs

Fairy House Collections

Decorating what appears to be a pre-existing fairy or gnome house among the roots. 

Closer view of the root house.

A fairy boat that the kids created.

We were very curious about these white things growing everywhere. Thanks to a little mobile internet search we found out that they are called "Indian Smoke Pipe or Ghost Plants," they are not capable of producing chlorophyll. It was also used by Native Americans for several different medicinal purposes.  I love it when I get to learn something new along with the children. 

This was our first frog sightings within our playground. Every time one of these two frogs hopped the other would follow. The preschoolers think it must have been a Dad and a Kid frog. 

This froggy was not shy at all and I was really wishing we had a net!