Applesauce

On Wednesday we made homemade applesauce. There was a lot of "working together and helping each other."  The only part that the kids didn't participate in was the actual cooking. They did all the chopping, grinding, stirring and eating. They liked it better after it had some time to chill in the fridge. 

Our new Risky Rope

We recently received a wonderful gift of a large piece of rope that was washed up on shore, probably an "anchor rope from a pirate ship."  We still need to make a more permanent plan for the rope, but today we simply tied it around a branch and climbed. 

Risky? The kids think so.

“Children can only learn to take responsibility when given a 

chance to assess and mitigate risk for themselves.”  

   -Gever Tulley

"It’s important to let parents and young people know that kids need some degree of risk

 experience in order to avoid more dangerous risks later."  

-Richard Louv

"Life itself is dangerous. Life is full of risks, and we should hope it remains so. Without 

taking risks, no child would ever learn to walk or ride a bike. No adult would ever take up a

 new sport. No company would ever create new products. Risks are an integral part of 

progress. Thus, the goal shouldn’t be to eliminate all risks from our children’s lives, but to

 manage them and keep them in perspective."  (Read more here.)

-Ken Finch, Green Hearts

And because I have more time for pictures and less time for words, 

here are a few great blog posts on Risky Play:

rubberboots and elf shoes

Teacher Tom

let the children play

Learning for Life

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!