First we dipped stiff bristled scrub brushes in silver and white paint, then we scraped the bristles with popsicle sticks to send droplets spattering across the paper. (and our faces, and the floor...oops!)
For the most part, the Dinosaurs have managed to co-exist peacefully with the invisible inhabitants of our recycled yogurt container village. Pretend "Accidents", however, do happen, which is why we also added doctors kits to our free-choice shelves. It is quite entertaining watching the same child, who moments ago was enthusiastically voicing a ferocious, car stomping dinosaur, switch gears to a caring, thorough medical professional! 
We will continue adding to this mural every month, just to see what happens. It should be an interesting way to track our progress through the year!
We collected leaves from outside and looked at the different sizes, shapes and colors. Then we cut out maple and oak leaf shapes and used paint and unusual brushes to make our paper leaves look like the ones we found outside.
It became apparent that this year's Frog group is particularly excited about painting, so we used fall colors to create several murals.
We wanted to bring the season into many different areas of learning, not just art. We added silk leaves, gourds, small dolls and a small tree to our manipulatives area.
We also took advantage of our fall parent work day by enlisting a parent volunteer to spruce up our book corner with the addition of some inexpensive and super practical rain gutter bookshelves. We added a number of fall themed books, both fiction and non-fiction. The new display, combined with some additional cozy seating, seemed to really encourage the children to curl up with a good fall book!
Every time we turned around, we found that the Frogs had lined up all of the chairs from the lunch table in the middle of the classroom. Sometimes the chairs were a train, sometimes a bus, sometimes a train. Since we can take a hint, we started to plan out some activities that expanded on the idea of travel and transportation.
Of course, sometimes outside influences have a hand in directing curriculum as well. Unfortunately, over the past few weeks one of the biggest overarching themes in the Frog room has been illness! the Flu tore through our group pretty quickly, leaving us with a few weeks of super small classes, and sniffle-y kids. We put some of our more elaborate transportation themed projects on the back burner while everyone recuperated, and took advantage of the smaller class size to scaffold social interactions between children. Now that everyone is on the mend (knock wood!), we are back to exploring transportation, and travel. Stay tuned to see where this takes us!
Well, the 2009 school year is well underway. For the past month the new Frogs have been settling into their new routine and establishing their new identity as 'the Frog group'. Our focus over the last month has been on building our own relationships with the children, and helping the children build relationships with each other.
We have noticed a definite difference in the tone of the room since all of the older Frogs have moved on down the hall. Since all of the children in the are now in the same age range (two-and-a-half to three-ish), we are noticing more parallel play than cooperative play. Practically speaking, this means tat you are more likely to find this group all gathered around the same project playing together, but that their interactions are more focused on the project and less on making plans together. This is exactly as it should be for this age. Because these guys are just beginning to develop their cooperative play skills, we are helping them to practice simple social skills that will hopefully make establishing harmonious play scenarios with their peers easier. During circle, we have been practicing asking each other politely for toys, and taking turns... something that is not second nature to a child who is just beginning to grasp the concept that other people might have different plans than they do. We are starting to see quite a bit of progress with sharing and taking turns during free play time - with reminders of course!
In other related news (trust us, we'll show you how it's related in a moment...) We now have a pair of classroom pets;
We have adopted a pair of Degus from the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society Animal Shelter. One of the reasons we decided to add a permanent pet to the classroom was to give the children a chance to hone their growing sense of empathy. There's nothing like something small, furry and vulnerable to bring out a person's nurturing instincts! One morning, the children noticed that the Degus were squeaking and squabbling over their water bottle. "Why are they squeaking at each other?" they asked. We answered "The Degus both want a drink, but there's only one bottle." Right away, the whole group piped up "They should share !!! They can just take turns!!!" See? Our circle time lessons in action!
(Looking for a pet of your own? Adopt!!! Visit the Pioneer Valley Dakin humane Society online at http://www.dpvhs.org/)
Since three is all about magical thinking, we decided that we couldn't come up with a better gift than a personalized magic wand- with a twist. Tucked in among those ribbon streamers that you see shooting out of the monogrammed felt star star on top of the wand is the solid colored grosgrain ribbon from September 2008 and a new, satin ribbon with rainbow colored stars all over it that we used to measure how tall our "graduates" were on their last day in the Frog room!
Over the year, we see so much evidence of growth in so many different areas with these children. They shift from being toddlers who are dependant on us for help with some of their most basic needs, to honest-to-goodness kids, who are aware of the impact that they have on the world around them and are ready to make things happen! It makes this work challenging, intellectually engaging, fun, and absolutely worthwhile. While we had some idea that the difference in height from the beginning of the year to the end of the year would be impressive, were not expecting it to be quite as impressive as it actually was. From our (admittedly crude) comparison, we found that most of the Frogs grew between four and six inches in a year!!!Here are a few more random photos from our summer...
2009 was the summer of slugs...they were everywhere! 
If you look closely front and center, you'll see one of our temporary classroom pets. The preschoolers hatched a Praying Mantis egg- technically called an "Oothica"-as a project. Since the hatch resulted in hundreds of baby Mantises, the preschoolers let us keep two in our classroom for a while. The Frogs loved watching the Mantises, especially during Mantis mealtime. Praying Mantises use their long front legs to catch live insects for dinner, which they nibble from side to side like an ear of corn. OK. it was a little bit gross, but utterly fascinating to watch!!!
(Speaking of eggs, remember these (scroll down to see what I'm talking about...)? Unfortunately, nothing came out. Apparently 2009 was not the Summer of chickens. Maybe next year...)
...Oh well, at least the fertility gods were with us on the garden front. Look, wheat!!!
Giant Manta Ray...
Crabs and seals...
more seaweed with paint...
...have you guessed what this years top vacation spot was yet?
We rode the bus...
...indulged in some doughnuts...
...window shopped...
...and took in the sights downtown!
After that, it was off to the library....
...to check out some books...
...and to visit Paco, the library's giant fish!
Then we walked over to the college to watch the construction...
...and visit the minerals...
...and the invertebrates in the science building.
We visited the fountain...
...where we watched a vertebrate who was taking a drink.
Then on to the garden...
...to smell the sweetpeas...
...admire the flowers...
...search for fish...
...and hide under the big tree!
On the way back, we took a run through the neon tunnel!
What a great day!
