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Circle Time (every day)

• Song:
  • We are learning new songs now that Kai really enjoys singing and has begun to pick up the words to songs we sing all the time. Each song is scheduled for two weeks, so that she has plenty of time to pick up the lyrics and hand gestures.
• PE: Ball Skills
  • We are practicing throwing, catching, and kicking with balls and bean bags.
• Calendar: Wednesday
  • We are learning about the days of the week.

Monday

Outdoor Nature Study: Burrows

• I’m not sure we’ll find any burrows on our nature walk, but we are going to look! We’ll record any burrows we find in our nature journal, and talk about how animals are starting to prepare for winter.

Process Art: Painting Sticks

• We are painting on sticks today, for a fun time painting on a surface that isn’t flat.

Tuesday

Indoor Nature Study: Deserts

• We are focusing on biomes for Late Fall, and talking about the different environments that animals live in across the globe. This week we are talking about deserts, the animals that live there, their homes and food.

Life Skill: Folding Napkins and Laundry/Tea Time

• Tuesday is tea time! First, Kai is going to help fold our napkins. We’re working on getting a nice even fold in quarters. Then we are going to have a treat and some lemonade in a tea cup and I will read a book from the book basket.
• We also do a math activity from Mathematical Reasoning Beginning 1 or another math activity.

Wednesday

Social Studies: Map My Ancestors

• Much like the map of our family members, we are going to find all the places our ancestors came from on the globe.

Sensory: Laundry Basket Spider Web

• Inspired by Fun Learning For Kids, we are going to make a spider web in a laundry basket and then “rescue” or “feed” the spider it’s food.

Thursday

Seasonal: Prepare for Harvest Meal

• We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but we do have a little harvest meal with friends of ours some time in the fall. We focus on local to us foods, how they are farmed now, and how they used to be grown.

Kitchen: Fermented Cranberries

• We’re making fermented cranberries in maple syrup. They were amazing in honey last year, so hopefully they will be just as good this year. We are also talking about how fermentation works.

Friday

Ancestor Tale: Cranberry Harvest

• Instead of reading a story from a book, Fridays are for oral story telling. I learn a new story every other week to tell Kai, and we act out the story with props. Usually the story gets acted out again and again during playtime and bed time, as Kai tends to really enjoy this kind of story telling.

Painting and Drawing

• On Fridays, I tell a story and Kai is invited to paint or draw something from it.

If you want to see how it went or follow along, I generally post our school photos to our Instagram either on the same day or soon after.

Specific Materials for Week 4:

• • globe or world map
  • laundry basket
  • string
  • spider/bugs

See our School Supplies post for general supplies used throughout the year.

Fermented Cranberries Recipe

• a fermenting jar  and weight of some sort
  • I use a mason jar with these Waterless Airlock Fermentation Lids
  • and these Glass Weights
• 12 ounce bag of cranberries
• juice from 1 orange
• 2 tbsps grated fresh ginger
• 2 tbsps maple syrup
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3 whole cloves
• unchlorinated water
• 1 pack of Caldwell’s Starter Culture

1. Mash cranberries until most berried have popped, but not so much that they are mush
2. Place cranberries in jar
3. Add starter culture, cinnamon stick, cloves, and ginger
4. Pour orange juice and maple syrup
5. Fill jar with water, leaving ~1 inch of space
6. Cover jar and shake
7. Remove cover and add weight and fermenting lid
8. Let sit on counter for 5 days