Somehow August 31st feels like the last day of summer. We start our fall term next week. Summer is the only season I am sad to see end.

Peanut was inspired by yesterday's art lesson on abstract art to make another project this morning.

Iish hasn't shown any interest in the felt board all summer and then this morning he choose it from the shelf and spent half an hour working with it.

Princess is working with the shape sorter, Tiger is doing bead sequencing and Iish is doing dot marker work. If a child wants to do a work that another child is using they put their name card on the tray so they know they will be next to use it.

Iish is using his fine motor skills to work with the mosaic set.

Art today

We learned about Diego Riviera, a Mexican muralist, today. Then we went outside and painted our own mural.

The children chose to start the day with some dress-up and creative play. They were playing "Kings and Horses"...their own game. This is the stable they built and Iish was the king.

We are still learning about artists this week. Today it was Kandinsky and abstract art.....we are making pictures using geometric shapes.

Small group today as some children are on their summer holdiays.

Peeling apples for morning snack time.

We cleaned out our pond habitat today. We don't know what happened to our predacious diving beetle, all we found was its exoskeleton. We did find four Common Skimmer naiads living in our habitat.

We sifted the mud to make sure we didn't miss any more naiads.

Back into the pond they go to finish their life cycle...

We learned about Vincent Van Gogh this morning and finished the day by "impasto" painting (thick paint, spread with knives). Van Gogh painted with impasto.

Tiger worked with the bead sequencing and Princess worked with the Babushka dolls.

Tiger showed Princess how to do the Trouble game pegs...

Today we did "Daubed Paintings" in the style of Monet....did you know he was almost blind when he painted some of his most famous works.

Tiger personalized his painting by adding some handprints...

Peanut finished her sea life poster...she couldn't wait to show it to Iish and tell him the name of all the different creatures.

Iish tried the cutting work..

Tiger played Duplo...

Something exciting happened.....

Here's what they are looking at.....one or our Monarchs emerged today.

Peanut gave everyone a great presentation on how to wash a bike...

Art today

We are learning about famous painters...today we learned about Sandro Botticelli who was famous for "Tondi" which are round paintings....

We put out some new pencils...Peanut helped to sharpen them.

Iish explored some seashells and coral...

Cooking up some fish

Tiger grabbed a helmet and spent some time spinning his wheels....

This week we learned that polar bears have black skin...to find out why God gave polar bears black skin I told the children they should put something black and something white outside in the sun.....today Peanut remembered and put two hats in the sun.....

Peanut shared her experiment with Little Man...

Little Man brought our latest newly emerged Monarch outside to take its first flight.

Peanut picked some fresh flowers and arranged them to make our room beautiful.

Peanut worked on a world map this morning...

Princess spent some time this morning trying to close the snaps on her sweater...time to get out some dressing frames.

It was raining too heavily to go outside this morning so we baked cookies and muffins.

Iish spent about 20minutes working with the discs in a jar.

Little Man showed Princess how to do the Canada puzzle.

Welcome back Tiger....

Peanut took a break from her poster she has been working on to play with the dolls.

Princess enjoys the felt board.

Snack time this morning...blueberrries and graham crackers.

Little Man give Iish a ride..

Everyone decided to play with the trucks and wood today...

Art

We are learning about the Arctic this week...today we made Arctic Animal Camouflage Collages

We had five monarchs emerge on Sunday morning...

Waiting for their wings to dry...