Our short winter session of Forest Playschool has come to an end and we're happy to welcome back playschoolers we didn't see this winter! We were dealt some cold weather this past Friday and Monday, but we still managed to have a blast together.
Friday 3/5
Friday was a very cold day, so we held Forest Playschool at the Birds of Vermont Museum just down the road from us. While our education barn is under construction, the museum has offered to be our indoor space! One of the best parts of visiting the museum is the bird feeder station right outside our 'classroom' window. We we're able to see a Red-bellied Woodpecker, Redpolls, Blue Jays, Cardinals, Chickadees and so many more backyard birds!
I apologize in advance if it seems we took less photos this day, our fingers were very cold outside our mittens!
As playschoolers arrived for their first day, we played with the snow kitchen outside, shoveled and tried to build snow castles.
After everyone arrived we moved inside to start Morning Meeting where we introduce ourselves and plan the day. Throughout the program, every student will have the opportunity to plan a day and make decisions for the group. Today, I was our Morning Meeting leader as an example, but also because it was so cold out that we wanted to make sure we scheduled around being inside every 30-45 minutes. We planned on searching for (laminated) coyotes, going on a bird hike and coloring.
We ate snack, read a story and got bundled up again to go back outside. We brought some bird guides with us so that playschoolers could try to ID birds we see or just flip through and see which they recognize. But first, we had 25 hidden coyotes to find!
When we got back from our hike it was time for lunch and a story. Then we ended our day with some coloring and free play outside until adults arrived.
Monday 3/8
We started our day with free play in the sunny backyard until all our friends arrived.
Then, we grabbed our lunch boxes and walked to Forest Camp where Emily had started a fire for us to circle around. We introduced ourselves to each other, reviewed rules and started Morning Meeting. Morning Meeting is when we plan our day using a board that you can velcro activities to. Throughout the program, every student will have the opportunity to plan a day and make decisions for the group. Today, Emily served as our Morning Meeting Leader example. She decided that after our meeting we would search for (laminated) squirrels around Forest Camp, have snack, go on a tracking hike, eat lunch and end the day with some free play.
Our education intern, Ciara, hid 30 squirrels around Forest Camp before playschoolers arrived. Now, each playschooler was told to find three each! Forest Camp suddenly became a very busy spot with playschoolers buzzing between trees in pursuit of squirrels. Once we had a decent amount, we called the group to count. We had only found 17 out of 30, so we did the math as a group to figure out how many were left. 13 squirrels! So we set back out until we found them all and then moved onto snack/storytime.
After snack, we started on the Warbler Trail for our tracking hike. We saw turkey, deer and squirrel tracks as well as some deer scat!
After our hike, we went back to Forest Camp for Lunch and ended the day with more freeplay.
See you next week!
