Fall 2021

Nov 17

Welcome to the You, Me, and the Trees Blog! Here, you will be able to see photos from each session, meet the “Tot of the Week”, learn new words with us in American Sign Language and obtain access to resources for outdoor learning.

December

Tot of the Week: Lucas

In the winter, his favorite thing to do outside is build snowmen… as you can see! Along with playing in nature, some things that bring Lucas joy are strawberries and dinosaurs.

In honor of Wildlife Conservation Day (December 4th), Brooke Larm led the group in exploring various animal furs as well as the incredible experience of feeding a Great Horned Owl! This owl has a broken wing and is unable to fly, so the class got to observe the way she uses platforms to hop down to where her mice are in order to eat.

**Did you know that Great Horned Owls…**

Can turn their heads **270** degrees
Can fly up to **40 MPH** in level flight
Have a wingspan ranging from **39 to 57 inches**

Snow play!

Exploring Soil

The best way to celebrate World Soil Day (December 5th) is by getting your hands dirty! In these garden sensory bins, the tots had to use their digging skills to search for things that you might typically find in soil. Some found insects, seeds, pinecones, and plants. You can also see a giant dried out sunflower head and Jade plant (top left photo); the children had the option to either take a sunflower seed or a leaf from the Jade plant and plant it into some soil to take home and watch grow!

That’s a wrap…. until next year!

Sessions for 2021 have come to an end but we will be starting back up in January.

Program Information & Registration

Click here to complete program survey

Questions? Click here to contact Leigh Rowe

November 17th: National Hiking Day

November 17th marked the first day of Fall Segment II and after a few weeks apart our tots were ready to jump back into the fun! The topics for this segment are based on Environmental Awareness Days, this weeks being National Hiking Day.

To get our bodies stretched and ready for a fun day of hiking, we started our morning by following the movements of Jack Hartmann’s song, “Great Way to Start the Day”. During story time, we read Tree and as you can see in the photo, all of the toddlers excitedly swarmed the book in search of a new hidden animal peeking through a small tree hole each page. After reading Earth Dance and spinning our bodies like an orbiting planet we couldn’t wait any longer to hit the trails! For today’s hike, everyone had a paper bag to collect natural materials that they would then use for a craft at the end.

Tot of the Week: Arteo!

Arteo is 2 and half years old and his favorite animal is a penguin! He loves seeing them at the zoo, however he does not particularly care for the hippos. At home, he has a dog named Hana. Arteo’s papa is great with woodworking and often makes him toys from scratch! His favorite as of now is the wooden bunny house.

On our hike, foraging for natural materials to use in our craft! Now that we are in the middle of Fall, the leaves are covering the ground giving us a whole rainbow of colors to choose from.

The pond always has so many wonderful things to explore.

A hole in the tree! I wonder what lives inside? Our detectives are searching for clues.

Thanks you, Tobias, for finding so many beautiful leaves for me! You added a new fall decoration to my home :)

To wrap up our day in the forest, we used the materials we collected on our hike to create some really creative artwork! I love the different techniques and approaches used from different children.

Learn ASL with us!

Storytime

While reading The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats, we were able to bring the story to life by adding images to a felt board that follow the adventure of a boy’s day in the snow.