Zen Tuesday!

We started off the day reading In the Night Kitchen, brought by Theo, as we were inside throughout the morning. As we finished the book, we sang songs and talked about the weather. We moved on to Playdough, which Asher, Ivy, Theo, Alanna, Noah, Teo, and Alanna were really excited about! They each got to pick the color they were going to use, as well as tools to use on the Play Dough. Meanwhile, Paislie was putting her babies to sleep and making them hold hands. Olive was resting before she got up and found her lovies to take for a walk around the room. Ancel was interested in using a pamphlet he brought as a tool for his Play Dough.  The Play Dough users were also given re-used plastic eggs to create snow cones and other objects with the dough. Alanna put her Play Dough into her egg, squished the dough into the egg and closed it, and revealed a snow cone as she said, “Tada! I made an old man!” (Well, that’s what it sounded like!) Theo replied to her, “you made an old man, like me?” and Teo said, “I’m making an old man.” So I asked what every one was making. Asher said, “a truck,” and Ivy said, “I’m making a cake” and Noah said, “Yeahhhhh” with a big smile on his face. And Ancel was too interested in his pamphlet to answer. Paislie was with her babies saying, “look at my baby!” and Olive was exploring the room with her lovies. We cleaned up, and headed outside.

We went outside and many of our friends were interested in using blankets in some way. We created a couple of forts, some over the slide, and some over other parts of the playscape. Noah and Olive were hanging out with some of their pre-tot buddies. Ancel put a rock in a cup and went around showing it to teachers, and as I was picking up trash, Olive started finding trash to throw away as well. Arielle started showing us a snail that she found, which was missing one antennae. Alanna, Theo, and Asher were very interested in our slimy friend. We decided to free him in the garden, where he would have plenty of water to drink. Ivy and Noah came to explore as well. Then, Paislie pointed out some edible parts of the garden, and Dom helped her try some leaves off of the cabbage. Ivy was interested, too, and joined in on the fun. Olive caught a glimpse, and had to join in to taste some fresh veggies. Noah was adamant about not tasting the leaves, and he made lots of funny faces as we tried to convince him how yummy it could be.  We had some more fun exploring outside, and finally got together to come in for lunch and nap.

After nap, we took advantage of the darkness outside, and used some fun strobe lights in the library. As every one woke up, and started using potties and getting changed, a cricket decided to visit us (he had been chirping all through nap!). We heard friends asking, “whachu doin, cricket?” and “oh!, he’s scared” and “Hi, cricket!” After a while, we had to say “see you later, cricket” because yoga had begun.  Our teacher noticed that we were stuck on a cricket, so we used this energy to begin our practice! We hopped around like crickets, and before you knew it, we were practicing different ways to express emotions through our face. During yoga, we made different faces that express different emotions, like “angry,” “happy,” “sad,” and “surprised.” We sang ring around the yogi, told a story about zoo animals, and then did a dance to represent each of those animals. Finally, we used a bowl that rings to practice our focus. As the tone rang out, we each listened until we could no longer hear the sound, and then touched our nose to signify that we no longer heard the sound. We sang our Namaste song and said good bye to our teacher, and then it was snack time! At snack, we read Ivy’s “H” book, Horton Hears a Who, which our oldest friends were especially interested in. (It’s a really long book!) We talked about how friends always matter, and how there could be a whole community on a tiny speck of dust, so it’s important to take care of everything around us! We headed out to end the day!