Rooted and Free Nature School

Our K-2 students enjoyed a batty morning together! We worked together to create a list of things we know and things we wonder about bats, and then read a fun story called “Bats at the Beach.” Then we worked on a bat art project and had so much fun using our hands or nature materials as our paintbrushes. It was a fun day learning about a very interesting animal!

Today was another beautiful day enjoying the fall leaves as we took some time to learn about bats! We played an echolocation game, read batty stories, and had lots of fun at the nature play space.

Thursday’s Explore Together class played like squirrels today! We read Squirrel’s Busy Day and then worked on gathering nuts, leaves and other nature treasures to hide for each other to find. We balanced, jumped, and scurried our way through a squirrel obstacle course and even found some “squirrel nests” to jump or cuddle up in! Several friends took advantage of the warm weather and explored the creek near the nature playspace. What a beautiful day for playing outside!

The fall fun continues! Today our nature preschool class did some more exploring with leaves. First, we created our own leaf creations using glue, markers, and eyes. We also got to use play dough and explored how it interacted with leaves as we wrapped and smooshed them together. There were also some huge leaf piles to play in! We threw them above us, jumped around, and swished through the leaves before finishing our morning with a story to celebrate Smokey Bear’s 80th birthday - what an action-packed morning!

Today at Explore Together we were on a quest to learn about apple trees and find their seeds! We will save the seeds we uncovered for a project in a couple weeks but we were glad to enjoy the apples today! A beautiful Fall days calls for plenty of time at the playspace. 🍏🍎

Our K-2 class spent the morning with praying mantis in multiple forms! After some play to start the day we looked at a mantis egg case, which we hope to watch throughout the school year and see it hatch in the spring. Then we read a story that told us about different plant and animal life cycles and how they are all connected! We also checked back on our decomposing log to see if there were any changes that we could observe, and the morning came to an exciting end when a praying mantis was spotted walking along our path. What a wonderful day!

Today Elenor shared the story of Smokey Bear with us as we enjoyed our fireplace for the first time this season. We talked about safety, and then walked to our snack spot. Along the way, we had the happiest surprise when we discovered a huge leaf pile Mr. Mark made and we got to enjoy jumping and throwing leaves! Ms. Sally read us Leaf Man and we got to make our own leaf creations. We finished our day playing with play dough, a story board, a hula hoop, and balanced and jumped on a slack line

Keep up with your tick checks please!

🕷 𝕋𝕚𝕔𝕜𝕤 𝕔𝕠𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕦𝕖 𝕥𝕠 𝕓𝕖 𝕒 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕕𝕖𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕗𝕒𝕝𝕝! While enjoying the nice weather and trick or treat festivities, remember ticks are lurking!🧟‍♂️
Found a tick?! Submit your tick for testing at ticklab.org/test-my-tick

Today our nature preschoolers spent some more time exploring leaves! We loved swishing through the piles as we walk around camp, and today that led us to the play space for some time to explore. As the sun warmed up the morning, we sat together to read “Leaf Man” before exploring some more leaf activities like making our own leaves out of play dough and starting our own leaf-creations!

At Monday's Explore Together we read a big book about Trees and talked about a specific kind of tree - an apple tree! We explored how trees start out by finding the seeds inside apples, and of course snacking on them too! We couldn't resist another stop at the playspace to end our time together! 🍎 🍏

Our Friday Pre-K class had another fabulous autumn day full of leaf exploration, play and sunshine.

Sticks, stones, and books about bones! Our Forest Friday class had a great class today to wrap up our first session. We got to dress up and enjoy costumes, make our own stick skeletons, and work on some more whittling to start the morning. Then we enjoyed a book about bones that had some amazing pictures and examples of what different bones look like and how they help animals do things like swim, crawl, or fly. Finally, we spent some time playing gaga ball and doing some more building in our play area - the next session can’t come soon enough!

If you want to experience Camp Kirchenwald in all its Fall splendor, join them this weekend for Fall Foliage Day! This is an opportunity offered directly through Kirchenwald, so please reach out to them if you have any questions. The link to RSVP is in the comments. Get out and enjoy the beautiful colors!

The K-2 class had a wonderfully fun fall day as we hiked out to Buzzards Rocks! Every one of our students has been eagerly waiting for this day, and this week we were in luck with some amazing weather for our journey. We got to enjoy checking out the many amazing colors of leaves throughout the woods, follow different trail markers, and spot a variety of interesting plants, too! There were lots of fun ways to climb, crawl, and even slide as we adventured through the rocks, and everyone had such a great morning together!

Today we hiked to the tree house where we enjoyed snack and some free play - building houses, nests, playing house with lots of pets, and taxis! Ms. Sally read a book about mice that helped us observe how things are the same and how they are different. As we hiked back to the pavilion, we searched for leaves that matched our board, and had the chance to drop a leaf off the bridge and watch it travel on the water to the other side!

How do we know fall is here? Thursday’s Explore Together class considered this question as we read the book The Leaf Thief about a squirrel who thinks someone is stealing the leaves from his tree. We decided that the changing colors are one way we know fall is here—so we went on a color hunt to see how many colors we could find. We also gathered our favorite colorful leaves to make leaf lanterns—something that can make the darker evenings of autumn just a little bit more enjoyable 😊 We hope you’re finding ways to enjoy all of fall!

Today we took our longest hike of the year so far, and followed the trail markers to the Tree House! We ate our snacks, and then enjoyed some free play underneath the tree house. We used the dusty ground, rocks, sticks, and other natural material to build playgrounds, bird nests, feeders, and other fun things! We continued looking at LEAVES today, and talked about what makes leaves the same, and what makes them different!

Another group of brave adventurers followed their own maps today at Wednesday's Explore Together! The group took a beautiful Fall hike and visited Turtle Rock and the field, where we listened for birds! We ended up back in one of our old favorites - the nature play space

The sun shining in through the trees made for a magical morning of exploring! The K-2 class spent the first part of the day at the play space enjoying some time in the stream. We even got to play with the preschool class for a little while! Then we took a trip to the field for a snack break and a fun fall story. Finally, we visited Turtle Rock where we enjoyed more time in the stream, some nature journaling, and fun climbing. We all had a blast soaking in the sunshine and warm weather - this fall has been full of so many surprises!

Leaves, leaves, leaves! Today was the perfect day to enjoy observing, collecting, and using leaves in art. We had lots of fun at the nature play space climbing the logs, making muddy, leafy foods, and raking! As we used scissors, glue, collected leaves, and paper scraps, leaves were falling from the trees onto us and our artwork! 🍂

Leaves are falling, and giving us so many opportunities for fun! Today the nature preschool class spent the morning exploring the changing colors surrounding us in the woods. We collected lots of leaves and then used them to create our own colorful trees! The sun was back out to warm us up by the end of the morning, and we had a great day together with friends.

Our little explorers took on a big hike today at Monday's Explore Together! We even used our own maps that we completed after arriving at our special destinations. We read "Hiking Day" by Anne Rockwell to get inspiration for our journey. Everyone did a great job, we even made it all the way back to the playspace to finish out our day!

Our first trip to Buzzard’s Rocks this school year was so much fun! The Forest Friday class spent the morning taking a hike out to one of our favorite spots. It was wonderful to see how our returning students guided and helped our newest friends! We all enjoyed some crawling, climbing, and jumping on the big rocks together, and each visit offers so many new opportunities for fun. We can’t wait to go back!

Our Friday Pre-K group started today with a class visitor— a spring peeper looking for a place to hibernate! After a story we headed to the play space for a long exploration of ramps, tubes, mud, leaves, swings, and the creek. We ended our day with a leaf craft and running through the crunchy autumn leaves.