Trying a little something different...

 I have so many cute pictures of the different faces kids make.  I am always the person taking the picture therefore I always know what is going on.  I thought it would be fun to see what you all think is going on in these pictures.  I will add a new picture every week and see what fun captions you can all think of!  Please do not use names of the children or the teachers.  Enjoy!

Here is the first picture...

What do you think this little guy is thinking?

Around the world

Our theme for the summer was around the world.  It has been so much fun traveling to different countries and teaching the children about different cultures, animals, history, etc.  It took about 2 weeks for all of them to understand we were not actually going on a field trip to these places.  We would show them the country on a globe each week and show them the flag for the country.  Here are a few pictures of some of the countries we visited....

Our first trip was to Antarctica, then we took a boat to South Africa.  One of our parents is from there, so he shared many stories, songs, and items from his home country.

We traveled to Egypt next.  This is the Nile river, a pyramid and a camel.

I was on vacation during the trip to the United States, but the next week we took a great vacation to the Bahamas!  Here are some islands some of the older kids created which sparked the next activity...

Our volcanoes....

The next week we flew on an airplane to Europe, first stop, France.  The kids were really interested in the Eiffel Tower, and made many towers themselves.

One of our families is from France, so we had a fun visit hearing books and songs in French.

We had our own Tour de France. (inside because of the heat)

Next stop was Scotland.  The children enjoyed a visit from one of our families that plays the bagpipes.  They danced a jig to this beautiful music.

Our next trip was a day in Italy, and a day in Holland.  No pictures for these but we talked about the Leaning tower of Pisa, and windmills and tulips. 

Next we traveled to Asia in our hot air balloons.  First stop was China.  We have a parent from China and enjoyed a visit from her singing songs, and the hokey pokey in Mandarin Chinese.

The next week we were busy traveling to Vietnam, South Korea, Nepal, Thailand, and India.  One of our kids was born in Vietnam, another one was born in South Korea, and one of our new families is from India.  These dress ups are from India.  We were also given some blessings flags from Nepal, which I explained to the children as flags that blow in the wind and wish you well.  we have them hanging at the front door to wish us all well.

 

Then it was on to the country and continent down under, Australia.  We have a family from there as well!  We enjoyed a visit learning about Australian instruments, tasted some vegie mite spread on crackers, and learned about some Aussie language and sports.

Here is a picture of an Australian army hat.

Our summer garden

The children enjoyed watching our garden grow, and watering the garden, sometimes daily because of the dry weather.  Here are some of the highlights...

these are the butterflies that enjoyed our zinnias

our first sunflower bud

it grew soooo fast!

eventually the tallest sunflower was over 7 feet tall!

 

I loved the purple bugs on the sunflowers!

our cantelope vine climbed the sunflower stalk

one of the cantelope flowers

our first tiny cantelope!  eventually it only grew to be the size of a baseball, but we ate it anyway!

our first few carrots we picked just to see what they looked like.  they tasted good even though they were so small.

one of our purple carrots

some of our first tomatoes

I loved how the kids would just pick the tomatoes right off the vine and eat them!  Even the kids that didn't like tomatoes tried them anyway just because they helped grow them.

some of our pear tomatoes.  these turned bright yellow and tasted just as good!

 

This is how tall our garden grew before we pulled it up to get ready for fall planting.

Playground fun

Mud pie kitchen station

basketball court

bike track

more of the bike track

natural area

water table

blocks/lego storage

balance beam

art table

bubble table

dress ups

table for legos, art, etc.

dramatic play area

More pictures to come of playground fun!  Hula hoops, slides, firetruck fun, bean bags, books, and more!

Just add sand

Parents, the next time you clean up the sand that comes out of your child's hair, shoes, and pockets, come to this blog and read some of the links below and enjoy looking at the pictures from our school. You will quickly learn to appreciate how wonderful the sand really is.

what-children-learn-in-sandpit

just-add-sand