Fairy gardens are real!



This fairy garden has a soft path made out of grass clippings that leads up to the garden.

Jen and I were so glad to get back to preschool and spend the day with your kids! Their enthusiasm and ability to appreciate the little things in life is lovely and helps us to see the little things too!

This week I was inspired to teach the children at TOP how to build a fairy garden after reading about a decorated stump from an old Big Leaf Maple tree in the Seattle Times yesterday morning. I brought in the photo and article to preschool to give a little nudge towards the thought that things in the newspaper can be interesting. The children passed around the article and accompaning photo and looked at it during circle time. I think I'll bring in more photos from the newspaper in the future...hmm.

So the children all recieved a bowl to gather flowers and other natural items with. We had a quick lesson on what was appropriate to pick (dandelions, the little white flowers) and what wasn't (trillium flowers, daffodils). I was very pleased to see that they knew the difference. We also talked about not eating things in the woods unless a teacher said it was ok ("What about huckleberries!" said Max.)
Yes, there are eatable plants in the forest but we wait until they are ripe and ok to eat and make sure that they won't make us sick! We had a lot of animated discussions during our circle time this week!

Then we were off in our color groups to gather. My group spent time finding dandelions, white flowers, grass clippings and some sticks and then together we put them in a hidden spot, decorating the ground. Pretty soon there were other secret areas that got flowers and became fairy houses. We plan on Thursday to show our fairy spots to the other group.



This garden has a soft bed for fairies.

The blue group was too excited to spend time making fairy gardens. They had a visiting teacher from California in their group whom they were anxious to take on a tour of "our" forest. "Teacher Lauryn" is touring the northwest looking at outdoor programs in order to get a preschool program started at her park in Golden Gate National Recreation Area in Marin, California. The kids were able to show off by telling her how to stay safe in the woods and where all of their cool playing places are! She was very happy to spend the day with our kids.

As we come up on the last 5 weeks of school-I just want to mention that we will have a picnic the last week of school. More information to follow. Keep an eye out for the date in upcoming news.

FYI----I have been told by a parent that Bogg Boots are on sale for 1/2 off on the REI website at this time. That's a good deal!
http://www.rei.com/gear/feature/search/Google_Footwear/Bogs%20Kids?s_kwcid=TC|13029|bogs%20kids||S|p|13088065205&gclid=CN3T0Oqa0a8CFSsHRQodhRGfIQ