Lots of Excitement

The children have been noticing the giant sunflowers outside of our window. We decided to take some small groups outside this morning to check them out. We took clipboards, colored pencils, and scissors with us!

As soon as we got to the sunflowers one friend yelled, "oh my gosh they are so big!"

Another child yelled, "they're bigger than me and even bigger than Ms. Beth!"

They began touching and smelling them.

One friend said, "they smell like honey."

MB ran to AD and said, "you have to smell this!"

AD said, "oh that's nice."

We looked at the different parts. JS noticed that the petals were yellow but the inside was black. We wondered why the inside was black? Then JS said, "I think that's were sunflower seeds come from."

We drew pictures of what we noticed!

And them some thing even more exciting happened! We found a praying mantis on one of the sunflowers! At first some friends were scared but soon we were ready to put him in our bug catcher! We talked about how to be kind to him and that nature is his home. We could observe him for a moment in the bug catcher but then we needed to set him free. The kids loved this plan!

The friends wanted to give the praying mantis some gifts so they collected sunflowers and sunflower seeds to put in the bug catcher with it.

We decided that we needed to let him go and be free in nature. Immediately we noticed that he blended in with the grass! We put a sunflower next to him to help him feel like he's at home, such a sweet sentiment from our friends! They watched as he slowly crept away and eventually hid under the deck.

Before he got away MB named him! To find out his name watch the video above!

A little bit later a second group came out to the sunflower area. This group was also excited about the size of the sunflowers but they were interested in all different kinds of nature in this space! Check it out!

BP was very interested in the bumblebees that were on the sunflowers. We talked about what they were doing. He said, "they have to give all of the baby bees honey."

ST said, "I think I smell honey, maybe we can get some honey from these bees."

TL was very interested in all of the sunflower petals that were on the ground. He collected petals and laid them next to each other. As he placed another petal on the deck he would count them.

He said, "I have four!"

The petal collection grew even bigger with the help of friends! We then collected petals, berries, mushrooms, and purple flowers!

"I found a mushroom!"

"Look at this pretty flower. It's littler than the sunflowers!"

And them something exciting happened with this group too! We found a frog!

In the video below you can see how our friends followed the frog all around the hill, until it hopped right under the fence!!!

The other groups of friends worked really well today too! As you know we have been talking a lot about families. These friends worked on making a house and a family out of loose parts. They told beautiful family related stories and worked so nicely together!!!