"I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house." –Nathaniel Hawthorne

We've had one last hurrah of summer this week, but the changing leaves tell us that winter is coming! Some of you may be thinking about gearing your children up for the cold and snow, so here are some notes from our experiences.

When looking at snowsuits, mittens, and winter boots, waterproofing or water resistance is extremely important, especially for our younger children who spend lots of time on the ground. A soaked-through snowsuit is nobody's idea of a good time. We've had good luck with suits from Columbia, Patagonia, North Face, and LL Bean. Dakine mittens and North Face boots tend to do well. For our youngest pre-walking infants, suits with closed or fold-over arm and leg holes are best, and a waterproofing option for them is to layer a rain suit over a down snow suit.

I also wanted to share Sarah's post from last winter about wool base layers: http://mountainvillageschool.blogspot.com/2016/12/reminder-solstice-stroll-is-happening.html They make a huge difference in warmth (especially wool socks!).

Finally, new gear from the companies listed above is often quite pricey. It might be well worth it to do the legwork to find these items secondhand. You can always check eBay, ThredUp.com, and local consignment stores. Zulily sometimes has new gear available at big discounts. We also encourage gear swapping between MVS families. There is a sign up sheet on the cork board in the entryway, and we teachers are also happy to  help facilitate swapping if you ask. And as always, please label all items so we can keep track of them.

Thanks for reading,
Megan

News and Reminders
This week we sadly said goodbye to Kyle as he headed back to school in Oregon. Thanks for spending the summer with us, Kyle, and best wishes!

Classroom Updates
Infant I
This week we have been singing, singing, singing as children frequently request "more" verbally and with hand signs. The most popular song at the beginning of the week was "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" which would often prompt two or three children to climb into our wooden boat and start rocking. They decided that the song could be applied to our wooden rocking horse, as well. At meal times we have continued to work on staying seated until we get cleaned up and trying foods that we might feel hesitant about; many times watching a friend try it is great motivation. Many of our children also needed lots of rest this week, and we've been working hard to both provide quiet times and support their learning to sleep through reasonable levels of noise. By the end of the week our focus had turned back to scarves and high fives (see photos below).

Infant II
Many of our children have been practicing jumping and getting two feet off the ground. We are very impressed with their jumping abilities. We have also been tasting different vegetables from the school garden, including three different types of beans and tomatoes. The children love munching on them. Finally, we have been encouraging our older children to model the rules of our classroom for our new younger children. For the most part they are doing great!

Toddlers
We had a wonderful week of gorgeous weather that we took full advantage of with lots and lots of outside time! This wee we worked on shape, number and color identification during a math and science activity; the children were very interested in identifying the correct colors and identifying the appropriate shape and name of the shape. They really liked identifying the hexagons, the hearts, and the flowers. Particular interest in counting the shapes was also observed as we counted to ten numerous times. Sorting the shapes into groups was also enjoyed by all. We are also working hard on following our school-wide MVS rules of using inside voices in the classroom and using walking feet in the classroom and hallway. The children continue to enjoy group snack and school lunches, becoming more adventurous by the day in willing to try new foods. A quick reminder that on Monday mornings, labeled blankets and cot sheets should go directly to the children's cots. Thanks!

Preschool I
Shannon E is back! We've had an extremely energetic week with both challenges and great excitement. There has been some resurgence of spitting, so we've talked a lot about how we need to keep spit in our own bodies to keep our friends healthy and safe. We are learning the words "appropriate" and "inappropriate"–it is appropriate to spit after brushing our teeth but inappropriate at the lunch table. Back to the good stuff: We have renewed interest in digging for worms, counting, and using lots of descriptive language. We're also starting to review family photos and photos of the children when they were much younger ("I was so tiny then!" said A about his infant photo). We also had our first birthday, complete with educational birthday muffins with three dots of cream cheese on top. We talked about how every time we take a trip around the sun we are a year older. Happy birthday, J! "I can focus because I'm three," he said.

Preschool II
On Monday we had our first walk on the rec path. We spent some time at the color tile art exhibit and saw how looking though the different colors changed the color of the clouds and seemed to make the green grass turn brown and the green disappear. We continued down the rec path over the bridge and onto the Quiet Path where we found a spot to see the Little River. On Tuesday we made our "Kabota tractor" and used it to collect hay bales and feed the hungry cows. Wednesday was our first library story hour of the fall and we enjoyed listening to stories about alligators, apples, and ants. We got to color our own alligator visors with sharp teeth. Then on Thursday we went back to there rec path where we helped rescue a caterpillar from the path and found many of its friends were climbing a nearby tree. On Friday we used the skills we practiced on Tuesday, when we pretended to be librarians reading to the class, to read our Friday book All the World to our younger friends in the front play area. We also returned to the SES playground Friday where last week's wish to see our friends from kindergarten came true. Next week we are excited for our first visit to the Helen Day Art Center.

PreK
This week the children have been trying out different ways to prop up the slide. They've used the tire in the past at the very top, but this week they started trying to maneuver the slide into different positions on the tire. Hannah and Bridgette worked at creating "a see saw". They decided that the tire needed to be "more in the center" of the slide. Orion and Alex had success with balancing the slide on the tire and using their bodies to make the slide "bounce". We've used the word "strategies" a lot this week. We've created strategies for solving social problems as well as remembering words and the number of sides on shapes like the triangle and the octagon. Speaking of shapes, we've been using ours to create patterns. We spent some time at circle looking at different patterns and classifying them as shape, color or size patterns. The children noticed that sometimes they can be more than one type.