Love to Ride My Bike

        
This week is Bike to Work week and we will be hosting
a Bike at the Playground event on Thursday.
       
I've had a difficult time finding good, easy to sing bike
songs and each year I try a new one.
       
This year I learned a song I heard on Jamie Barnett’s
cd called Ride My Bike.
     
I made magnet board pictures and added sign language
to the song.

Here is a video on me singing and signing the song.

 We love to ride our bikes, do you?
 
Do you have a song about bikes that you could share?

Tree Rubbings

 
We went out into the woods again today to have a closer look at trees.
          

We went prepared to do some rubbings. 
Each page in our books told us what to look for.
 
As they walked through the woods they touched every tree, connecting
with nature in a new way.
   
Making comparisons to each others rubbings.  How are the leaves different?

Finding rubbings wasn’t the only thing we discovered.
 
            We found a fort to play in,
 
    lots of mushrooms poking through the ground,
 
a snail without it`s home and a tree perfect for climbing.
    
    We found the oldest tree in this woods.
   
  It took seven of us to measure around the tree.

Paper Helicopters

               
One of our families showed us how to make paper helicopters. 
They are easy to make using few materials.
      
Use a small paper rectangle, fold it in half, open and then cut
in half to the fold.  These are the helicopter blades.
         
Fold the blades in opposite direction of each other.
  
Now fold the corners of the other end in and attach a paper clip. 
This doesn’t have to be exact.

Time to make them fly.  
    
Lift as high as you can and let go.  Watch it twirl to the ground.
 
We climbed to the top of the playground equipment and let them go.
Sometimes the wind would catch them and make them go farther.
 
We ran across the field and flew our helicopters over and over again.
Time flew by too as we easily spent an hour outside playing together.

Caterpillar Dreams

            
The Crunching Munching Caterpillar wishes he could fly.  In this book,
by Sheridan Cain, he meets different creatures that can fly and they all
describe what he needs to have in order to fly.
 
He needs wings, be as light as dandelion fluff or float like a feather.
 
So when he goes to sleep he dreams about flying.   I love the
illustrations and how the text floats around the page.

  
I was inspired to set up a question for the children to think about
while they look at our chrysalis.
 
We started by talking about dreams and asking if they could think
of a dream they had while sleeping.
 
Some could tell a whole story about their dreams and were able to
create a dream for the caterpillar.
 
     While others drew about a dream as a wish. 
               Something that they like
                   so the caterpillar
                   would like it too.