As we approach the end of the school year, the children are showing a need for more outside time, free play, and exploration of the natural world. Our annual ECC Garden work day was a great success, and fueled interest in making potions with flower petals and herbs in the outdoor mud kitchen and outdoor scavenger hunts. After reading Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner, we did a cooking project called mud cups. The children helped mash up chocolate cream cookies with wooden hammers in ziplock bags for the dirt. Then, we made chocolate pudding and cut up gummies that we pretended were seeds and pill bugs. It was a delicious treat enjoyed at the end of the day!

Another buzzing enthusiasm happening in Mariposa is fuse beads. The children get focused, create patterns, and build fine motor skills while putting fuse beads together and listening to our favorite audio books. Over the school year, the skills they have mastered in patience, attention to detail, and fine motor abilities has allowed them to be successful and satisfied with creating with fuse beads.

Since we have completed our alphabet sound study and handwriting series, we are building phonemic awareness skills with our Montessori movable alphabet. This tools allows children the ability to “write” using inventive spelling. They are building words with wooden letters that are color differentiated by vowel and consonant. The activity is meant to be a fun exploration of their knowledge of the letter sounds and practice putting them together.

As we move through the remaining weeks of school. our goal is to revisit beloved activities, continue to build skills acquired, and begin having conversations about kindergarten. We will be reading books, talking about what is the same and different between preschool and kindergarten, and share excitements and worries about change. We hope to soak up these last weeks with your little ones!