March 2023: Mindful March
Living in the moment with intention.
Mindful Focus: Mindful living. What can you do when you feel mad?
Explorations: Rocks, water, and weather
Although we celebrated the beginning of spring, March was a wintery one. The children still got to search for signs of spring and were interested in water and weather in their environment.
Something very exciting happened for the SimpleLife Team this month! We presented at the Utah’s Association for the Education of Young Children Annual Conference. We shared our passion on teaching children through creative process-focused play. This means we promote and encourage children taking lead in their learning process by hands-on activities and exploring their curiosities. Our audience was other preschool teachers and child caregivers. We inspired our audience to simplify their programs by incorporating nature and up-cycled materials, toys that stimulate imagination, and creating a safe and compassionate environment where children can discover at their own pace, while learning life skills and boundary setting. We feel spreading and sharing what we do at SimpleLife is important. We have goals to grow SimpleLife and teach other educators the SimpleLife Way. Thank you families for supporting and trusting what we do!
Books read to enhance learning experiences:
Are You Ready to Play Outside? By Mo Willems
5 Little Chicks By Nancy Tafuri
When Sophie Gets Angry- Really, Really Angry… By Molly Bang
New songs we sang this month:
Grassy Grass Grass by Elizabeth Mitchell
Daniel Tiger’s “When you feel so mad…”
Rain, Rain, Go Away (Snow, Snow, Go Away)
Mindfulness:
An ongoing practice
Mindfulness is an all-embracing skill we integrate into our curriculum. It takes a long time to understand what mindfulness is and what it looks like; for children and adults. Although mindfulness is often peaceful, calm, and very regulated, it does not always look like meditation. It’s a practice of living intently in the moment, with awareness of yourself and your surroundings, without judgement. Squish the play dough in your hands, feel the tickle of the ladybug, allow yourself to get muddy without worries. Notice, observe, experience. Teachers plan daily activities so children can focus on the learning experience happening in front of them, rather than what is going to happen later. We help the children be present by checking in with their body and emotions, use their senses to explore and learn, and encourage process-focused activities.
“For all human beings, everything begins and ends with the brain. Every move we make, every instinct we have, every problem we solve, every complicated emotional scenario we could conjure, every moment of joy, and every moment of pain are the result of the interplay between our brain, our body, and the world around us.”
― Amy Leigh Mercree, A Little Bit of Mindfulness: An Introduction to Being Present
Rocks and Fossils Explorations:
Miss Jenny has a large collection of unique rocks and fossils
Children love rocks! We’ve all experienced finding that pocket full of rocks that is REALLY important. We motivated the children to experiment with different types of rocks by touching them, describing them, and observing them change with light and water. The children had many opportunities to compare and contrast, investigate, and ask scientific questions.
Water and Weather Exploration:
“There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
-John Ruskin
These little scientist were deep thinkers during our water exploration! We learned many new words and concepts. We discussed the properties of water and how water changes from a solid, liquid, and gas. We turned liquid into solid with a yummy popsicle, and liquid into gas with a humidifier. We used salt and water to melt ice to break out frozen treasures! We made predictions and completed a sink and float investigation. We learned a new word, density, and compared it to other words such as heavy and big.
We had so much fun acting out the water cycle! We learn in many different modes, and children are more likely to remember their learning experience when they can actively take part and move their bodies! We pretended to be water droplets existing in a pond, then feeling the warm sun evaporate us into a cloud. The water droplets would get closer and closer together, making the cloud heavy, until we would rain down back to the ground water!
March is usually a good time to talk about weather because there is often many types of weather to observe in the month. The children got to experience hail and were so excited to share with their teacher what was falling from the sky! With a fan and pinwheel we experimented with wind and how it moves within a space and effects the objects around. We talked about activities you can do in different types of weather and what clothing you would wear in each type of weather. The shaving cream “cloud” sensory activity was engaging for all children. The objective was to use your sense of feel to move the fluff in your hands. This activity is good for children who don’t like to get messy because it’s just soap! Some of the older children decided to practice their letters in the clouds.
Spring Celebration:
"Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own."
— Charles Dickens
We unfortunately couldn’t celebrate the first day of spring outdoors, but we were able to enjoy it with the bright sun shining down on us.
We still played outside and planted our peas we germinated in hopes we to get some springtime vegetables. At circle time, each child made some instructions on how to take care of the gladiolus they planted and got to take home.
Art Explorations:
3D paintings, wind chimes, and still life painting
The children created 3D paintings this month. We have learned about 2D drawings and paintings and 3D sculptures, so we combined the two, where the children glued on objects in an art piece that will stick out, not be flat. The children love using all different types of materials and being able to get up and select their own with independence. We painted them and strung them to be hung!
While learning about weather and wind, we showed the children how you can create using recycled materials.
Using tin cans and jar lids the children made their own wind chimes! They were excited to pick out their colors of paint and string and then take them home to show their family!
For spring we had children closely examine a vase of flowers to draw and then paint. We explained to them what a still life is. Something that is sitting still in front of them to draw and paint. We guided the children to notice the shapes they see, colors, and how many different parts of the flower were there. The children worked hard and learned from the process of noticing details!
Art projects have been so fun! The children are always excited and engaged during art. We are glad we are able to provide them with so many opportunities and options to create!
