April 2025: Spring Brings New Life

**Every child deserves a childhood full of wonder, laughter, joy, excitement, exploration, safety, and love.**

April was such a happy month!

We explored the theme of new life by learning about birds, eggs, and nests. One of the most exciting moments was seeing real chick and duckling eggs and even watching some hatch right before our eyes. The children were gentle and curious as they held the baby chicks, showing great care during this special experience.

We learned about feathers, different birds, what they eat, where they live, and how they build nests. We also listened to real bird sounds, which aimed to build listening skills and spark more interest in the world around us. During circle time, we did a feather matching activity that supported early thinking, problem-solving, and language development as we talked about textures, colors, and sizes. Each child had the opportunity to take home a real pheasant feather.

At circle time, we also explored real bird nests and discussed the materials birds use and how they seem to know what to do. We read books about birds and nests, which encouraged curiosity and provided new words to describe what we were learning. We talked about which animals hatch from eggs and which do not, helping to build a basic understanding of life cycles and the diversity of living things.

To connect learning with play, we set up a Bird World exploration table filled with materials for building nests and playing with pretend birds and eggs. This play supported fine motor skills as children handled small materials, encouraged creativity and imagination, and fostered social and emotional growth as they worked and shared together.

For Earth Day, we made simple bird feeders using recycled materials. This provided a chance to talk about caring for the earth and the animals we share it with.

It was such a rich and engaging month. We enjoyed seeing the wonder in our students’ eyes as they explored, created, and connected with nature. Learning seemed to take flight in April!

- Miss Lacey

Mindful Focus: Earth Day Celebration and Compassion

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This month, we had another one of our special celebrations at school! We’ve been talking all month about compassion and how that can relate to taking care of our Earth. The kids love coming up with different ways to help our Earth and implementing them! We’ve discussed picking up garbage, planting things, recycling, and turning out our lights to save power. Then, of course, we talk about why. Why is it important to take care of our Earth? Our planet is completely unique in our known universe, no other planet has the capability to support life the way our beautiful planet does. And not only can our planet support life, it can support a huge diversity of it! We have so many different ecosystems on our planet, and they are all beautiful in their own ways.

So, come Earth Day, the kids are so ready to celebrate our planet and all its beauty! Where we make the whole day revolve around ways to take care of all the parts of our Earth and show our appreciation for it! We first make bird feeders out of recycled materials, reviewing the fun of taking care of the Earth's creatures and making sure we’re mindful of the things we throw away. Then, this celebration becomes extra special. Because not only do we get to leave the school on a field trip, but all our lovely families are able to come with us! As you know, we took a walk along the river and each class had a designated area in which to pick up any garbage that we could see, showing our care for both the earth's creatures and plants, as garbage can make it difficult for these things to grow big and strong! When we finally reached the park, we all got to read a book about the Earth’s diverse beauty and take a mindful moment to think about all our favorite things about the Earth. Then we release the kids for a long playtime on the playground!

While the kids definitely get the importance of the other pieces, and talked about it for the following days at school, this play time may be their favorite of the whole trip, though several of them still implement the things we’ve learned into their play! Some of the kids decided to be different kinds of spiders and flies, some of them continually paused their play to take trash they found in the wood chips to the trash, and some of them collected acorns and even found some that had begun to sprout!

- Miss Sushi

Nature Time Explorations:

April’s Nature Time was filled with hands-on learning and discovery!

We spent a lot of time learning about chickens and their needs. Here at SimpleLife, we have 6 hens, each requiring plenty of care and attention. With the help of our students, they learned just how much goes into feeding, tending, and cleaning up after our chickens. We taught the children about the chicken coop, where the hens like to sleep on the roost, their specific spots for laying eggs, and the importance of the chicken run—not only for eating scratch but also for keeping the birds busy, which helps them stay healthy and strong.

We explained how every part of a chicken’s care is essential to their well-being. The children absolutely love collecting eggs each day, and they’re always eager to carry the special egg basket. One of the highlights of our daily routine is feeding the chickens leftover snack foods. We even have a designated "chicken bucket" for clean-up, and it’s always fun to hear the students excitedly ask for it when they finish their snacks. Whether they realize it or not, they are actively caring for our birds every day! They also enjoyed taking the time to learn about the chickens and even had a chance to pet one (though I’m sure they also had fun watching the teachers try to catch them!).

As part of our chicken/bird theme, the children also got creative and made nests out of recycled branches from the trees in our school’s backyard. Pretending to be birds, they chirped, hopped around, and placed sticks into a nest-like shape, before covering them with cloth to represent leaves, feathers, and grasses. It was a wonderful way to engage their imaginations while learning more about the natural world and how birds care for their eggs.

At SimpleLife, we place a special emphasis on nature and gardening. Miss Jenny’s beautiful yard is home to a vast garden, and with her guidance, our students are becoming little gardeners! They’ve had many opportunities to plant a variety of seeds, bulbs, and plants—both in the yard for future school harvesting and in take-home containers for harvesting at home. So far, they’ve planted onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes and even mammoth sunflowers. For those who’ve been with us for a while, they know how fun it is to return in the fall to harvest the fruits of their labor. Both new and returning students will have the chance to experience this process at the start of the next school year. It’s so rewarding to watch nature come full circle!

- Miss Annie

April helped us welcome spring, as the weather got warmer we were able to spot more signs of the season change. Flowers were blooming and birds were chirping! We got to sing about different kinds of birds and explored what makes each one unique from looking at their different feathers to listening to all the sounds they make. This really helped us be better prepared to use our own creativity during art. Each child got to make their very own bird mobile, this project really opens the door for individuality as they got to choose their pinecone for the birds body, feathers they were able to glue on themselves and a stick for our birds to be able to soar! It was so exciting being able to watch all the different bird creations fly above us in the classroom as they dried. Now that we had our bird it was time to build their nest and you can’t have a nest without eggs! We dove deep into this project, strengthening our fine motor skills as well as using our imagination. After sculpting our eggs with clay we got ready to get our hands dirty, using layers of hay, string and glue we squished the materials down into a bowl to create our nest. We had to use our pincher fingers as we added more materials on top to mimic a birds beak! After everything was dry each child got to paint their eggs and add them to their nest, they were so excited to take these projects home! Last but not least we enjoyed discovering a new way to paint, drip painting and this required some team work! We learned about action painting and how we would be constantly moving as we paint, a perfect way to stay engaged during art! We also discussed how this will be a collaborative project so each friend in our class will work together to make the finishing product and we will all get to take our very own piece of our masterpiece home. This project also required lots of space and since it was messy we got to move this art outdoors! Using various colors and paint brushes we stood around in a circle and splattered the paint all over a giant piece of fabric. We may not have been able to predict the end result but we had so much fun creating a painting where each friend had a share and were able to enjoy our creation together as a team!

- Miss Mallorie