September 2025: Harvest Season with New Friends

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

Mindful Focus: Friendship and Kindness

Explorations: School, Harvest, Fruits, and Vegetables

Welcome to SimpleLife Preschool! Each month the teachers and I work hard to present the meaningful learning experiences, carefully planned activities, and how we felt during our time at school via our newsletter!

Our first couple weeks were focused on how to be at school. Children learned about lining up, listening to teacher, raising their hands, taking turns, sharing, and. overall school safety and rules.

Our curriculum is planned around the seasons and what is going on outside. Throughout the year we will take time to explore important life concepts and topics that are interesting to children. Each month we have a “Mindful Focus”, this is where we implement social and emotional skills into our daily rhythm and learning. We take pride in setting up an environment where children can learn through hands-on activities and play! We balance free choice and structured lessons to provide children with a developmentally appropriate introduction to school, building a pathway for a love of learning! Enjoy the read, please feel free to reach out to me with any feedback or questions.

- Miss Demi

New songs we sang this month:

The Welcome Song
The Wheels on the Bus
Make New Friends
Apples and Bananas
Way Up High In The Apple Tree

Mindful Focus: Friendship and Kindness

*“We didn’t realize we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun.”*
*- Winnie The Pooh*

The first month of school can be scary! We learned together how it can exciting but also make us nervous to try new things and be at school for the first time. During circle time we read a story about a friend who felt just like that! What helped our friend in the book feel comfortable? Making friends! How can we make friends? By being kind! We discussed so many different ways to be kind to old friends and new. We explored different photos of children demonstrating kindness and respect and we even engaged in a board game to help us learn patience when taking turns and using team work…even when our team didn’t win. We also learned how important it is to consider others feelings, an extremely important skill to learn! How would you feel if you were left out and no one included you? We all discussed ways we can make sure we are showing kindness and thinking of ways to bring joy to our friends!

- Miss Mallorie

Harvest Exploration:

*“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”*
*- Albert Camus*

The word ‘Harvest’ comes from the Old English word hoerfest which means autumn, when food was gathered from the land, prepared for celebrations and stored for the winter months. As a culture, this tradition and connection to the land started to fall away as convenience and imported foods became popular in city grocery stores. In recent years, we have seen a shift back to supporting locally grown and seasonal foods, reconnecting us to the land and the seasons.

At SimpleLife Preschool, we celebrate community and connection, offering curriculum and activities that follow seasonal rhythms. As summer comes to a close, it’s time for us to observe the signals and prepare for autumn, gathering in celebration of our work leading up to and during the harvest. We encourage the children to notice changes in weather, sunlight, and temperature as the Earth begins its annual transition between summer and winter. SimpleLife teachers connect the children to this important time of year by working together to harvest the food grown and tended in the school gardens. Some of the harvest is the result of spring plantings from last school year’s classes! You can see the excitement and wonder as children are allowed to pick their own tomato, smell a basil leaf, and hold a pear in their hand. The preschool snacks during this time of year include the opportunity for children to try foods from the garden harvest – tomatoes, peaches, grapes, and more. As we move further into the autumn months, our songs and circle time activities reflect the rhythm and teachings of the season. We encourage you to ask your child questions about their activities and food they may have tried during snack time and engage them in reflecting on their learnings about harvest season!

- Miss Missy

This month we had a huge focus on fruits and vegetables, especially the ones that grow abundantly in our gardens! We had so many opportunities to explore with them and learn all about them! We went out into our gardens and harvested all the different kinds of things we could find, and harvested in all the different ways. We twisted pears off our trees, plucked tomatoes off the vine, dug up onions, and so many more! Our favorite part is the fact that we can share so much of our harvest with our community with our harvest table! During snack the explorations continued with tasting different things that came from our garden, especially our peaches, pears, and grapes! We even made our grapes into juice and raisins for something extra special, and blended our frozen peaches into “ice cream”! And of course we got the special chance to use tools to explore the insides of fruits and vegetables! We started by teaching the children how to safely use a knife, and then we all worked together to try and predict what was inside - asking questions about the change in texture, color, and number of seeds - before cutting them open to smell and feel the insides! We even got to include fruits and vegetables in our art projects by painting pictures of those special fruits and vegetables we harvested!

- Miss Sushi

Art Exploration:

Self Portraits, Large Easel Paintings, Stickies Project, Still Life, and Clay Exploration

This month, children explored various art mediums. They enjoyed “plein air painting” (French term, the act of painting outdoors) on easels, learning the difference between representational and abstract art. They did a great job painting objects around the school, like trees, sky, flowers, and caterpillars. We introduced "stickies," a project using glue, tape, and staples to teach different ways to attach items to paper. It was simple but fun, fostering creativity with various materials. The children also had time with clay, learning about its origin and creating with it by smashing, rolling, and building. This set the stage for many future clay projects. Two favorite projects were the Vegetable Still Life, where they drew and painted real fruits and vegetables, and Self Portraits, using mirrors to capture their likeness. We loved seeing them take on new challenges and complete their art even when it was tough!

- Miss Annie