Sunflower Preschool
At Sunflower Preschool, we take pride in connecting young children to nature and their inherent sense of wonder! Our Outdoor Classroom is busy and vibrant, with happy, engaged, curious, and kind children exploring the multi-sensory and stimulating environment, while the Teachers work to support the children in their discovery, passion, and nurture their interests and curiosity!
Over the last year, we have continued to maintain our Outdoor Classroom as well as enhance and expand outdoor areas. Sunflower children explore various aspects of our outdoor area on a daily basis. In the warmer months, they are often barefoot and messy in our sand and water play area, where they focus for hours on their creations from ‘volcanos’ to ‘bridges’ to ‘constructions zones’ and more, their imaginations come alive and they develop cooperative play skills. We regularly open our Outdoor Theater, where children become experts in choreographing plays and music! In our front Berm Area, we utilize this extension of our outdoor space to read stories, listen to sounds of nature and see birds flying to and from their nesting boxes in the spring, explore our enchanted Coyote Willow House, gather natural materials such as herbs and leaves to create art projects in our outdoor Nature Art Area, and we even release butterflies to the wild from our Berm!
In our Messy Materials Area, this year we added an Outdoor Weaving Loom! We have a variety of beautifulribbons, as well as vines and branches from our gardens that the children use to weave and create. This expansion of an already busy and dynamic area has allowed for children to further develop their fine motor skills outdoors, enhance their cooperative play skills as they share and take turns and plan their masterpieces for the loom, as well as enhancing their knowledge of what we grow at Sunflower! The children have helped to pick grape vines, rabbit brush stems, grape ivy vines, and catalpa tree seed pods to weave and integrate along with the ribbon at the Weaving Loom. We are observing that more children are now exploring this area and are able to engage in various play styles and preferences.
We believe that children learn best in an environment in which they are free to explore during long blocks of uninterrupted free time. At Sunflower, the children enjoy connecting to and exploring the various outdoor areas of our Nature Explore Classroom! We look forward to continue to enhance and expand areas in which children are connecting to nature and their inherent sense of wonder. We are happy to be part of the Nature Explore community, and continue to be in awe and appreciation of working with children during these impactful and important years of growth and development!
