NEWS FROM THE NATURE CLASSROOM:  What a beautiful and fun month April has been!  As the natural world around has been growing by leaps and bounds, we took nature's cue and explored our own growing bodies.  We started the month by stretching and balancing as we did Yoga.  We practiced taking deep breaths to calm our mind and felt how Yoga helped us build stronger, healthier bodies.  All the students did an amazing job trying the poses, even the challenging ones.  We were inspired to come up with our own creative yoga poses.  The following week we dove into the exciting world of the human body.  Going beyond the body parts we can see with our eyes, we felt, listened and read about our internal organs.  For example, we took deep breaths with our hands around our chests to feel our lungs fill up and empty and we moved our bodies quickly to feel our heart's beating under our chest to get more oxygen to our busy muscles.  As a group we traced a student and added lungs, heart, brain, stomach, bones, muscles, intestines and the nervous and circulatory system to our drawing.

With a better understanding of how our bodies work on the inside, we moved into a week of nutrition.  Lorie, Isabella's mom from the Burro's room, taught an amazing lesson on food groups and the importance of good nutrition.  On the patio, classes were introduced to a wide, abundant and exciting array of fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and dairy.  Classes worked together to identify and place all the food on a gigantic food pyramid that gave us a great visual representation of the amount of each type of food group is best for our bodies.  Younger classes had the opportunity to identify, sort and taste a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables and touch several types of different grains.  Much to our delight many of the youngsters tried every food presented to them including lettuce and green beans!  We are tying together the month with a unit on cooking.  By making home-made pizza, we are learning how cooking can be easy, fun and delicious when we work together and follow the directions.

Here is the no-rise pizza dough the kids enjoyed this week.  I hope you'll enjoy making it at home.  Follow the recipe below and add whatever toppings you and your family would love to eat.

Easy, No Rise Pizza Dough

Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

Directions

1. Combine yeast, warm water and sugar and let rest for 5-10 minutes.
2. Combine flour, salt and oil in large bowl.
3. Mix in yeast/water mixture and stir till all the flour is combined.  It will look ragged.
4. Turn dough out on floured or oiled work surface and knead until dough looks smooth and has some elasticity when you pull it. Children do really well when you give them a smaller piece to knead.
5. Spread out on a large pizza pan and roll out. Top as desired.
6. Bake at 375 degrees C (190 degrees C) for 20 to 25 minutes.

Looking Ahead:  As we bring the school year to a close we've got so many exciting things left to explore during the month of May.  We'll start off with an in depth look at birds.  After having the opportunity to examine bird feathers, eggs, nests and bird food in class, we'll head outdoors for a bird scavenger hunt.  Using binoculars we will find an array of different feathered friends in various stages of their day.  Older students will have a supplemental lesson that focuses on 5 common Minnesota birds that incorporates audio, visual and matching games.  We'll then move onto bees, learning what makes these insects so special, what role they play in the world and the varieties that live in our backyard.   May 15th marks a special day for us in nature, as it is the last estimated frost day of the year which means we can plant outside!  We'll celebrate by transplanting all the plants we started last month into the garden and planting beans and onions directly outside.  To finish the month, we'll take a closer look at flowers as we plant a wide variety of flowers around the school.  If you haven't been to the newly redone gnome village, be sure to check it out and be on the look-out for a new fairy garden coming to the school in the late spring.