Out and About! A huge success.....

Well.....we made it!  Today was our first ever Out and About!  We took a walk around the neighborhood to look at street signs and houses.  We found stop signs, school signs, traffic lights, and even learned how to "read" the crosswalk signs.  We did stop at the park and play on the playground.....which was wonderful, until 4 classes from Dilworth Elementary came out to join us.  That made the experience a little stressful for the grownups! 

Along the walk we got to talk about things we saw and heard around us.  We saw airplanes, birds, mushrooms the size of baseballs, squirrels, and one big truck even blew his horn and waved to us!  The kids LOVED that!  It was a wonderful natural learning experience!

We made a big circle and crossed East Blvd.  I know right now you are thinking how very brave we are.....and, at the time, it felt a little ambitious!  We spent so much time explaining the crosswalk and, wouldn't you know it, it changed to "Don't Walk" in the middle of the street.  The kids wanted to stop.....which showed that they understood, but wasn't really possible at the moment!  There happened to be a policeman first in the line of traffic, which turned out to be really neat because he turned on his blue lights and made everyone stop to let us cross!  I guess he could see the panic on my face and knew he needed to help! 

Despite all the obstacles, we were on a mission and needed to get to the blue mailbox.  While we were at the park, we put some mail in an envelope with a stamp and addressed it with our home addresses.  I'm not sure that they really understand the process but, you can reinforce it again when the special mail arrives at your house this weekend.  Inside you will find some shape homework to reinforce our weekly theme about Where We Live. 

We were gone from school today for almost TWO hours even though we didn't go that far!  Little legs just don't move as fast as big legs!  Everyone was really tired when we returned for lunch.  It was easily the quietest lunch we've had since school started!  They were completely worn out!  We put on some soft music and had some chill time before we closed the day out with loud musical instrument play.  One last blast before we sent them home to you for the weekend! 

We all had a great time outside today!  I promise to post some pictures later!  Since I can't take a nap, right now I am headed to get some much need caffeine!