Later, we found whole apples among the moss, deep in the woods. After some shared detective work, the girls located wild apples growing way high up in the crown of an old tree.
The girls found ants crawling on a rotten apple, and the kids surmised that the insects were eating the apple and they urged each other to "just let them eat--don't squish them."
All of this constitutes cognitive learning along a path of truly emergent curriculum-- apples being the "theme"-- but so much more was going on.
The children were communicating, making eye contact, posing questions to each other, problem solving as a team, calling each other by name and enjoying the give and take of conversation.