Saturday, April 29, 2017

we love snails in the classroom

 


It's getting harder and harder to find snails to bring to the classroom but when we find them, oh boy, do we enjoy them! We create a snail habitat by placing dirt, rocks, and small pots or cups onto a tray or shallow bin for the snails to enjoy. We have a squirtbottle nearby to keep them damp and I encourage gentle hands and wonder when we have the snails in the room. The cool part is that snails can be popped into a ziplock bag or container with lettuce or cabbe leaves and stored in the fridge. We do this for the week then liberate them to our small play yard. One year, after such a liberation, we found dozens of itty bitty baby snails in our garden. It was really cool! Anotehr year, we found a snail, weeks later, had moved into our nursery rhyme book and ate it's way through a few pages! The children were DELIGHTED when my teacing partner pulled out the book to read only to discover a wayward snail inside!

Friday, April 28, 2017

playing a symmetry game

 
We do the symmetry game at group time in the spring (my mother used to do this with me when I was really young, yay memories!) Many of my three year olds are now four and are beginning to grasp larger concepts. We talk about the wings of a butterfly when we introduce symmetry aka bilateral symmetry. I will draw a butterfly on the chalkboard as guided by the children narrating my process as I do so. Then I place an object on one side and invite a child to match it on the other side. Once everyone gets a turn, we place more chalkboards on the carpet for the children to play it together. It's totally cool if they do not get it, they will someday. What this does is give us teachers a chance to assess the children without assessing them. Sometimes, there will be a child so into the game that it carries off into their play for the week. They discover other items with smmetry and we guide them through their learning based o nwhere their interests are.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

all for me

She made me a play dough bouquet of goodness....all the flowers she could find, straws (the bendy kind...she pointed out to me), honeycombed fruit picks, glitter, cookie presses, and play dough...of course.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

paint with veggies

veggies, and blossoms...chive blossoms... 
I tried my best to match paint to veggie colors but couldn't bear to add brown for the mushroom 
which seemed to be a favorite non-brush brush...

Thursday, April 6, 2017

squishy art

I don't have any photos of the finished projects but really, it doesn't much matter how it all looks as much as how it felt making them.

First the children selected the paint they wanted to use...usually  ALL of the colors...then they applied their "squeezing muscles" to pop the pretty paint all over their paper.
When they were ready, the slected a sheet of cling wrap and carefully palced it over the top of their paper and got to squishing it all up. They children were astounded that no paint got on their hands! Some smoothed the paint out from the center. Others used fingertips to poke and prod. All of them had a lot to say. Most of the papers ended up drying with the cling wrap on top. The children had so much fun doing this they even added another layer (or two) of paint and cling wrap. Yay for process!