ice play

We dumped a large bag of ice into our sensory bin, then added a couple of cups of liquid watercolor with eye droppers. This entertained the kiddos for almost an hour!

painting with shaving cream paint

sometimes all you need is suds

We had a hot week at school and weirdly enough, the kiddos just weren't into the water table. That all changed with the addition of a few squirts of liquid soap. Not only did they keep cool, they (and the toys) got squeaky clean!

the return of our pan pipes!

I think the children had more fun cutting the straws and watching them fly, than making their pan pipes. We forgot to plug up the bottoms, though we did pop some play dough in a few (which was super fun to blow out, of course). If you decide to make these, you can find the diy here. I recommend using masking tape as the washi tape peeled off a few hours later.

same but different

I'm sorry for the blurry photo but really wanted to show you these two paint palettes as poured by two different kiddos. Both were three at the time, one a few months shy of their fourth birthday, the other a few months into their third year. What a difference a few months make! I love this so much.

buggy pea soup

More spring time sensory play. This time with two bags of dried split peas, and an assortment of insects, reptiles, and amphibians (which all escaped the pea bin and made their way to the sand box..of course!)

spring play dough fixings

We love a good play dough set up! For spring, we pulled out a thrifted divided tray and filled it with bracelets from the dollar store, wee stampers and cookie stamps, silicone cupcake liners (also thrifted), plastic flower picks from Daiso, and a flower set from Toobz! This was out for three weeks, the children were having so much fun with it!

it's time for our estimation jars!

There are five jars for the children to investigate. Each jar contains a set number of like items such as rubber duckies, stretchy snakes, butterflies, small pebbles, and a large mossy (faux) rock. We set this up along with a couple of clipboards and pens to encourage drawing what they see. This year around, it was more fun to stack the jars as high as they could. Either way, it's all learning!

bean counters!

I love a wooden Mancala board for sorting small items in the classroom. I think we have two or three in the classroom as they are easily found at the thrift stores. Here, we popped a handful of mixed beans into the large well, along with one of each in the small wells. Yay for sorting!

a window full of happy

I usually hang art up on the line to move it out of the way for new art that needs a flat surface for drying. This assortment of art waiting to go home was too happy not to photograph! We have our weather sun catchers on the window, our veggie prints hanging on the wire, our pool noodle sculptures on the shelf, and an be-glittered pine cone or two as well. Swoon!

can you paint a flower?

what can we do with earrings?

A friend of mine gave me a large bag of jewelry. I took it to school and immediately took apart all the beaded bits and put them in a bead bowl. The rings, bracelets, and necklaces that were not beaded went into our classroom jewelry box for the kiddos to play with. But what to do with all the earrings?

One of the kiddos knew just what to do. This basket would be perfect. Look at that fine motor work!

Isn't it pretty? After all the earrings were snuggled onto the basket, he promptly put it in his head as hat! Ta-da!

spring water transfer

mother's day gift wrap

For Mother's Day, the kiddos made sweet Sculpey trinket dishes and watercolor painted wood tags all wrapped up by their own hands. How sweet are these?

sink or float?

For our week of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, one of the things we talked about was whether or not the Troll sunk or floated when he was butted off the bridge. There was a lot of discussion, with some of the children deciding that their troll would be a nice troll and would not get butted off the bridge, with other trolls sinking to the bottom and living in the river.

With all this talk of sinking and floating on our minds, the children brought in objects from home to see if they would sink or float. We did this at group time first, with each child predicting what their object would do, then we moved it all to the science table for more exploration.

All week long, the children brought in objects to test. There was a lot of activity at the science table. Many of our classroom items took a turn in the sink or float bowl. There may have been water everywhere but it was worth it...so worth it!

This was back in at the beginning of February and just this week, one of the classroom kiddos found a leaf on the playground. They said to me "I am going to see if this floats!" and they promptly placed it on a puddle to discover that it did indeed float! For the rest of the hour outside, various rocks, leaves, and bark pieces made their way to that puddle and it was awesome!

a wee little classroom happy

*weather inspire suncatchers
*blotto trolls
*easel painting
*pool noodle sculptures
*ice cream cones
*fun with weather pillows

**just a little splash of color in our classroom to brighten your day (and mine)!

make a button board

More like a button pillowcase...I used two cloth napkins from our local craft store, but you could just as easily use a solid color pillowcase....hand stitch a variety of buttons to the cloth, insert cardboard, cut out felt shapes (don't forget the buttonholes,) and you're good to go! This is great for fine motor work and button practice!

three bears smoosh painting

Every year when we read The Three Bears, we pull out the honey bears for some painting fun. This year, I added a slight twist to the usual suspects...

The children selected a square of construction paper in either red, white, blue, or yellow. They would then place their paper into the cookie sheet and get ready to engage those squeeze muscles. It isn't easy to squeeze paint out of a honey bear!

The children added paint to their heart's content then placed a sheet of plastic wrap on top of the happy mess. Once the plastic was placed, it was time to smoosh away.

Their favorite part was the magic of not getting their hands covered in paint (and this is a class that LOVES to cover their hands in paint!)

Minds may have been blown!

I wish I had thought to take photos of the final art...I may have but I cannot find them...we also taped up some of the pieces of plastic into our windows...all sorts of colorful pretty!

Enjoy!

misadventures in gluten-free play dough making

I tried, I really did, but as far as dough goes, I failed (well, sort of, at least in this instance.) I picked up some coconut flour and thought if I added cocoa powder to it and cooked it up like regular play dough it would work....I thought wrong.

I added the flour, then the cocoa, some cornstarch, and less water than usual and it looked like it might ball up but it didn't. It got too fluid and goopy so I added cornmeal and nothing happened. At this point I had about 6 cups of crumbly stuff that I was told smelled divine but what could I do to salvage it? Ooh! I know...turn it into a microwave mug cake...um....yeah, that bombed too.

Rather than admit defeat, I popped the whole crumbly mess into a container and marveled at the texture which was silly smooth and cool even if it wasn't doughy. The next day at school, I dumped the whole crumbly mess on top of the table, added a few cookie cutters, and empty heart shaped candy boxes and called it a day.

It appears the kiddos loved it...

Go figure.

Coming up, the successful gluten-free playdough recipe I rocked. Stay tuned!

trip-trap, trip-trap