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!