more painted leaves

 I stitched this garland of fall leaves together to decorate our classroom. The children loved seeing their art hanging like this over the entryway to our kitchen. Along with the watercolor leaves we did some squishy paint leaves. I think I may like these even more.

 The children selected and squeezed their own paint on top of their watercolor leaf shapes. They also selected which leaf they wished to paint. Sometimes painting up two or three more.

 After squeezing their paint, they placed a different sheet of paper over their work are and got ready to smoosh!

 They smooshed and rubbed and rubbed and smooshed!

 

Aren't the colors fantastic? We used bottled tempera from Discount School Supply. Such nice happy colors!

our watercolor fall leaves

 

 

jack o' lantern felt fun

The kiddos at school love themselves a flannel board. For Halloween I had planned on making a jack o' lantern board for them but time ran away from me.

 Then I found this pumpkin placemat decoration thing at either Micheal's, The Dollar Tree, or Target, I cannot remember. Either way, an idea bloomed. All I needed now was to get to work cutting out shapes for funny face making.

 And then that pesky time thing ran away once again but I stumbled upon sticky felt face pieces for pumpkins at Target and I snatched up one of each design. There were four in all.

After backing the sticky bits with regular old felt we were ready to decorate!

I supplemented the pieces with a bunch of circles and triangles cut from felt and popped them into the tray on our sticky easel.

spin art is never too old: making spin art acorns

 

 

 

pumpkin painting exploration

 The children in my class painted up wee pumpkins the week of Halloween. These were a work in progress for the week and had many stages of nifty going on.

 

We began with paint and paintbrushes. The children chose their colors and began painting. We stuck with one palette for each child as we were working on color mixing.

We discussed warm colors and cool colors.

 

I snapped these photos during the first round of paint. Love how the colors mix on the pumpkin itself.

Glitter was added then painted over then added some more.

 

Then the squeeze bottles came out and more exploration was had.

 

It's a bit of a beautiful mess isn't it?

invitation to play: pumpkins and creepy crawleys

Four felt pumpkins and a bag of Halloween rings with the ring-parts snipped off. I set it up to see what they would do.

 

Sorting, counting and naming of colors all happened. The children also talked to each other about their favorite colors or their favorite critter. The purple bats were a top favorite.

One child pulled me over to talk about what he discovered after sorting out all the creepies. He said that there were the most spiders and that most of them were black but a lot were orange but that only one was purple. We had been working on counting, grouping, quantities, and subitizing and seeing that he was taking it all in and using it was so cool. So cool!

one elephant went out to play...

For our week of Elmer we focused on colors, squares, and elephants. One of the songs we sang a lot was this one and since the children really enjoyed it, I set up this invitation to play.

We sang the song up to five elephants and then the children tried placing all ten elephants onto the web. The elephants were purchased from Amazon and I am very happy with them. They connect trunk to tail and the children loved connecting them and playing with them. I often found them in the dollhouse.

One child connected the grouping on the left and told me he made a big circle. He then connected the four on the right and told me he made a little circle. We were joined by another child who said "That's a square! That's a square of elephants".  She then leaned over and read out the numbers and told me that there were ten elephants. It was really awesome.

I often send the children home with their own mystery bag (more on mystery bags later). During our week of Elmer, they had their very own assortment of elephants and a small spider's web to play with. We had a lot of fun.

spin art spiderwebs

 

 

 

making apple pie and the best kitchen gadget ever

We did three weeks of apple themed books in the classroom. As I was planning out our days I really wanted to make apple sauce and apple pie. I figured I could use a crock pot to make sauce but how could we bake pies? The school does have a kitchen but I wanted the children to be able to see the pies get made and so, after discovering the pie making capabilities of the cupcake maker I discovered one on super sale and snatched it up. We were going to make apple pie in class! Each kiddo would get to make their very own tiny apple pie. I was super excited!

To make things easier and to allow for more play time, I used Trader Joe's pre-made pie crust (it is super tasty). The children each got a chance at using the rolling pin to roll over the dough...large motor skills!

And then use the crust cutting tool to cut out  circle, shape recognition!

I didn't turn the maker on until we were ready to bake so the children got to select which batter well they wanted their pie to bake in and got to place their crust into the well then use the push tool to press it down after they dunked it into some flour so it would not stick. They then added a few scoops of cooked apples (I made this at home) into their bottom crust (some chose one scoop while others did two, three or even four). Here the children learned new vocabulary words, methods of baking, and used hand-to-eye coordination to place their crust evenly into their wells and drop their apple filling on top.

 

 After they used the other side of the crust-cutting tool to cut out a smaller circle for their top-crust (more vocabulary and shape recognition going on) they used their "pinching fingers" to pinch up a small amount of sanding sugar for the top (fine motor skills).

The pies baked up in ten minutes and made the room smell delicious for the remainder of the day. We shared our apple pies with the Jr. K class at lunch time and there was nary a crumb left. We are totally going to make pumpkin muffins and corn bread in November!

an invitation to play: felt leaves sorting

This little wooden box was another thrift outlet find. I hot-glued the tiny clothespins onto the back and popped a different colored felt leaf into each one and a sorting activity was made. The leave came from either Michael's or World Market and they are tricky to grab with a clothespin as they tend to stick together. They have been sorted and played with for two weeks now. I find them in lines, piles, and arranged around our pom-pom apple tree.