making painter's tape snowflakes

For our week of Snow, one of our projects was making painter's tape snowflakes. I pre-ripped lengths of painters tape for the children to place on their paper after talking about symmetry and snowflakes. We used a sturdy paper for the project and the children enjoyed placing their tape down in a snowflake pattern. We also had strips of paint on the side of the easel if they wished to do more tape resist paintings. Many of the children did and for those they preferred to keep the tape on their paper as they painted only on top of their tape placement. It was really nifty and I wish I had photos of those...I totally forgot!

I added some clear glitter to our finger paints for the children to use. The finger paints were also out for the duration of the day. Most of the children preferred using a paint brush and so they did.

I encouraged them through dialogue to paint over as much of the paper as they could. The painting began with gorgeous colors that slowly got swirled over and over and over again until they met in the middle and became brown. Isn't that usually the case?

We also did another snowflake using watercolor paper and liquid watercolors. We talked about a warm palette and a cool palette and looked at our book for inspiration.

After the paint had mostly dried, we removed the tape, the children loved this part! So happy and sparkly and sadly I only have this photo of two snowflakes and well...the one on the left there is mine. When we sit down to do a led activity such as guided drawing or this snowflake project, I often will ask them to show me how to create lines and shapes etc. I completely believe that children should be allowed to follow their art to wherever it takes them and that sample art is not in their best interest so I never have one to show them ahead of time. I do however do the project along with them if I have not done it before so that I have a sample for my files. Otherwise they are free to create to their art's content which is a delightfully messy and glorious experience!

making play dough in the classroom

 I often forget to make new play dough for the classroom but luckily we have a cabinet with all the ingredients we need and a microwave for heating up water to pull it all together. Often we will mix away with no recipe other than each child who is present getting to add a scoop or two of each ingredient at hand. As we work on our recipe I use vocabulary to enhance the process and now each child clamors to be the one who gets to level it off, or knead the dough.

 We use flour, salt, oil, cornstarch and water in our dough. If I remember to bring in cream of tartar we add that as a preservative but otherwise hte cornstarch adds a nice smooth feel to the happy mess.

 This batch here was for a week of faux snow play and so while it did not have any color added, it did need a glitter boost. Everyone loves a turn shaking glitter into the mix.

 I need to find a big mixing bowl for the classroom. I keep an eye out at the thrifts but until then we use whatever we have on hand. Sometimes a bucket, other times this aluminum tray. We began with a bouquet of wooden spoons but many of them seem to have gone into hiding. I need to find more of those as well.

 The children love making their own play dough and will often play with it more than usual when they have had a hand in the making. The sparkles in this batch made the dough all shimmery while the cornstarch made it smooth and pliable. This snowman was the first thing that got made that morning.

 To add to the play there were small clear, blue,  and white flat backed jewels; glittery styrofoam balls,snowflake shaped cookie cutters, and a handful of classroom made stamps.

We made the stamps from a pack of sticky-backed foam snowflakes and a handful of our play blocks. Later, our large foam snowflake stampers made an appearance and were a complete hit!

learning with ornamental corn

 My class begins with forty-five minutes of exploration time. This is when the children arrive and explore the room, centers, activities, and supplies I have set up for them. Sometimes what I set up is a hit and crowd pleaser with the children playing in the one spot every opportunity they have. Other times....not so much. It's all good as it helps me to get to know the children better and figure out what will engage them to higher levels of play and what will not (no matter how much encouragement they receive). This young man was a first arrival one morning while I was still setting up and discovered the wooden corn-on-he-cob holders I picked up at a local thrift. I got them mostly because htey were wood and an interesting shape. I thought they would be interesting to sort items into and/or accompany play dough play.

He asked me what it's name was and I told him it was intended to hold corn on the cob. His face crinkled up a moment and then his eyes flashed a wee light bulb and he was off looking for our ornamental corn that was no-longer on the nature shelves. I waited for him to use his words to ask me where the corn was and when he did I told him it had been put away and would he like to use it.

 He did indeed, and so we walked to the big teacher cabinet where the corn had been stored and I pulled out the bag for him. He immediately sat on the floor and attempted to fit the corn into the holder. When that didn't work I told him the husks were in the way and that maybe they needed to be shucked, explaining what shucking was. It took him awhile but he did it for each of the four ears of corn.

 Then he carried each holder over to a table. After placing two of the holders down he exclaimed "Hey! I made a L!"

The L became an O and then a train and then so many other lovely, wonderful, imaginative things. The best learning comes from within and this kiddo had a grand time of it!

sometimes flowers need to be studied

We were walking back from music to our classroom when one of the children spied a fallen camellia in his path. He immediately stopped, exclaimed, then picked it up. He held it out to me and I explained that he was holding a flower called a camellia. At that point the other children had to find their own and the hunt was on. We talked about only picking up the flowers that had already fallen and to not pick them from the bushes as there were plenty of fallen blooms.

The children were excited to explore their flowers in the classroom so instead of the planned activity and discussion, trays and magnifying glasses were pulled out. It was science time!

 The children touched their flowers, sniffed them, and peered at them closely through a magnifying glass. I showed them the parts of the flower, naming each one for them. Some of the children wanted to pull the petals off of their flowers and I encouraged them to explore.

This is Ellie's flower. It is red. She found it from the tree outside, at school. It is pretty.

This is Quincy's flower, it is grey. It has stripes. It has white on the inside.

I asked the children if they wished to create a scientific label for the flowers. I pulled down the typewriter and typed out their dictation. Later some of the petals made their way into our play dough while others were put in glass jars with water for observation. I love it when the day takes you somewhere else.

ice and watercolors

 For our week of The Mitten, I added ice to one of our water bins. I made the ice the night before using small plastic bowls and storage containers. I plopped it into our water bin, added a palette of caked watercolors, a dash or two of glitter, and paintbrushes.

 There were also mittens available if the children wanted to pick up the ice with mittens or not. The paintbrushes, however, were most popular.

 This young lady spent most of the day painting the ice. There were a lot of comments about the water changing color, mixing new colors, and feeling the water to see if it was still "Icy, Icy, Cold!"

Thank goodness I brought extra ice to the classroom! I really loved the dialogue that was happening between the children as they visited the table. My co-worker who shares the room with me on alternate days, added water to balloons and then had the children add color before freezing them. I did not get photos but they were really gorgeous and the children loved exploring their sculptures. I'm going to have to try that as well...perhaps when the weather warms up!

more stitching with kiddos

 One of my students was so into our mitten making that upon his next school day he brought an ENORMOUS needle with him. His mother told me that he would not stop talking about sewing so we brought out the wool basket (which is full of pieces of felted wool sweaters I pick up at the thrifts) and selected a backing. We placed it into the mini hoop and got to stitching.

When we stitched up our mittens we practiced by only poking the needle up from the bottom. UP being the operative word. Some parents might prefer down when working with a pokey needle but I found that three-year-olds really need to see the needle and poking it down is a bit confusing for them as they have not yet mastered grasping for something they cannot see. I know there is a specific word for it and I am driving myself batty trying to retrieve it from my noggin! It is not object permanence but that too has a lingering effect on this process. For sewing onto fabric in a hoop we practiced stitching IN the circle. Using words like IN, UP, DOWN, help a child with directional organization. Later when we read books such as Hop on Pop the words and actions in the story have a kinetic value to them. Whenever a child is doing an activity and looking for my attention and approval, I comment by using placement words as often as possible..."I see you are placing your green cubes on TOP of your blue cubes" , "You are using red paint INSIDE your circle", "The green dinosaur is UNDER your left foot".

This piece sits in his cubbie so that he can revisit and add colors as he wishes. He knows where the embroidery thread is as well as scissors. He has not yet mastered threading the needle but he will with time. We practice a lot by beading pony beads onto pipe cleaners. I love watching the children carry ideas and skills home with them. It is an exciting thing to see their little minds expanding. I hope you try sewing with children. Here are a few of my favorite pins; paper plate lacing, a first sewing basket for children, printable animal sewing cards, making a felt caterpillar, and stitching on a large burlap 'table'.

dr. seuss fun

We're in the throes of our week of Seuss and I wanted to share with you what we are doing. The children are having a blast and I am loving most every moment of it! There will be even more later in the week but here is what I set up the classroom with so far.

*cotton ball art for truffula trees via In Lieu of Preschool (the lorax)
*straw cutting 
*pool noodle sculptures (this was one of those would this work ideas that I am quite pleased with)
*felt egg sorting; which I thought of forever ago but then discovered it all lover the place. I like Pink and Green Mama's post (green eggs and ham)
*Seuss eraser matching & sorting in blue sand (found the erasers at Target $1 spot and sand came from Michael's)
*Cat in the Hat Memory Game (found ours at Target this year)
*cork and button building via No Time For Flashcards
*crazy play dough fun
*magnetic fishing (one fish, two fish)
*sock sorting (fox in socks)
*cup stacking via Mom on Time Out (cat hats minus their stripes)
*the cotton ball set up
*star hunting and graphing using star shaped post-it notes (sneetches)

my heart is like a zoo

Our book for the Valentine Week was My Heart is Like a Zoo. For the literature, we read the book and went on a heart hunt through the story. Then we went on a classroom heart hunt and graphed our hearts.

 

The hearts we found became our zoo animals. We used gluesticks and markers to create our animals.
 Throughout the week, the children used their eyes to seek out hearts of all shapes and sizes. When we talk about our senses I use words and phrases such as visual clues, auditory clues, sense of smell, sense of touch, etc. I have been doing this since the very beginning of the school year and just now the children are starting to tell me about their clues.  When we read a story and the children tell me what is going to happen next as they look at the illustrations. I will tell them that they are using their eyes to seek out visual clues to the story. I use descriptive phrases like this to illustrate and reinforce each child's actions and processes. Rather than say great job or a simple yes, I prefer to reinforce what they are telling me by repeating what they said with the physical action of how they came to that conclusion. Let's just say I jump into it kinesthetically. I like to make connections and build autonomy this way. I believe it gives them more power an control over their own learning, to know that they are physically capable of using their body as a tool for learning.

We also learned about how our heart works. We used our fists to demonstrate the size and pumping actions of our hearts. We tested our resting hear rate and our accelerated heart rate. We dance around our room to build our heart up and later throughout the week, when the children had been running or bike riding, they would run to me to feel their hearts beating. I would feel their heart beats and say the thumpy, thumps out loud with them repeating after me. Of course we used a stethoscope to listen to our heartbeats and we looked at pictures of the muscles in our bodies. I really liked this book (darn it is out of print but I think this is the same one?) and this book. Also, just found a hand pump at the hardware store used for siphoning gas that will be a great tool to demonstrate the in and out pumping of our blood through our hearts.

scenes from our Valentine Week {photos}

lovely books

our valentine tree

valentine station

a valentine assembly line

sorting fun

valentine button snake

   

squishy bag

with glitter added

 

bags in action

glitter makes everything happier

mixing up tints

paint happy

our play dough chocolate shop

A happy batch of play dough, tool for rolling and cuttings, an assortment of beads and jewels, and a trio of empty candy boxes makes for some delightful play! Tikes for blurry photos, but they move so quickly you never know if yer going to get a good shot or not!