Monday, December 5, 2016

scenes from the classroom: november

tiny pumpkins

fine motor work
sensory play
doctor's office play
watercolors and pipettes
monochromatic collage jars
mixing up pudding
the art table
flower experimentation

Thursday, November 17, 2016

shoofly pie?


Our first Nursery Rhyme this new school year was Baby and I. After the children had learned it, we spent some time talking about the rhyme. One of the questions I asked was "What kind of pie?" And I have to admit, the children just sat there and looked at me. Crickets, I tell ya! Chirp.....chirp...chirp...so I asked again and added "Apple pie? Chicken pot pie? Shoo fly pie?" and with that they all piped up "Shoo fly pie!" After much discussion, we decided to make "shoo fly pie" but not the traditional kind, our kind.
Upon discussion. The children decided that shoo fly pie had peanut butter, apples, bananas, chocolate chips, and powdered sugar in it...and so we made shoo fly pie!
The children cut and chopped bananas and apples. One of our parents helped us caramelize them in our tiny electric skillet. As the caramelization magic was happening the children took turns adding peanut butter to our graham cracker crust.
Next we added the sticky hot fruit and sprinkled chocolate chips over the glorious goo!  With a flip of their wrists, the children dusted the top of the pie with powdered sugar. Skills they learned included safely using a real butter knife to cut fruit, cleaning up their work stations, respecting the heat of the skillet, using pinching fingers to drop chocolate chips onto the pie, and how to slowly dust the whole shebang with sugar. They also learned a lot of new words...
Not to mention we made an awesome pie! It may have looked like a hot mess but good golly, did we eat every last bite and by we, I mean ALL of us...parents, kiddos, and teachers! We love cooking in our classroom!

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

scenes from the classroom: october

wiffle balls and pipe cleaners
birdseed in the sensory tub
painting with feathers
natural geo-board turned hammering boards
making nests

Friday, October 7, 2016

windy art via Handmade Kids Art blog

My co-teacher found this nifty project on Handmade Kids Art blog and was so taken with it, she tried it out with her class. I was so taken with it, we did it in my class as well. The children really enjoyed it!

The first step is to imagine what the wind would look like if you could see it. The children used markers to show what their wind would look like.


Next up, the children selected a paint color and squirted it onto their tray and used their fingers to replicate what they drew on their papers.
After they used their fingers to draw the wind on their trays, they flipped their paper onto the paint, marker side down, to pull a print. We give them the vocabulary such as print pulling, etc. to let them know their art is valid. Once they pull their print, they use glue to adhere three dimensional elements of wind such as yarn and feathers.

Aren't they happy? It was very interesting to watch the children follow the steps to their own tune. The dialog that went on was a lot of fun as well. Thank you Handmade Kids Art for sharing your projects!  

Thursday, September 29, 2016

getting a little themey with apples


Everyone brought an apple to school for tasting. We used our "octopus" slicer to cut the apples into eight pieces that we then cut with butter knives to share. After much deliberation and sampling, the kiddos graphed their name in the column of the color apple they liked the best.
Next up, more chopping of apples that were then mixed into a homemade batter to make apple muffins. We used the recipe in the back of Apple Farmer Annie. Not one crumb was left. Yum! 
Lastly, we did a three step apple tree painting. The kiddos used a paintbrush to paint their trunk, a bath sponge for the leaves, and their fingers for the apples. Later we talked about the many ways you could paint an apple tree. Some of the children continued on to draw trees with markers, and paint trees at the easel. It was a lot of fun, themey or not!

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

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!

Friday, September 16, 2016

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!

Saturday, June 11, 2016

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.