"U" Week and Spring

What an UnUsual week! No really, it was unusual and it was that way on purpose! Last Friday was by far one of our best days EVER in school, so I knew once again I had to find something great for this week. Unfortunately it was "U" week (insert a very confused face here!), and well, to be honest, the letter "U" isn't THAT exciting - or is it?????? It is now! Here we go, the letter "U" and Spring Week - Mrs. Karen style . . . . We started on Monday introducing the letter "U" just as we usually do. We made a very simple umbrella (yawn) BUT we added something unusual. We mixed glue and paint together and made "Mrs. Karen's Unusual Paint" - PERFECT! This ended up being the perfect craft since we had a severe thunderstorm later that day. On Tuesday we talked about spring and all the wonderful things we see during season. Of course everyone commented on how many bugs we are seeing now so we made a ladybug. Isn't she cute? Can you tell how we made the spots on her wings? I'll share our secret - we used little umbrellas!
I found these little umbrellas up in our supply closet and BAM we had instant fun! Everyone enjoyed dipping their little umbrellas into our "unusual paint" (paint and glue for a thick effect) and making spots!

Wednesday was a day for us to work on our letter of the week. All day long we made the "U" sound. My entire classroom sounded like they had the stomach ache! UH, UH, UH, UH, UH! Lots of fun but very noisy. We also painted a beautiful butterfly in a very unusual way. For this put big blobs of paint on 1/2 of the butterfly then folded it over and rubbed the two sections together. INSTANT beauty!

Everyone added a fun little body and just the perfect little faces! They were all so pretty that I backed them with black paper for an extra little pop. I love to see the children's faces when their projects are completed. There is such pride in their eyes!

Thursday is our busy day. We have Chapel and a Spanish class in the morning, so it makes for one hectic day. On Wednesday I had the children make their hand prints around a circle. I didn't tell them why so it made things really fun. On Thursday we added their fingerprints to the middle and I handed them some scissors. We have been working very hard on our cutting skills and it really shows. I drew a leaf and a stem on a large piece of green construction paper. The children took it from there. WOW! Their stems and leaves were amazing. Here are the end results



Aren't they amazing! Now, after they glued in their stems and leaves I mounted them on brown construction paper and cut them out. It seem to make their work stand out. I liked that!

Finally, it was Friday! Our Fabulous Fun Friday did not disappoint! This week I call it our "Unusual Fabulous Fun Friday" and unusual it was. We started off by NOT being in our classroom! That's right, we traded classrooms! OH FUN! I also took away all our springtime themed books and traded them in for . . . . CHRISTMAS books! Our blocks were replaced with all different sized bottle caps (I haven't thrown away a bottle cap in 2 years!). I also brought in a HUGE box of my son's old baseball uniforms for us to dress up in! OH THE FUN! But I wasn't quite finished . . . for our craft activity we drew Under the tables!I tapped large sheets of construction paper to the under side of the tables and the children had the best time! I do believe there were two little girls who would still be drawing if we had not run out of time. FUN, FUN, FUN! My favorite part of the day is listening to the children while they are getting into their cars. NO, not because they are leaving, but because they tell their parents about the fun they had at school.
Oh, I almost forgot to show you our wonderful springtime snack.
We had so much fun putting this together. I think you can probably tell that it is 2 pretzels joined in the middle by white Almond Bark.The little antennas are broken pretzels (with our budget we don't want to waste anything!) and of course we had to add 2 little M&M's because everyone loves M&M's!

Next week we will continue talking about "Spring" and the letter "V". I hope you will come back and visit us!