Ocean/Sea Unit

(I'M STILL BEHIND!!!  AHHHHH!  I guess this will be my battle cry until the end of school and I am so sorry.  Little did I know that remodeling a few rooms would be so stressful and time consuming!  But then again, it could just be me!  OKAY, enough excuses, let's talk about our week.)

What an amazing week we have had!  We just completed our unit on "Ocean/Sea"!  We have spent the entire week "barking" like seals, "blowing" like whales and dolphins and "putting a fish bubble" in our mouths while we  walk down the hall.  Let me show you some of our fun . . . .

We started on Monday with one of my all-time favorite activities - finger paint!  I've had several classes over the years that just flat would not finger paint!  Lucky for me, this year's group is all in!  We mix blue, green and white all together to make . . . .

an ocean!  The next day we cut some seaweed.

and made a few hand prints for our sea creatures.  On Thursday,we glued everything on, we added some tan paint for the sand.  I like to find different and sometimes unusual objects for my students to paint with.  To paint our sand we used some old make-up brushes that a sweet neighbor of mine gave me.

The end results were amazing!

Sweet "H" ask me to take a picture of artwork!  

I guess they are getting use to my camera!

During the week a came across some alphabet stickers in our supply closet.  Everyone loves stickers and we have several fine-motor skill activities that are always a big hit.  Like this one - 

(I know SANTA STICKERS!).  Instead of tracing the circles (BORING!), I laminate the pages and we use stickers to make our circles or other shapes and numbers.  The stickers come right off with a little wipe of water.  Okay, back to the alphabet stickers I found!  I laid them out on the table one day after lunch 

and WOW . . . .

suddenly we are making words!  VERY COOL!

I found some large old copies of a fish stashed away in my cabinet and I thought we could do something  neat with them.  First we colored them using good 'ole Dot Markers.  Hmmm . . . I could see my class was looking at me and thinking, "really, this is it?".  I had to do something and quick!  I found some rubbing alcohol in my cabinet

 (WHAT?  You don't have rubbing alcohol in YOUR cabinet?) 

and the FUN began!  Everyone loved smelling it (YUCK!) and painting with it too!

The alcohol made the ink from the markers soften a bit.

The results were pretty cool!  Later in the week, I cut them out along with an extra piece of plain construction paper.  Next, we stapled the two pieces together and the children stuffed them with some old pillow batting that I found in our supply closet.  (Sorry, no picture of the final results, but trust me . . . CUTE!)

I found some activity cards over at Tiddler Approved and we have had so much fun this week in circle time as we acted out each of the sea creatures.  I hope you will check them out!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was even more fun than usual this week because of an amazing gift I received.

Can you believe someone was going to THROW THIS AWAY????????  Good thing we rescued it!  Our class spent the entire day Friday painting the box.  The final project . . . .

The world's LARGEST aquarium!

All four sides of the box were paint with every shade of blue and green that you could imagine!  We added some seaweed (see the pieces floating?) and some little fish from the Ellison machine.  Someone asked me at the end of the day if I was going to throw it away.  REALLY!?!?!?!  NO, we are saving this masterpiece for our art show in a few weeks!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope to catch up with our other activities very soon.  I hope you will check back soon!

Our Happy Easter!

I'm sorry to be so far behind in my posting but my husband and I decided to do a "little" remodeling during spring  break and well . . . things have gotten out of hand.  hahahaha!  I am skipping ahead to Easter so I can share our WONDERFUL week with you.  We started on Monday by making simple handprint craft.

I saw this on Pinterest a few weeks ago and knew we had to make it.  Here is the original post Prayer Glow. I wanted to let my class do most of the work so I made a few changes.  While our handprints were drying, we cut paper for the grass.  We added some colorful punched flowers and WOW!  GORGEOUS!  (Note:  I added the draping to cross with purple glitter glue.)  This was truly a hit with our parents.

Since I knew we would not be in school on Friday, we did our science experiment on Monday.  We dropped a raw egg in vinegar and left it overnight.

If you have never done this experiment I beg you to try it.  I won't ruin it by telling you the results, but it is AMAZING!

On Tuesday we decided to have a little fun with tissue paper and Easter eggs!  I gave each child an outline of an Easter egg and a cross laid out on a piece of contact paper.  We carefully picked out our favorite colors of tissue paper and put them in the center of the Easter egg.

Then we covered it with another piece of contact paper and squished it down!

The results were stunning!  Everyone could hardly wait to take them home and put them in their window.

I introduced a new game to my classroom this week too.  Part of the reason for our big remodeling project came about because my sweet husband bought a new toy.

He loves and I loved the fact that he is very happy AND this big TV came in a BIG box!  You know what that means . . . free entertainment for my classroom!  Check out our newest game.

This literally cost NOTHING!  I used hot glue and some various shaped lids to make a maze.  We have different shaped objects (golf balls, Styrofoam balls, Easter eggs, etc)  to try and get through the maze.  It was amazing to watch the different styles of each student as they worked the objects around each lid.

We were out of school for Good Friday and our BIG spring concert was held on Thursday so that meant Wednesday was our SUPER FUN DAY!  I used the rest of the TV box to do a LARGE class project.  I quickly drew a simple sketch of the three crosses on a mountain and let my class have fun!

We divided up into two groups.  One group started out cutting/tearing all different types and color of paper.  (We used tissue paper, construction paper, and scrapbook paper.)   Once they got a good pile, the second group got it and started gluing!   I kept reminding them that we were working as a "team" and since I have several new t-ball players in my class, they loved it!  The final results were, hmmmm . . . well you decide -

And if you start to wonder how much of it I DID . . . I'll go ahead and tell you . . . I just drew it, they did the rest themselves!  This is being saved for our Art Show.  

Again, I'm sorry to be so late with my post.  The "real world" has gotten in the way.  Hopefully, I will be caught up soon!  Thanks for visiting.