Let's Talk Turkey!

First of all, let me issue a big 'ole apology for being away from my blog so long.  We had a wedding at our house!  Let me introduce you to our family . . .

My husband, Bill, Me, our son Jay and his lovely bride Brooklyn!

 

I plan to go back and play catch-up, hopefully during the Christmas holidays.  But, for now let's talk about Thanksgiving!!  One of our very first projects this year was special.  Last spring our Director of Children's Minister, Mrs. Brenda Clark did a little house cleaning.  It was like "Christmas in April" for me.  I found so many things little treasures!  One of my favorites was several packages of very "strange" looking artificial leaves.

Trust me, NO ONE would want to use these for leaves!  But, I did want to use them for feathers!!!  It was so much fun letting the children pick out their very own combination of leaves.  If you look closely, you may notice that the turkey is made from shapes.  The body is an oval, the eyes of course are circles, the beak is a diamond shape that magically turns into a triangle when you close it and finally those cute little feet are stars.  I think he is so cute!



THANK YOU MRS. BRENDA!!!

 

Like most teachers, I love new supplies!  Look what showed up in our supply closet . . .

This is some very good stuff and the children love it!  It isn't as messy as regular glue and a lot more fun to "dab" on.

 

Our next project came to us by one of my former student's Mom.  We loved it!

 

We used vegetable rotini.  I think I like it because as with most project, the process was so much fun.  It didn't take long for everyone to realize that it was fun to "dip" the pasta in the glue.  Yep, it was messy - very messy, but lots and lots of fun.  By the way, walking around all day making turkey sounds NEVER gets old for a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds!  We have had so much fun gobbling around our classroom.

 

Our next project is an old favorite.  I say old because we have actually done it before and if you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I like to add new things each year.  But, this is just too cute and fun.  The children got so excited painting the toilet tissue rolls.  I kept asking them what they thought we were making and I loved their answers.  I got everything from "trees" to "a dirty truck". 







The feathers are their hand prints and the feet are stars (again).  The turkeys actually stand up so I hope at least one or two of these little guys will be the centerpiece of someone's Thanksgiving table.

 

Okay, you know those good 'ole hand print turkeys that we have made for years and years??  Well, we have given them a little twist.

 

 

Since we are 3 and 4 years old, we need something more than just a hand print!  The children had the best time putting beads onto a pipe cleaner.   I love watching them pick out their favorite colors.  Can you tell what color "B-man" likes . . .

Yep, he spent so much time picking out his beloved "green" beads.  Oh, the little pieces of burlap were placed on some old pieces of cardboard and held on with large gold brads.  SUPER CUTE and FUN!

 

Goodness gracious, we did a lot of turkeys these last few weeks.  I will post our other Thanksgiving ideas later (I promise).  In the mean time, I hope you give a few of these ideas a try.  

Greatest Art Project EVER!

I'm skipping ahead and posting again today because I want to share with you what I think is the GREATEST art project ever.  WOW, that is a big, bold statement isn't it???  Well, you be the judge!

 

 

Our letter last week was "M" so this just seemed perfect.  We are reaching for the moon and the stars.  YES, with the exception of cutting out the moon and the children's bodies), these were all done completely by the students themselves!  I saw a similar art project on a children's museum website last year.  I'm sorry that I don't have the original art piece (it was done by an adult artist) but if you do, please let me know and I will give them credit.

NOTE:  A big thank you to Katy Mitchell!  She lead me to the original picture I saw.  Here it is Artsonia.  THANK YOU so much Katy!!!

This project was really very simple but the children were all so proud of themselves.  I loved watching each child finish their art and look at it.  They were so happy.  I hope you will try something like this with your class and if you do, please send me a picture, I would love to see it!

Thanks for dropping by!

Transportation and "T" Week

AHHHHH!  "T" Week!  This is an exciting week for us and yes, it is ONE of my favorites.  Let me show you some of the terrific stuff we did during our "T"ransportation Week!

We started off the week reviewing the shapes we have been talking about and making our wonderful shape car!  This ended up being more fun than I expected because everyone got so excited when they recognized the shapes.  I know this is simple, but it was very fun and effective.

Tuesday is a day when I try and have "extra-fun" art for us because we do not have any of our "special" activities (i.e. Spanish, Music, Chapel) and that can make for a long day.  This Tuesday really was extra special because we started our day with SCISSORS!!!!  I have to admit that this class LOVES to cut with scissors and they are very good!  We cut and cut and made these adorable little sailboats.

Of course everyone got to pick their favorite colors!  While our sailboats were drying we started working on making some water for them to float in.

The water was really fun to make because we just squirted blue, green and white paint onto the paper and started mixing it up!  WOW, the results were amazing!  I love projects like this because the children are so proud of them.  Here are the final results!

 

Everyone had such a good time all week practicing our "T" sounds.  We decided our favorite "T" word was turtle so we decided to make one.



 He is very simple but look closely . . . .

there is a tic-tac-toe board on his back!!!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was extra special this week!  We headed to kitchen was all of the plastic trucks and cars that I could find.

 

We had a great lesson in sharing and mixing colors!  Can you see the green????

 

Now, finally my favorite part of "T" week began . . . "T"ubes and "T"ape!!!  OH MY!!  This is the one of the best days ever!  All we did was collect lots, lots and lots of paper towel, toilet paper and even wrapping paper tubes.

(This is only a small portion of the tubes.)

 

My friend and co-worker, Mrs. Christi and I cut long sections of masking tape and the imagination took over!

 



Some were small, some were tall, some were just plain HUGE!  No one cared, we just had a great day.  My favorite part of this activity is seeing the children's faces as they proudly take their creations to their parents at the end of the day!!!!!

 

WOW, this was really a terrific week.  Thank you so much for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by again.





Church and "L" Week

I apologize for being so behind on my post.  Between school and this little thing we are putting together called a WEDDING, I am a little S T R E T C H E D thin.  But, I'm playing catch-up this weekend and I hope you enjoy some of these fun activities.

Our Church and "L" week was a lot of fun.  We started the week working on one of my favorite projects, a lizard.  Because we have a "L"andon in our class, we of course called him "Landon the Lizard". 

I love the little spots on him.  They were made by the children with dot paint.  He is a wonderful and easy way to introduce the letter "L".

I love sensory activities and I love for us to use our hands.  I could not resist letter my class make a "squishy" lollipop.  "Squishy" painting is one of my favorites.  No one really gets dirty (except for me) and I love to see the children's faces when they mix the paint all together.  We start with a large circle cut from poster board.  The children pick out their favorite colors.

I cover the circle with clear plastic wrap (note: this is NOT the time to buy cheap plastic wrap and if you do, use 2 layers). 

Here comes the fun part . . . squish!!

 What magically appears is beautiful.

We let them dry overnight (some actually took longer) and glued a large craft stick to the back.  INSTANT LOLLIPOP!  Of course everyone went home with their very own lollipop to eat too!
One of our 3 year old teachers found these Tiger Pops at the local Dollar Store and they looked just like our lollipops!

Since this is our "Church" week and our school is one of the largest churches (Shades Mountain Baptist Church) in our area, we took a wonderful tour.  Here is my friend, Mrs. Christi showing the children the BIG stained glass window (I may get in trouble for posting her picture.  But I'm checking to see if she really reads my blog.)

 

Since we saw the church's big window, we headed back downstairs to make our own!  We are VERY blessed at our school to get to use all the church's wonderful resources.  One of the BEST is the large commercial Ellison machines and dies.

 

 

We have a good supply of shapes to choose from and one of them is a beautiful window.  I carefully lay the cut out shapes onto a piece of clear contact paper and the children have a wonderful time cutting, tearing and placing their favorite colors of tissue paper onto the window.

 

When they are finished, we cover it with another piece of clear contact paper and cut away the excess.  Now, it becomes an amazing piece of art.  Here it is laying on our light box.

My class is doing very well with their scissor skills.  Each week we try and spend time improving our skills.  This week we worked on "Larry the Lion". 

Everyone cut their own mane!  Isn't he adorable!  We also worked on drawing "l"ines by using a ruler to draw his whiskers.



A little close up view of our cutting!

 



We used the Ellison machine again but this time we used the negative portion of the die cut (don't worry, the actually die cut will be used later!).  Instead of using tissue paper, we used colored cellophane that my wonderful director, Mrs. Cynthia ordered for us. 

Once again, I laid the cross onto a piece of clear contact paper.  Then, each child carefully selected their favorite colors and added them to the cut out.

Once the cut out was covered we had another beautiful art piece. 

 

I didn't send the cross or the stained glass window home until Friday because we used them during our weekly science experiments.

 

On Monday we sent home a little note that asked everyone to bring a flashlight to school on Friday.  Of course everyone was so excited on Friday morning to show me their flashlights.  Our entire Friday was devoted to exploring the "L"ights!  We started by looking at our beautiful stained glass window and cross on a light box.  The light box was more fun I imagined.  We looked at all difference in the tissue paper window and the cellophane cross.   We looked at other things too, including our hands, leaves and even one little girls long hair!  Next, we all headed to the kitchen to find our big table covered with butcher paper.  Unfortunately, we didn't have enough real rulers for everyone so we used big craft sticks and drew "L"ines!

 

Now, what does this have to do with LIGHTS . . . .well . . . look what happens when you turn the lights out and add a couple of black lights??????? 

AHHHHH!!!  We loved looking at every one's drawing, our clothes and especially our teeth!  A special "THANK YOU" to our sweet Assistant Director, Mrs. Melissa for finding us the black lights!

Next, we headed up the hallway for some flashlight fun! 

We drew shapes on the ceiling with our flashlights! 

 

Making squiggly lines was fun too!

 

We even danced with our flashlights!

Now as sad as it was, our fun day was coming to an end.  But we really didn't want it too, so we headed to the kitchen to eat our lunch under the black lights!!!  

Mrs. Christi and I had one last surprise for our "Fabulous Fun Friday" . . . . Glow in the Dark Jello!!!  Oh my!  You can find it on my PINTEREST board. 

Yes, it really did glow in the dark!  Although I'm not too sure everyone enjoyed the taste, but we had a great time.  THANKS for stopping by.  I hope you drop by again to see what we are up to!