Getting Crazy with the Letter "C"

Our "C" week was so much fun!  We are all still getting to know each other, but all in all my tiny little class is doing great.  Since one of my favorite authors is Eric Carle, I knew we had to do some special to honor him.  And what better way than to read, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!  It is now officially a class favorite!  Of course a great book has to have a great art project to go with it and this one was so CUTE!  I had seen the caterpillar made with balloons and knew we had to give it a try.  I think we did a great job, don't you?

The children even drew on their own legs!  I'm so sorry I don't have pictures of the actual process, but this got a little wild and crazy!  The body is made by using 2 different colors of paint.  First, we used a balloon dipped in yellow paint, then put a balloon with green paint right on top.  Meet the Deubiens is a GREAT web site for instruction on how to make the caterpillar with balloons.

I'll go ahead and admit that I am a big 'ole softy when it comes to fingerprint and handprint art.  (Now what he is all grow-up, I wish I had more of it from my son!).  Our next little piece of artwork was so simple, but so cute - CORN!

We start out with our handprints - 

Then we glued them on our colored sheet (blue was our color of the week!)!  Easy-peasy!!!  NOTE:  You can also do this a little closer to Thanksgiving and make it into Indian corn by letting the children put different colored fingerprints on top of the yellow corn.

Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was spent baking a color cake and since we knew there be NO leftovers, we made our very own birthday cakes to take home.

It is difficult to see the actual cake, but it is made from 3 different size squares (our shape of the week).  The children mix up shaving cream, glue and food coloring to make our special icing.  (There is no exact measurements for the shaving cream and glue.  I try to use equal parts of both.) 

Then we spread on the "icing"!

We added our candles and lit them with our fingerprints!

These are still puffy when they dry!  It is literally a science experiment AND an art project all mixed together!

We also had a wonderful time making our color tables, so all in all we had a great week!

Thanks for coming to visit us, I hope you pop back by again!

SSSSHHHH! It's "S" Week!

I'm not really sure where to start on this past week. It was Super! We were coming off of our Spring Break and that is usually a big problem. I think the over-planning for the week really helped! Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty good at making sure our days are filled with fun and educational activities but sometimes things don't always go as planned. But this week was as close to perfectly planned as they will get (okay, seriously enough bragging on myself). I think this picture pretty much sums up our week! It is a rainbow made from our plates and pots from our classroom's kitchen!

We started the week with a new student. YIKES! But she was absolutely wonderful (see post below) which really helped to make things run smoothly (wheeew!). On Monday, we worked really hard on the Super letter "S". Oh my, there are so many fun things that can be done with the letter "S". We started out with a sun. We've made a sun during our big unit on the Solar System so I wanted something a little bit different. I cut out of the big yellow circle and handled the scissors over to the children! WOW! I was thrilled with our cutting progress. Of course, several had to add faces to theirs

and I even have one with hair!I LOVE THEM ALL!

This week we are also talking about the rain forest. This is a new unit for us so I had to put on my thinking cap. We have a wonderful book about the rain forest and on Tuesday we looked at all the beautiful birds that make their home there. I found a very old coloring sheet of a parrot (YAWN!). Nope, no way we are just going to color something! I ask our sweet office helper (we don't have access to the copier, Ellison die-cut machine, etc., they are located on another floor, so we have a "runner" who does all this stuff for us) to enlarge the parrot as "big as you can". She did GREAT! I also found some old dot markers (http://www.teacherstorehouse.com/product2.asp?product_key=69413 ) and cleaned them up. I'm sure you can tell, I cut them out and mounted them on some large black construction paper. I love to make our art work look very special, it is a great way to help the children take pride in their work. I think the parrots are wonderful!

The only instructions I game the children was to "try" and color each part a different color. I think they nailed it!

Wednesday is always exciting for us. We have "Wiggles with Mrs. Nancy". It is really a Pre-K version of Physical Education. Mrs. Nancy takes them to the gym for organized games. No doubt about it - EVERYONE loves Wednesdays! On this particular Wednesday we talked once again about the letter "S". Again, I had found some old worksheets (YAWN again!) and cut out the giant "S". I found some sticks in my yard and well, you get the idea . . . . .

While several children were working independently on their "S's", I called one child over at a time and had them work on our "name caterpillars". I have small multi-colored circles cut from our wonderful Ellison machine and each child is instructed to pick out one circle for each letter in their name. Next we pick out one more circle for their caterpillar's head and we start working! After all the circles are glued down the fun really begins. Each child adds a face and legs to their caterpillar and then each child actually WRITES each letter of their name on the circles! SO MUCH FUN and the look on the child's face when he/she sees the final results - AMAZING! Here are a few of our caterpillars -


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These lovely creatures will not be sent home right away. I'll have them laminated and store them away for our big art show in May.

Since we were talking about the rain forest, we decided to make our own. Thursday was a fun day, it is also our shortest day because we have to squeeze in Chapel and Spanish class into our already busy day. Since it was "S" week we got out of scissors once again and started cutting. First we cut out the grass, then we painted our wonderful sun. We added hand print trees and animal crackers for the animals!



Sorry for the wet glue! Simple project, but everyone really loved it!

FINALLY, it was Friday! I love Fridays, but not because it is the end of the week. It is because we have so much fun on Friday that we actually call it "Fabulous Fun Friday". Seriously, that is what we call it! We started the day off talking about snakes! Ahhhh, the perfect "S" word! We read a book about snakes and even made our own snakes out of sticks.







Everyone loved them! Next we headed to the kitchen for a wonderful science experiment and a snack. First we mixed up some cookie dough, added a little food coloring, and rolled them into snakes! We added some chocolate chips for eyes and popped them into the oven and wow, super yummy snake cookies!


I really goofed on this one! We were having so much fun with our science experiment that we forgot to eat our cookies. We had to take them back to our room and eat them for our deserts at lunch!

It was finally time for our super science experiment - homemade silly putty (a very simple recipe, just mix equal parts of glue and starch then stir!) First we mixed food coloring (your choice of colors, of course) and good 'ole Elmer's Glue together.



Next came the fun! On the count of 3 everyone dumped their starch into the colored glue and stirred! I didn't tell anyone what we were doing until they finished mixing. Oh, the joy on their faces! I've never heard such happy sounds! We played and played with our silly putty and then packed them away in little baggies so everyone could take it home. It was a wonderful day!

Next week, the letter "T" and Ocean Week, it should be great! I hope you will stop back again.

FALL and "E" Week!

Our school is located in central Alabama so that means we don't get to see much ice and snow in the winter. But autumn more than makes up for it. We have studied autumn for two weeks now and I personally think we could have continued our discussions for at least another week. The children have really enjoyed looking at the leaves and seeing all the different colors. We actually found a PINK leaf! You should have seen the faces of the girls! WOW! Now of course the boys are on a hunt for the blue leaf!

While my husband and I were working last weekend at the lake I came across some amazing items that I bagged up and brought to school. I think they made the interesting leaf people. I don't really think there is much to say about this art work except meet the 2010 leaf people . . . .

Don't you just love her hair bow????
The boys of course added buttons!

If you closely you will see the faces were made from tree bark! Oh, a very special thank you to my partner in crime, Mrs. Christi! She found the amazing arms for us. They are actually the dried out stems of her day lilies! LOOK, they look exactly like hands!

We also have a class pet! He is a caterpillar that we have named "Creek". (A little background on the name. I decided that since caterpillar begin with the letter "C", his/her name should start with "C" too. After several minutes of listening the to the "C" sound the children started coming up with names. Soon "Creek" popped out of Isaiah! That was it, everyone loved it!)

We put fresh leaves in his little house each day and we are patiently (?) waiting for him to start spinning his cocoon.

This week we also did a pretty amazing "E" experiment. I call it "Can we get an egg into a bottle?" Really good instructions are found here - http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/sucking-an-egg-into-a-bottle/

Yep, that's me! Lighting a small strip of paper towel for the experiment!



The children, and a few teachers, really loved it. It is very simple and FUN!
Next week is all about Community Helpers and the letter "F"!!!!

Outdoors

This week we have been studying the letter "T" and the great outdoors. I love this unit. We have a huge tent setup in our room, okay, it is really a king size sheet tacked to the wall but everyone loves it.

We also have made a few pretty cool bugs! I have a majority of boys in my room this year and my girls are too girlie, so we have a blast! Our first bug was a caterpillar made entirely with circles.

We picked out enough circles for a head and each letter of our name. Each students wrote their name, one letter on each circles and glued them all together to make a caterpillar. In the case of poor Mary Elizabeth, her caterpillar grew to great lengths. This is a huge hit with the parents!

Our next insect was made anatomically correct, three body parts, two eyes, two antennas, and six legs! But that is where the instructions stopped and the imagination begin. The cardboard egg cartons were painted any color the child wanted and then embellished with dots, stripes or in one case, flowers. The eyes on the insects like most of our eyes were made from 2 circle punches. It saves a great deal of money and the results are always fun.