Under the Sea

Our "Under the Sea" week turned out to more fun than even I expected!  Usually by the time we get this deep into the school year, the students tend to get bored more easily.  NOT WITH THIS UNIT!  WOW, we had so much fun! 

This is my classroom!

I don't even remember where I got this large poster.

Someone threw it away and I retrieved it from the trash!

One of the most fun things we did this week was walk down our  hallways.  REALLY?!?!?!  Yes, we had so much fun swimming like a fish, crawling sideways like a crab and even floating like a jellyfish down the hall.  A real plus here is that fish are very quiet, so it was a wonderful way to keep us quiet as walked.  Okay, now let me show you some of the fun (and messy) things we did this week.

For the past couple of years, we have made a giant ocean scene.  It takes a couple of days but it is really fun.  First we have to paint the water.  Now that just didn't seem fun enough for us, SO we decided to do it the Mrs. Karen way!  First we squeezed on paint different colors of paint (green, blue, turquoise, and white).  Next, we used different types of rollers, brushes and scrappers to spread around the paint.

 

While that was drying (and it did take a full 24 hours to dry), we made different sea creatures out of our hand prints and cut out seaweed.  

Everyone was so very proud of their work!

One of our favorite books this week was Please Don't Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward.

 

This quickly became a class favorite and I was asked to read it everyday!  After reading it, there was no way my students were going to let me get through the week with a shark art project.  I think I nailed it!

 

Of course, there were those who wanted to make a hammerhead shark!



 

Here is a close-up of his/her mouth.  The children painted the inside of a small paper plate.  Then they cut (I drew the lines) little triangles all the way around the plate.  When you fold it in half it makes a perfect mouth!



 

I saw this amazing file folder game on PINTEREST but unfortunately the link did not work.

I loved the idea and I wanted everyone in my class to be able to do it.  Guess what?  We did!  Here is our Counting Octopus.

The octopus is a girl.  See her hair bow!

 



A close-up of our legs.

I will admit this activity is not for everyone.  There was a lot of circle punching involved in this, but I think it was worth it.  The children loved counting the circles and gluing them onto the legs.

Friday was our "Q" day.  We tried (really, we did) to be quiet, but as you can imagine it was more fun to be quick!  We also started working on our big Friendship Quilt.  This year we used real material.  Everyone picked out their favorite color construction paper and glued on different shaped pieces of material.

This is where I get to say "OPPS!"  I forgot to take pictures of the finished pieces, but I will and I will post them in a day or two.  We will join all the pieces together to form our giant "Friendship Quilt" and it will be on display for our end-of-the-year Art Show, which will be this Thursday.

 

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope you come back and visit with us soon.

Christmas Crafts for Children

This is going to be a short little post to show you all some of the amazing things my class has been making for Christmas.  I'm WAY behind on my Christmas shopping AND decorating AND crafting so I'll just post a few pictures for you to enjoy.

All you need is varied sizes of paper 

(I used some leftover scrapbooking paper)

and let the children have fun making their very own tree.

Hand prints and fingerprints make the most wonderful pictures.

This one is especially nice for Christmas!

I cut out a candy cane and the children painted on the stripes. 

This was a great way to work on our fine motor skills!!

I taped off a Christmas tree design with some painters tape and

let the children go wild with red and green paint.

To make it a little more fun, we added rubbing alcohol to the paint.

The alcohol smelled funny and made the paint dried really fast.

(NOTE:  Use a hair dryer and heat up the tape, it releases easier!)

More hand prints!

The stripes on the candy were cut by the children.

Isn't it wonderful?!?!?

Last, but certainly not least is this precious hand print angel.

The body was made from leftover wallpaper!

Thanks for stopping by to visit with us.  I'll be posting more during our Christmas break so I hope you stop back again.

Valentine Eve

Tomorrow is the big day in most Preschools! Yes, Valentine's Day is a big deal in our little class. We have worked so hard and had so much fun. But alas, February 15th will be here too soon and all our wonderful hearts will soon be put away. Soon springtime themes of flowers and sunshines will take the place of pink, purple and red hearts. Since everyone has anticipated our big Valentine's Party, I didn't want them to be disappointed so I have declared tomorrow, February 14th as (drumrooooollllllllll) Valentine Party DAY! Yes, you read correctly, the entire day will be a party complete with games (fun and educational of course), special crafts (designed especially with out fine motor skills in mind) and fun food. Heck, we might as well do it now and to be honest who doesn't want an entire day devoted to PARTYING! Here is one of our fun games -

Educational, simple and most importantly very much fun! I have a huge box of hearts with all the number written on them. I love seeing the children's faces when they realize they are adding.
We also have a several match the heart games and our number heart game that we will be playing in large groups. The heart matching game is simple. One heart cut in 2 pieces, put them together to make one. EASY, but instant success! The object of the heart number game is to put the hearts in order, smallest to largest OR largest to smallest.
Another great activity that I've made for our classroom is so simple and cheap. I take the classified section of our newspaper and open it out flat. Then I write a letter or word with a large permanent marker. The students use markers or crayons (we really prefer markers) and trace the word. THEY LOVE IT! At the end of the day - throw the paper away (although some have wanted to take the newspaper home)!
Here are a few of the great activities that we did last week. I really wanted to share them with you because besides being very low cost they became big morale boosters in our class. Instant satisfaction is always a good thing. First is our our little heart shaped handprint for our parents.


This art is so important because the children actually did the placing of their hands themselves. Some of our "hearts" were a bit lopsided, but who cares?? Surely not the parents! The border was especially fun because I tore a scrap piece of poster board and laid it in the middle of their paper. I gave them 2 plates with some old make-up brushes. Their only instructions were to put the paint around the edges. The boys were skeptical of the make-up brushes at first but when they discovered they could bang them up and down to make a neat effect, the game was on! Great, great fun!
We also headed to the kitchen on Friday for a super fun and tasty shape game. We started with some old copies of a worksheet (YUCK, worksheets!)


Okay, it was a worksheet (YAWN!) but I cut out the heart portion and we used our snack to match with the shapesThe triangles are actually graham crackers carefully cut by the teachers, the squares are pieces of Chex Cereal and the circles of course are Fruit Loops! YUMMY and a lot more fun then just coloring shapes (YAWN!)
Oh my, I almost forgot! This was also "N" Week! We ended our week by making a WONDERFUL "Name Poster". A lot of work but oh the results were worth it. First we wrote the child's name with masking tape on a 1/2 sheet of poster board.
Then everyone painted over their names. As soon as they were finished we ripped off the tape to reveal our masterpieces!Again, instant gratification! One Mom even said she was going to frame it! Not much more needs to said.

By the way, I hope you like the new design to my blog. You can tell someone woke up way to early this morning. Well I need to go, I still have a few more hearts to cut out before tomorrow so I better get busy. Thanks so much for check in on us. I hope you come back again!

"H and Home & Family" Week

FUN WEEK! This week was all about the letter "H" and our Homes and Families. We started out by making the cutest little house out of shapes.

Great fun and a great way to review our shapes.

We also ate a house! Graham crackers and vanilla icing make yummy houses. (Sorry for the bad picture but the children were READY to eat them, not wait for pictures.)

We also did some wonderful science experiments with our left over Halloween candy (get it - "H" week). I found them at http://www.candyexperiments.com/ SUPER FUN! Try these, especially the ones with the skittle candies http://www.candyexperiments.com/2009/09/floating-ms-and-ss.html

One last fun thing that just has to be mentioned. We made handprints by dipping our hands in glue.
Then after they dried (give it at least 2 days) we water-painted over them.

Magical fun! Just watch as the hands appear! I love the expression on the children's faces!!!!!!!! We will start our unit on Thanksgiving next week!!!

Spring Flowers

I just love springtime! My entire classroom is filled with even more happiness and activities. One of our favorite spring activities is making spring flowers.

I'm sure you can tell that we used our hand prints for the flower and our fingers for the seeds in the middle. But, can you tell that each student did their very own cutting?? All the stems were cut by the students themselves. Big accomplishment for newly-turned 4 year olds. This is a huge confidence builder!