Baby It's Cold Outside!

The great state of Alabama, as well as most of the country, has been COLD lately!  School started back for us on Tuesday!  But, due to the extreme cold, our school, like so many others, started an hour later.  This was NOT, repeat NOT a good way to welcome the students back from Christmas break.  Now, I know my students do not know how to tell time, but their little internal clocks were all off.  It took most of Tuesday to get things "normal" in my classroom.  It was fun listening to everyone tell me what they received for Christmas.  We giggled and laughed most of the day and listened to some "regular" music (that's what "T" called it since I didn't have Christmas music playing).  Our first fun art project for 2014 will be kept for our upcoming art show. 

We started by letting the children cut some white construction paper for our snow.  Next, we glued our snow onto a piece of blue construction paper and added our hand/arm print for the tree and our palm prints for our little snowman/girl.  It took just a few minutes for that the dry and then comes the FUN part, we added the snow.  Earlier that morning, I found an old tube from a roll of plastic wrap and covered it with hot glue.

  We rolled the tube in white paint and then rolled it onto our paper.

After everything dried, we mounted it to a large piece of black construction paper and added window panes!  A WONDERFUL Winter Window!

 

Tuesday was bitter cold down here in Alabama and since we aren't accustom to this kind of temperature we forced to stay inside for our recess time.  YUCK!  Well, not really!  I saw on one of my favorite sites Teach Preschool where the children were weaving through a rainbow.  I loved it of course (because I love everything on this website!) and wanted to try it.  Here is my version, we call it "Sneaking Through a Snowstorm"! 

WOW!  It was fun!!!!!

 

No fun winter themed week would be complete without talking about PENGUINS!!!!  I must say, our penguins are very cute.  His/her fat little belly was made white by sticking different white objects to contact paper.



 

Our Thursday was spent talking about polar bears!  Of course we read Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear by one of our favorite authors, Eric Carle.  Our polar bear craft was taken right off of PINTEREST .  It was very simple but oh so much fun.  We really gave our fine motor skills a workout.

 

 

Since we were talking about polar bears, we had to play a polar bear game, right???  Meet "Pete, the Polar Bear" . . . .

He was made from a vacuum cleaner box (don't worry, I didn't get a vacuum for Christmas! LOL).  I covered him in white butcher paper, added ears, eyes, a nose and cut a hole for his mouth.  We talked about how polar bears like to eat fish, so I made us some little fish to feed him.

 

All the little fish were turned upside down on the floor.  They looked like they were swimming.  Each child picked out a fish and told us what written on it.  If you got it right, you got to feed the fish to the polar bear.  SUPER FUN!!!!!  I think we could have done this for an hour!

Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was one of my favorites.  We started the day painting with ice!  On Wednesday, we all went to the kitchen to make ice paint.  Everyone stirred up little cups of paint and water.  We covered them with foil and stuck a popsicle stick in it.  On Friday, they were ready, no instructions were needed.

This one was fun because it had yellow and red paint in it.

The child who mixed it together didn't mix it thoroughly,

so we got to see the yellow and red paint.

This green ice paint was made with glitter paint!

LOVE!

They were ALL amazing!

 

As soon as we were finished painting we headed to make a snowman.  Now, by the time Friday came around, the temperature in Alabama was back into the 50's (ahhhhh . . . . winter in the south!), so we made our traditional "southern" snowman.  First, we had to make snowballs, and lots of them.

 

 

As you can see, we use newspapers!  We stuffed three large white garbage bags with old newspapers to make "Frosty"!

 

Hopefully, he will stay in my classroom for a few days.

No "Fabulous Fun Friday" would be complete without a little "cooking" time!  This Friday we made a snowman cookie. 

Everyone loved him!  We used one white powdered sugar donut (we cut it half),

 

added M&M eyes and a candy corn nose!  MMMMMM. . . . it was so good!

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you come back next week, we will continue our unit on "Winter"!





Our Wild Winter Week!

We have spent two wild weeks talking about "Winter" and the letters "S" & "W".  As some of you may know, my class and I are located in Central Alabama and winter here is . . . well. . . ummmm . . . usually just wet!  This year has been no exception.  We have had a lot of rain.  So, I tried to brighten things up with a few fun snowy activities!
One of the very first things we did was make the cutest Shape Snowman!  Everyone picked out their very own different shapes to use.
;

It was so much fun watching everyone identify the different shapes!  I was reminded several times that "snowmen are round like a circle", and then they would pick out a square! 

We've made this next little snowflake for many, many years now.  Our craft stick snowflake.  The fun part of this craft comes when the children mix glue and white paint together.  Of course everyone has to touch it to see how sticky it is.  Next comes the real fun - you get to "dump" handfuls of Epsom salt all over your snowflake!  They actually have a little shimmer to them.

During the Christmas holidays I sent an e-mail to all my amazing teacher friends and asked them to save white wrapping boxes (the kind you get at the stores for clothes) and newspapers for me.  Of course my friends came through for me AGAIN!!!  I tapped the white boxes together with a little tape and . . . .

 

INSTANT FUN!  We now had the ability to build an ice fort!!  YES!  The boxes lasted about 2 weeks and then they started falling apart.  That was ok with us because by then we were moving on to something new.

 

Again, we don't really see snow in Alabama so we had our on snowball fight using newspapers!

  

For the past 4 years I have made our infamous "southern snowman" and for the last 4 years the great state of Alabama has brought home the National Championship trophy for college football (three for Alabama and one for Auburn).  Hmmm . . . I see a pattern!!!  Do you think the coaches should be giving me a percentage of their salaries????

Guess not!  Here is this year's official snowman -









And of course, here he is in his official "University of Alabama" gear!  To make things even better (could they be?) we were also studying the number 15 (as in this is the 15th National Championship for the University of Alabama).

Another fun activity we did to get our imagination going was to make a snowman/snowgirl with our palm prints. 

 

I love this activity because the children's imaginations really get a good work-out.  Besides picking out their favorite scarf, hat and buttons, the children decide on their own names for their snowman/snowgirl.  I always love seeing the different amounts of snow the children put on their creations.  By the way, the snowman on the left is in a "windy snowstorm"! 

 

Since last year's class had so much for with our "sticky box", I had to make another one this year.  (You can find the details of our sticky box here Sticky Box)  I changed things up a little and let the children used some old foam letters we had laying around. 









 

Everyone loved finding the letters of their names and their favorite colors!  It was such a big hit we are sharing it with our friends in the four-year old classes!

 

We talked about the letter "S" a lot during our Winter Week and we decided that our favorite "S" word was "SNOWMAN/SNOWGIRL".  We ended up our discussion about the letter "S" by making a "s"illy "s"nowman/"s"nowgirl out of toilet paper rolls.

 

 

I love the faces!!!!

 

We got a little "wacky" during our "W" week and painted with worms!  Don't worry, we didn't use real worms, we used some of my Dad's old plastic fishing worms that I brought home from the lake! I have a funny feeling he would love knowing how we used them because WOW, we had fun!



 

 

 

The end results were "w"onderful!



We had a HUGE surprise on Thursday, January 17, 2013 in Alabama . . . . we had SNOW!  Yes, real snow.  Do you know what happens in Alabama when it snows?????  We all leave our classrooms and go look at it! 

 









 

Yes, snow is THAT rare in Alabama.  Moments are this picture was taken we decided that we could not wait another second!  We went back to our classroom, got our jackets and headed out into the wintry mess.  OH THE JOY! 

 

Thank you for visiting with us I hope you COME BACK SOON!



Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

I wanted to have something extra special for "S" week.  I had read and seen a "sticky table" over at Teach Preschool and ever since I've been dying to try it.  My classroom is small and is also used for Sunday School on the weekends so most of classroom activities have to be stored out of site at the end of each week.  Instead of using a table, I made a sticky box!  OH MY GOODNESS, we loved it!

I hope you can see the large box over on the right.  I filled it with all different kinds of objects (Note: the drinking straws were fun but a bad idea.  Yes, they kept being put in our mouths!)  I just used an old cardboard box destined for the garbage and some very ugly contact paper.  I sprayed the box with a spray adhesive and placed the contact paper, ugly side down, to the box.  I used good 'ole duct tape to secure the paper and carefully peeled the paper off.  The duct tape proof interesting because the children kept trying to stick things to it and seemed to enjoy figuring out that the entire box was not sticky.  Another wonderful moment came when they discovered they could remove the items and then replace them in another spot.  Seriously, this was an amazing activity!  

Well, by now I hope you have seen our wonderful class snowmen!  Here is our garbage bag snowman with his very own University of Alabama Crimson Tide #14 National Championship jersey!  Lucky for me, we were also talking about the number 14! 

Since it was "S" week and I was given some wonderful BIG boxes we also made "Sammy, the Square Snowman"!

Right beside Sammy is our "world's largest snowball". As soon as we read the book, The Biggest Snowball EVER by John Rogan, we all started talking about building one ourselves.  It took quite a bit of teamwork, but it was well worth it.  Our snowball may have started out small but in the end it was over two feet tall and for the state of Alabama, that is one large snowball!

We read another wonderful book entitled Snow Dance by Lezlie Evans.  As a matter of fact, I do believe this was everyone favorite book of the week.  I know I was asked to "re-read" it at least 4 times!  We decided that since we do live in Alabama and snow is rarely ever seen, a snow dance probably wouldn't work.  Instead we made our famous "dancing" snowman. 

  

We call them "dancing snowmen" because the two paper plates are tied together with ribbon and when you hold them up they wiggle and look like they are dancing.  

Another great art activity we did this week was our collage penguin.  We spent the day waddling like penguins and talking about how they cannot fly even though they have wings.  The white belly of the penguins are filled with a variety of different white objects.  Each and every one of our collage penguins seem to take on the personality of the maker.  

Look at this one!  My sweet little "W" was hungry,

so he put some food in his penguin's mouth!

Each month I save one piece of special artwork for our end-of-the-year art show.  This month I kept our hand print snowman.  Each child used the palm of their hand to form a snowman.  Once he dries, we use a variety to hats and buttons to make each on unique.  We used our fingers to add snow all around.

We also used an old make-up brush to brush on more snow at the bottom.

I will add a mat and laminate these special little guys and girls for our our art show!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday arrived way too quickly this week.  We were having so much fun I didn't want anyone to be disappointed.  I think I delivered!  We started our by with something different - sand art!  Everyone covered a black sheet of construction paper with glue.  NO INSTRUCTIONS, just go!

Some used a little.

Some used a LOT!

Next we sprinkled on some sand. 

Finally, we added some paint.  Any color or colors you wanted!

This was extremely messy but a lot of fun! (EDITED 1/19/11 to add photo)  Here is a sample of the final artwork all nice and dry.

Of course snack time on Friday had to be special too!  Our wonderful new assistant director brought in her shaved ice machine for us to use.  

This thing was so much fun.  We all got to have a little shaved ice with our pretzels! 

 Thanks Mrs. Melissa!

Our science experiment for the week was very SPECIAL!  My sweet friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Christi and I had filled the school's freezers and our home freezers with bowls of water.  We gave the children the large hunks of ice and a cup of rock salt.  Everyone sprinkled the rock salt on the ice and watched.  

OH MY!

As you may know if you live in the northern part of the United States, the rock salt quickly started to eat away at the ice.  We were all amazed.  BUT, we weren't finished (of course not)!  Next, we added some color.

Everyone picked several colors of paint (we used our regular school paint mixed with water) and squeezed on the color.  

The results were spectacular!

Even though they were special we waited about an hour and came back to find . . . .

Needless to say, we were all Surprised!

We ended our very special Snow Week by doing a little "snowman bowling".  Now, I do not have one of those fancy "I-Phones" or "Droids", but as soon as I said we were going to go "snowman bowling" half of my class said they play that game on their parent's phones or I-Pads.  REALLY!?!?!  We didn't use an "I-Phone" but we did use some old Christmas boxes turned into bowling pins.

Let the fun begin!

Our snow week sadly came to an end.  But it was super fun! 

I hope you come back and visit with us again.  Next week we will be talking about solar system.  I can't wait to show you what we will be doing with those big boxes next week!