We are Wild About the Zoo!

What a fun week we have had!  I think we spent more time this past week just "talking" about our topic than ever before.  Zoo Week was just plain fun!  Our circle times were lively and not only full of questions, but animal sounds too!  Here are just a few highlights from our busy week.

We celebrated "Earth Day" on Monday.  We talked about "reusing" items to help protect our planet.  One of the things that we do in my class is recycle lunch containers.  It seems that at least one child brings applesauce to school each day in a disposable container.

The students love to rinse them out for me so we can use them to hold paint or glue when we do an art project.  It may not seem like much but we are trying to do our part!  In case you missed it, here are a couple of our beautiful recycled spring flower -

 

Everyone loves monkeys so our very first zoo art project had to be a monkey!  Ours was so cute and so much fun to make.

 

 

It is probably hard to tell by the pictures, but the students actually cut the arms, legs and tales out my themselves.  We let them dry just a bit before we accordion folded the arms and legs.  I just love them.  We also spent the ENTIRE DAY talking about monkeys and apes.  Of course there was a lot of monkeying around too!

 



I was really excited when I saw this next art project on PINTEREST .  I instantly fell in love with it.  I also knew my class AND their parents would really like it.  But of course, I had to add the "Mrs. Karen" twist to it. 

The original art work used the child's hand prints for the zebra and the grass.  We needed something a little more fun.  Can you guess what we used to make the grass? 

If you said a "fork", you are right!

 

Everyone really enjoyed painting with an old plastic fork, which by the way we had leftover from lunch on Monday!  (Don't worry, we washed it!)

 

On Tuesday, we painted old paper towel tubes green and after they dried, we added dots with fun little paint dabbers.  Now that was just plain messy, fun but messy!  Everyone kept trying to guess what we were going to do with them.  Finally on Thursday they all found out! 

 

Let me be the first to say that this art project DID NOT turn out like the original one I saw.  Here is it-

http://eighteen25.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/arts-crafts-tp-roll-snakes.html

But to honest, I like ours better!  They were silly fun!  We also spent the entire day talking about snakes!  (Footnote:  I do NOT like snakes!  But my class does, so I an forced to keep my feelings to myself.)

 

One of the topics that came up during our circle time was zoos versus wild.  Hmmm . . . kind of a deep subject for a group of four year olds, isn't it?  Well, that started a unique discussion about the pros and cons of being a zoo animal versus being an animal living in it's natural habitat.  WOW, my class really surprised me with their ideas and comments.  So, we did an art project that represented the animals in their natural environment.

We found some jungle stamps in our supply closet that had never been used.  It was fun to use "new" supplies.  Again, since our cutting skills are SO GOOD, I feel like I must mention that our "tree trunks" were cut by the children!  I really wasn't sure how much the children would enjoy this art project.  It really didn't say "FUN" to me.  I WAS WRONG!  Everyone loved picking out their favorite animals and stamping them in the jungle.

Friday was our "ZERO DAY"!  This year's class loves to do BIG group projects.  We covered our tables with butcher paper and laid out different circle shaped objects along with some colored pencils and markers.  Everyone had a blast tracing the circles and make ZEROES! 

 

Honestly, several of the students could have done this for HOURS!  I will say that the trick to making this successful is having a LARGE variety of traceable objects.  This was just an easy and fun way to work on our fine motor skills AND our sharing skills too!

Thank you for visiting with us.  I hope you can use some of these ideas for your classroom or just to do with your own children.  Next week we will be talking about the OCEAN!  I hope you drop back by and see what we have done!

"Z" Week and FUN!

Oh no, it is the dreaded letter "Z" week! That means "the end of school" is almost here (visualize me with a very SAD face here)! I like to end the year with a huge BANG so hold on to your hats . . . here comes our "Z" week.

I had to be out on Monday of "Z" week because my Mom and I attended my niece's college graduation way down in Auburn. It was well worth the 2 1/2 hour drive! So I left a little fun for the substitute. They started out with a very simple watercolored "Z" My class has always enjoyed painting with water colors so I thought one last hurray! Next they moved to the clay, lots and lots of "Z's" were created with the clay. Best part, it is the end of the year - take your clay HOME!


I was back with them on Tuesday and I was ready to go! We did an amazing black and white collage to honor our letter "Z". I love them all!

Do you see the "Z"eros? I like mixing the paint with the glue to make a 3-D effect.


Wednesday was our "Z"ero the Hero day. Wish I could show you a picture, I'm just not sure where they are :(

Thursday ended up being BUSY! We continued talking about "Z" and putting the finishing touches up on our "Brown Bear Book" (more about that later) so our art project was simple. FUN, but simple. Anything and I do mean anything I could find that was round was dipped into white paint and we made "Z"ero art. I knew there was a reason I kept all those laundry detergent caps. Since they were white on black paper everyone kept calling them our "Z"ebra "Z"eros! SUPER fun!





We also decided to make a "Z"ebra puppet. To be honest, I thought it was boring but after it was all done everyone loved them. We even had a "Z"ebra parade!

Friday was the day we had all waited for! I had teased everyone all week about the fun we were going to have. And boy did we have fun! First, we were not allowed to "walk" down the hall, we had to "Z"ig "Z"ag. Our art project was amazing. I know I use that word a lot but seriously it was amazing! I saw this post from Teacher Tom ( http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/our-tall-paintings.html ) and knew we just had to do it. To say the children LOVED it is an understatement. Well, there are no words, just look for yourself -
Some got a little carried away pouring the glue, but who cares? Certainly not me! These will take days to dry so we left them in our storage room for the weekend. I can hardly wait until Monday!

As always on Friday we headed to the kitchen for a science experiment. Hmmm . . . last FABULOUS FUN FRIDAY, this had better be good! IT WAS! We made our very own "Superballs". Here is the recipe http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/rubber-blubber-666356/ and here is our version

And yes, they really bounce!



Were we done? NO! Next we made our own homemade ice cream. We used the following recipe for each child.




1/2 cup milk




1 teaspoon vanilla




1 tablespoon sugar




We put the children in groups of 3, tripled the recipe and put the ingredients into a large ziplock freezer bag. CLOSE IT TIGHTLY! We put the baggie into a large round plastic container (ours were large plastic pretzel containers) with crushed ice and rock salt. Next we rolled, and rolled, and rolled. We actually rolled for about 15 minutes, just because it was fun!







There was one accident (I think I didn't have the top screwed on tight enough) but no one minded, it just was fun to pick up the ice!




The ice cream was so good! Super way to celebrate our last Fabulous Fun Friday!




It was a busy week and to be honest I expect next week, our final week, to be even more busy. I hope you stop by and see how we ended our year!

What's Black & White and Red All Over?

What's black & white and red all over? Hmmm . . . did you say a newspaper? Well, in Mrs. Karen's Class the answer is . . . .

A ZEBRA on red paper! His head is the child's foot! Isn't he the cutest thing? We had so much fun using tiny paint brushes and painting the stripes. By now you may have figured out that we are studying "Zoo Animals" and the letter "R". This adorable little zebra was the finale of our fabulous week. Friday was our official "BLACK AND WHITE DAY". We all wore black and white clothing (or at least tried) and we headed to the kitchen to whip up some really delicious "zebra cookies". Here is our secret recipe - take one chocolate cookie (our's was lowfat)Spread a little vanilla icing on top

Why use a knife when we have fingers???? Add some raisins for eyes and a nose and drizzle with chocolate syrup!

Instant zebra cookie! AND very, very yummy!

Opps, Friday was so much fun that I think I got ahead of myself. Let's go back and talk about our Marveous Monday activities! Monday was a lot of fun! We started of the week talking about the letter "R". Nothing says "R" to me like a Recyclable Red Rabbit. Recyclable Red Rabbit??? Yep, isn't he adorable? And all we used was red scrap paper and a toliet tissue roll. Instant Recyclable Red Rabbit.

Of course no respectable rabbit would be complete without a tail (left over from some Christmas crafts)If you look closely you may notice that the rabbit's little feet are made from left over valentine hearts. Truly a "Recyclable Red Rabbit"! This was one of those projects that had the children giggling and thinking at the same time. All day long we tried to think of things that had the "R" sound. SUPER FUN!

On Tuesday we concentrated on our zoo animals. We talked about all the different zoo animals and did a lot of growling! So we made a pride of lions!

We started with a small paper plate. By the way, why is it is hard to find CHEAP paper plates? It seems all the manufacturers want to coat them in plastic. Preschoolers need cheap paper plates, they are easier to paint. Opps sorry, now back to our activities. Next we painted them with our special mixture of yellow and orange paint with a splash of glue. Before the paint/glue mixture had a chance to dry we carefully laid on rotini noodles. After he dried we added our eyes and noses. Super cute! I have to show this next lion. Somehow he absorbed some of old purple paint that had dried on our paint mat. Instead of being upset, my sweet "L" just thought he looked "meaner", which in preschool terms means "he liked it". Whew, meltdown averted!Wednesday was a really big "R" day! We made our annual "Recycle Rosies" and "Recycle Robbies". (These little ones are named after my mom, Rose and my brother-in-law, Rob) Oh my goodness, each year this project gets bigger and better!

As the children were working I asked them if they could tell what kind of material we used for our project. I was amazed at how many students could identify the cereal boxes, expecially the "Fruit Loops" boxes! I was quick to remind everyone that all the supplies used were "recycled"! They loved it and couldn't wait to tell the parents that we used "garbage". Well, I tried!

Thursday is an extremely busy day for us. We always enjoy our Chapel time with Mrs. Fish and Mr. Scott and our Spanish Class is always lots of fun. But it leaves us rather short on actually class time. This week we did 2 fun and silly animal crafts. Our first was an eleplant, on red paper of course

Super easy and pretty much an independent activity. Everyone did a great job!

Next we tackled a handprint peacock! SUPER pretty and great fine motor skill practice trying to pick up the sequins.
Again this was pretty much an independent activity so I just watched them work!

It was a wonderful and busy week in our class. We are on our Spring Break this week and hopefully everyone will get some needed rest because we will start on the letter "S" when we return. I hope you will join us!