Quiet Spray is Just for Fun!

Okay, let's clear something up right now!  THERE IS NOTHING IN THE QUIET SPRAY BOTTLE!  I have seen several comments where people talk about "spraying the children like a dog".  There's nothing in the bottle!  It is meant to be FUN and SILLY!  Lighten up people!  Sorry, about the rant!  But come on, I LOVE and TEACH children, I do not HARM or BERATE them!

The Light Box

The letter "L" has always been a fun week for me.  I love to walk around singing, "LALALALALALALALALA"!  Trust me, only a preschooler can love my singing voice.  To make this week a little more fun I added a surprise to our classroom.  OUR LIGHT BOXES!  A friend of mine gave me a box that their new gas grill came in and one of our classroom just received a new bookshelf.  I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the boxes.  I pulled out my old Christmas lights and poked them threw the top of the boxes.

 Plug the lights in

 and instant fun!

Everyone took turns!

 These two guys are best buddies and 

the one of the right has been out sick.  

They had a lot of catching up to do and 

the light box was the perfect place!

This was such a huge success that we gave it to one of the older groups to use next week.  SWEET!  I love sharing!

Leaves!

I love Leaves!  I don't like raking them but I sure do love gathering them up and using them for our school art projects!  This year I was a little worried because the leaves here in Central Alabama had not started to fall as much as in years past.  No worry, my neighbors were more then happy for me to run around the neighborhood and gather up their leaves.

I'm not a teacher that likes to do the same art project year after year.  I guess I get bored it.  Either I change it or just do something different all together.  These next two art projects are the exceptions to the rule!  First, let me show you "Leaf Man and Leaf Lady 2010"!

Look closely!  "She is kicking!"

"He is running!"

"He has funny legs!"

I'm not sure if the children like this because it is a fun project OR because I tell them they can use A LOT of glue!  Either way, it is fun and always a big hit at our "End of the Year Art Show".

Here is the other art project that I love doing.  I never get tired of this one!  We call it "Squishy Leaf".  SUPER EASY, SUPER MESSY, SUPER FUN!  First get a really large leaf pattern.  I like to give choice.  I have three different leaves that I cut out from poster board.  Everyone gets to pick three colors and either a shimmery bronze or gold.

Cover with plastic wrap (some people use wax paper, but I like the plastic wrap because we can see the paint better), and mash!

Here is the final product!  Aren't they wonderful?!?!?

I don't like worksheets or art work that has been copied  and all you do is color/paint.  BUT (why is there always a but?)  I found a beautiful tree and had it enlarged onto heavy cardstock paper.  We made our own watercolor paint by mixing our regular brown paint with lots of water and we went to work.  I let them use cotton swabs instead of paint brushes.  I wanted to see what would happen if I gave my students NO DIRECTIONS.

After the trees dried we added fingerprint leaves.

Look at a few of the final results!  WOW!

I love this one because "the leaves were falling to the ground".

The parents I'm sure were laughing at me when these went home.  I was grabbing the children's folders and pulling out these pictures.  I tried to explain to the parents how amazing the art work was.  OH MY!  These children were showing some mind blowing fine motor skills.  Remember, we are ONLY 3 and 4 years old!

At the beginning of the school year, wwaaayyyy back in August, we arrived at school to find out that our Director and Assistant Director had done a little house cleaning.  There were boxes and boxes of "treasures" that either our school was getting rid of OR the church.  Either way, I made out like a bandit!  One of the "treasures" was several bags of this - 

OH MY!  We cut some old paper towel tubes and glued on our leaves.

WOW!  Instant centerpiece for Mom's table!

On Friday, everyone was to bring in a leaf (OR as many as you wanted to bring in).  Oh the fun!  We made a giant "L" and everyone glued on their leaves.

 WOW!  That a big "L"!

My sweet husband found me some big bunches of leaves in our yard.  Bless his heart, he knows there are some things that are better than flowers - leaves during "L" week!  I took them to school   

 and we made our scientific observations as to what will happen to them.

Hopefully, they will still be hanging up on Monday so we find out!

Thanks to my sweet friend (and fellow teacher), Mrs. Felicia, we were able to find a wonderful leave shaped cookie cutter.  We made Leaf Toast with cinnamon butter for snack.  What a YUMMY way to end our week!

Fall Fun!

Our "F" week and "Fall" activities fell all during the same week.  This made everything extra Fun!  No fall activities would be complete without an adorable scarecrow and ours was the cutest ever!

Some old lunch sacks and left over scrapbook paper made for a very fun fall art project.

Of course, we had to make a pumpkin!  We did ours a little different this year.  We painted it with condensed milk and food coloring.

WOW!  The texture was amazing!  We added a couple of hand print leaves and a palm print stem and the results were fantastic!

One little word of caution - this takes forever to dry!  We let ours dry for 4 days and they were still sticky.  

While we were making our pumpkins one of the boys said he wished he had a blue pumpkin, because blue was his favorite color.  Hmmm . . . . change of lesson plan!  The next day we made our very own "Personalized Pumpkins"!  Some were fat and pink

Some were tall and pink 

Some were all about our favorite football teams -

The Florida 'Gators!

War Eagle for Auburn University

Others were a combination of things we liked -

All in all we decided our pumpkins were perfect!

I found this little poem about a squirrel and really like it.

  

We just needed the "perfect" little squirrel to go with it.  AHHHHH! . . . found it!  First we added cotton balls to his tail.  Next, the fun part!  We used old squirt bottles to turn him gray!

I knew those old bottles would come in handy!  After we sprayed him we wiped his body with a paper towel.  What a wonderful piece of fall art!

"F" Week

I'm going to try and make a change in my blog posting.  I'm thinking making more post, hopefully everyday, but making them shorter.  Hmmm . . . . let's give this a try and do a little catching up!

Let's talk about the letter "F"!  Of course Fall is a great time to talk about the letter "F" and with a room full of boys we loved talking about Football!  I think there must have been at least a dozen Football games on the playground during ''F" week.  We also talked about things that were Fun.  So naturally everyone agreed Football and Fun were our Favorite "F" words!  One of the most fun art projects we did was our

We had so much fun painting with a Fork!

We also did a little sandpaper rubbing to make our frogs come to life!

You put it all together and add a four flies and what do you get!

Well, sometimes we get a little carried away when we make our fingerprints.  No problem . . .

GREAT FUN!

We also headed to the kitchen to do a fabulous science experiment.  We did the preschool version of "Will it Float?".  Everyone was told to look around our room and pick any object they wanted (okay, I did have to say paper products were OFF limits!).  Blocks of course were the #1 choice but I finally got them to try and pick different things.  First, we made our observations.  "Will the object float?"  Then we plopped them in our large bucket of water

Success!

Of course my camera battery died before we could finish, but you get the idea.

We also had a wonderful time cooking in the kitchen too.  We made our "Fabulous Fall Friendship Fruit Salad".  Would you like the recipe???  It is very simple, invite all your friends to bring in their favorite fruit.  Cut it up, mix it all together and enjoy!  YUMMY!

We also did another fun science experiment with a fan.  It was fun throwing balloons into the fans to see how far they would fly.  The grand finale was when we threw a box of feathers into the fan!  OH MY!  Messy but fun!