Ocean/Sea Unit

(I'M STILL BEHIND!!!  AHHHHH!  I guess this will be my battle cry until the end of school and I am so sorry.  Little did I know that remodeling a few rooms would be so stressful and time consuming!  But then again, it could just be me!  OKAY, enough excuses, let's talk about our week.)

What an amazing week we have had!  We just completed our unit on "Ocean/Sea"!  We have spent the entire week "barking" like seals, "blowing" like whales and dolphins and "putting a fish bubble" in our mouths while we  walk down the hall.  Let me show you some of our fun . . . .

We started on Monday with one of my all-time favorite activities - finger paint!  I've had several classes over the years that just flat would not finger paint!  Lucky for me, this year's group is all in!  We mix blue, green and white all together to make . . . .

an ocean!  The next day we cut some seaweed.

and made a few hand prints for our sea creatures.  On Thursday,we glued everything on, we added some tan paint for the sand.  I like to find different and sometimes unusual objects for my students to paint with.  To paint our sand we used some old make-up brushes that a sweet neighbor of mine gave me.

The end results were amazing!

Sweet "H" ask me to take a picture of artwork!  

I guess they are getting use to my camera!

During the week a came across some alphabet stickers in our supply closet.  Everyone loves stickers and we have several fine-motor skill activities that are always a big hit.  Like this one - 

(I know SANTA STICKERS!).  Instead of tracing the circles (BORING!), I laminate the pages and we use stickers to make our circles or other shapes and numbers.  The stickers come right off with a little wipe of water.  Okay, back to the alphabet stickers I found!  I laid them out on the table one day after lunch 

and WOW . . . .

suddenly we are making words!  VERY COOL!

I found some large old copies of a fish stashed away in my cabinet and I thought we could do something  neat with them.  First we colored them using good 'ole Dot Markers.  Hmmm . . . I could see my class was looking at me and thinking, "really, this is it?".  I had to do something and quick!  I found some rubbing alcohol in my cabinet

 (WHAT?  You don't have rubbing alcohol in YOUR cabinet?) 

and the FUN began!  Everyone loved smelling it (YUCK!) and painting with it too!

The alcohol made the ink from the markers soften a bit.

The results were pretty cool!  Later in the week, I cut them out along with an extra piece of plain construction paper.  Next, we stapled the two pieces together and the children stuffed them with some old pillow batting that I found in our supply closet.  (Sorry, no picture of the final results, but trust me . . . CUTE!)

I found some activity cards over at Tiddler Approved and we have had so much fun this week in circle time as we acted out each of the sea creatures.  I hope you will check them out!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was even more fun than usual this week because of an amazing gift I received.

Can you believe someone was going to THROW THIS AWAY????????  Good thing we rescued it!  Our class spent the entire day Friday painting the box.  The final project . . . .

The world's LARGEST aquarium!

All four sides of the box were paint with every shade of blue and green that you could imagine!  We added some seaweed (see the pieces floating?) and some little fish from the Ellison machine.  Someone asked me at the end of the day if I was going to throw it away.  REALLY!?!?!?!  NO, we are saving this masterpiece for our art show in a few weeks!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope to catch up with our other activities very soon.  I hope you will check back soon!

Our Happy Easter!

I'm sorry to be so far behind in my posting but my husband and I decided to do a "little" remodeling during spring  break and well . . . things have gotten out of hand.  hahahaha!  I am skipping ahead to Easter so I can share our WONDERFUL week with you.  We started on Monday by making simple handprint craft.

I saw this on Pinterest a few weeks ago and knew we had to make it.  Here is the original post Prayer Glow. I wanted to let my class do most of the work so I made a few changes.  While our handprints were drying, we cut paper for the grass.  We added some colorful punched flowers and WOW!  GORGEOUS!  (Note:  I added the draping to cross with purple glitter glue.)  This was truly a hit with our parents.

Since I knew we would not be in school on Friday, we did our science experiment on Monday.  We dropped a raw egg in vinegar and left it overnight.

If you have never done this experiment I beg you to try it.  I won't ruin it by telling you the results, but it is AMAZING!

On Tuesday we decided to have a little fun with tissue paper and Easter eggs!  I gave each child an outline of an Easter egg and a cross laid out on a piece of contact paper.  We carefully picked out our favorite colors of tissue paper and put them in the center of the Easter egg.

Then we covered it with another piece of contact paper and squished it down!

The results were stunning!  Everyone could hardly wait to take them home and put them in their window.

I introduced a new game to my classroom this week too.  Part of the reason for our big remodeling project came about because my sweet husband bought a new toy.

He loves and I loved the fact that he is very happy AND this big TV came in a BIG box!  You know what that means . . . free entertainment for my classroom!  Check out our newest game.

This literally cost NOTHING!  I used hot glue and some various shaped lids to make a maze.  We have different shaped objects (golf balls, Styrofoam balls, Easter eggs, etc)  to try and get through the maze.  It was amazing to watch the different styles of each student as they worked the objects around each lid.

We were out of school for Good Friday and our BIG spring concert was held on Thursday so that meant Wednesday was our SUPER FUN DAY!  I used the rest of the TV box to do a LARGE class project.  I quickly drew a simple sketch of the three crosses on a mountain and let my class have fun!

We divided up into two groups.  One group started out cutting/tearing all different types and color of paper.  (We used tissue paper, construction paper, and scrapbook paper.)   Once they got a good pile, the second group got it and started gluing!   I kept reminding them that we were working as a "team" and since I have several new t-ball players in my class, they loved it!  The final results were, hmmmm . . . well you decide -

And if you start to wonder how much of it I DID . . . I'll go ahead and tell you . . . I just drew it, they did the rest themselves!  This is being saved for our Art Show.  

Again, I'm sorry to be so late with my post.  The "real world" has gotten in the way.  Hopefully, I will be caught up soon!  Thanks for visiting.

Old Mrs. Karen Had a Farm!

"Old Mrs. Karen had a farm!"  EE-I-EE-I-O!  With some fun here and some fun there, everywhere some fun, fun!  Old Mrs. Karen had a farm, EE-I-EE-I-O!"  Okay, that is enough singing for a Saturday!  Can you tell we talked about the farm this week?  It was great!  We have mooed, oinked, neighed, quacked and clucked all week (not easy with a sore throat I might add).  We also had a great time, let me show you.  Our Monday we talked about one of our favorite barnyard friends, the pig!  We started off with an activity that I have done for several years now, our muddy pigs!

 We painted our pigs with our regular paint and let them dry.  It doesn't should like a whole lot of fun but if you "oink" while you paint, you start to giggle!  After they dried, we added "Mrs. Karen's Special Mud"!  It is a fun mixture of . . . .

Everyone mixed up their own "mud" and slapped it on their pigs!  Each child had their own method for applying the mud.  There was the "I don't want to get my hands dirty" method -

The "let's just use one finger" method - 

And then there is MY favorite, "LET'S DO THIS!" method - 

The "how" part didn't really matter, it was the "fun" that counted!  All-in-all our pigs were "perfect"! 

We also spent our circle time talking about pigs and how they use mud to cool off.


Tuesday turned into an "R" day.  We talked about letter of the week and rabbits!  If you are a follower of my blog you know that I really enjoy "reusing" items in my classroom (and at home too!).  I don't believe in spending a lot of money to have fun.  Our "R"ed "R"abbit is a perfect example of this.  We started with a good 'ole toilet tissue roll and painted it red.  

After it dried, we added a face, some ears and a tail - instant "Red Rabbit"!

Our circle time was spent talking about rabbits and everyone tried to "hop" everywhere we went!


Wednesday's are always a fun day for us because we get to spend 30 minutes in the "big" gym with my good friend, Mrs. Nancy.  We call it "Wednesday Wiggles".  It really is a preschool version of a Physical Education class.  There are about 40 children in each class and we work on group activities and following instructions.   I love when everyone runs in the door screaming "is it wiggles day?".  And since wiggles is so much fun, I have to make sure my classroom time is fun too.  SSSOOOOO, this Wednesday we talked about roosters.  We cock-a-doodle-dooed ALL day and spent our circle time talking about roosters.  We also made a wonderful rooster to take home.

He was quick and fun.  (Quick note:  Next time we will make him red!).


Thursdays are always busy for us, but not too busy to talk about horses!  We galloped along  as we neighed and made our hand print horses.

I love hand print art!


Finally, it was Friday and time for REAL fun!  I don't think anyone was disappointed with this week's "Fabulous Fun Friday"!  We started with a recycled sheep project.  This was GREAT for our fine motor skills and everyone had a fun time.  First we wound the yard (your choice of colors of COURSE!) around a piece of old recycled cereal box.

Next, we added a head and some clothes pins for legs.  Instant recycled sheep!  

Our Auburn and Alabama Sheep!

Our blue sheep!

Since we were talking about sheep, we headed to the kitchen to make our snack.  We made sheep cookies, of course!

Okay, I know, you have to use your imagination on these, but we loved them!


Our science experiment of the week was all about the letter "R"!  We made raisins and rice dance!  

I'm not sure where I found the original experiment but, Dancing Raisins is a great link.  I changed it up a little by adding a little red food coloring and using rice too.  We did the experiment at around 10:00 a.m. and by 1:00 p.m., the raisins and rice were still moving!  Everyone loved them!


We had a busy week!  Next week is all about the letter "Z" and the zoo.  It is our last week before our Spring Break so I will be pulling out a bunch of new ideas.  Thanks for visiting with us and I hope you will come back soon.


This blog post was shared on 
 

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Everything about Friday, March 2, 2012 did not go as I had planned.  Besides being the amazing Dr. Seuss' birthday, it was also the birthday of my dear friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Christi.  I wanted our pre-school day to be extra, extra special but alias, the real-world got in the way.  After days and days of planning and scheming (I spent days telling all our parents that we would be celebrating TWO birthdays on Friday), I left school on Thursday to head home and bake a birthday cake in the shape of the hat from A Cat in the Hat.  NOPE!  I came home to a refrigerator that was leaking water all over my kitchen.  So after mopping up my floor, finding the problem, deciding it wasn't worth the money to fix the thing, my hubby and I headed out to buy a new refrigerator!  By the time we got home, there was no time for baking.  Luckily, I called one of our moms (and dear, dear friend) and she volunteered to make our my cake!  THANKS TIFFANY!   I headed to bed that night thinking of the fun we would have on Friday.  Again, real life got in the way!  The great state of Alabama (and most of the southeast) woke up Friday to the news that we would be under a severe weather threat all day.  After what has happened to our state in the past 10 months, we in Alabama take severe weather VERY SERIOUSLY.  All the schools in our area made the decision to close early Friday. Our school would be closing at 12:00 noon but since most of the other schools closed at noon too, I knew our parents would pick up first.  RATS!  Sorry, Dr. Seuss!  I had to get moving to make this day a success!

We started our day by changing up our little carpool routine.  I helped Friday and told each child as they got out of the car that they could RUN down the hall to Mrs. Christi's room IF they told her "Happy Birthday"!  OH BOY!  Who doesn't want to run in school?  Christi said everyone ran in yelling "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"  Many of the children brought her cards and gifts.  It was so fun to watch her face as more, more children came to school.  We talked about Dr. Seuss and sang "Happy Birthday" to him most of the morning.  Our art project was scaled back a bit because of our short day.  I still think it turned out well.

We headed to our kitchen for our Dr. Seuss One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish snack.  I found this printable and enlarged it.

 We loved counting our "fish" and placing them on the counting sheet.

And of course we enjoyed eating Mrs. Christi's birthday cake!

I really wanted to squeeze in our science experiment.  It came from the Dr. Seuss book, Bartholomew and the Oobleck .  WARNING this experiment is very messy!  I got MY recipe from Instructables , of course I didn't follow them EXACTLY (insert evil giggle here!)  Everyone had a lot of fun mixing and making a big mess!

Because our time was short we weren't able to do all activities but we ended our day with a new game.  We called it "HAT, HAT, CAT!"  You play it just like "DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE!" but change out the words!  Everyone and I do mean EVERYONE loved running and playing our new game.

All in all it was a short but great day.  I'm planning on doing a little tweaking to our calendar for next year.  I think we need an entire week to celebrate Dr. Seuss (and Mrs. Christi too)!  

Thanks for visiting us!  I hope you come back soon.  Next week we will be talking about the farm!