Insect Week!

This past week turned out to be much more fun that I had originally planned!  To a preschool child, insects are either "WOW" or "yucky", but much to my surprise, my class thought they were "WOW"!  Lucky me!  One of my all time MOST favorite books is . . . . .

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

by Eric Carle

 

So naturally we spent an entire day discussing not only the book but caterpillars too!  Everyone had a great time making the very own hungry caterpillar.

 

 

 

Balloons made the perfect round shape!

 

The children used their fingers to make the antennas.

They drew on their own noses and legs.

 



 I think Eric Carle would be very proud, don't you?

 

We also started making our "Name Caterpillars".  This is one of my all time favorites.  Each child counts the letters in their name and picks out that many circles.  Next, they write each of the letters on a circle.  Finally, we get to put it all together, add a head, some legs and . . . . .

 

A close up view of Jon Brook's caterpillar.

WOW, he has a long name!

 

After our caterpillar day on Monday, we spent Tuesday talking about butterflies.  It was really fun walking around the school fluttering like butterflies.  We made beautiful butterflies by putting big blobs of paint on one side of our butterfly cutouts.  Next we folded the paper and squished it.  It was very messy

 

 

We added a cute little thorax complete with an adorable little face and antennas. 

 

Wednesday was so much fun!  We spent the entire day talking about bees!  And yes, we "buzzed" the entire day!  We also made the cutest little bumble bee ever! 

Everyone loved using the tiny paint brushes to paint on the stripes.

 

Thursday was all about ladybugs and of course we had to read The Grouchy Ladybug by Eric Carle. 

Again, this is one of our favorite books (to be honest, I am a HUGE Eric Carle fan!).    Our ladybug was not quite as "grouchy".  One student said, "she had already eaten her dinner and wasn't mean anymore!".  I LOVE IT!  



I found a number of great ideas for the using The Grouchy Ladybug on The Official Eric Carle Website.  Check it out for more ideas.

Because of a threat of severe weather, our school day was cut short on Thursday.  (Remember, we are in Central, Alabama and severe weather usually means tornadoes!)  Anyway . . . we spent what little time we did have reading and talking about Eric Carle's book The Very Lonely Firefly .  Again, here are some more fun activities for  The Very Lonely Firefly

 

Friday was spent talking about insects and all their distinct characteristics.  Each child made their very own personalized insects and decided if they would fly, hop or crawl.  We also talked about what their insects liked to eat!



 

 

 

We also "at an insect"!  We headed to the kitchen and put together a yummy insect out of good 'ole 'Nilla Wafers, pretzels, raisins and "I"cing!  YUM!

 

No one seemed to mind eating these insects!

 

Thanks for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by next week - we will be talking about "birds"!

Valentine's 2013 Part 1

Ahhhhh . . . Valentine's Day, which only follows Christmas and birthdays in a child's excitement!  My class is already in a frenzy talking about our Valentine party which is not until next week.  I've tried to stress the meaning of Valentine's Day, you know LOVE and all, but all I hear is CANDY & PARTY!.  Well, I do have four more days to get my message across.  Now, let me show you a couple of really cute and fun hands-on activities we did this past week. 

Here is an oldie but a goodie . . . Heart Man/Lady!  We let the children pick out the matching circles for the eyes, and hearts for the hands and the feet.  Each heart person looked different!  These are just plain fun!

This Heart Man is flying!

Don't you just love Heart Lady's hair and hair bow????

 

Our BIG project this past week has been our "Eric Carle Heart".  This is the second year in a row that we made this and it will not be our last.  First we started by painting a large sheet of construction paper, but we didn't use any paint brushes!  We used scrappers and other objects to spread the paint around. 

 

Next we used stamps to stamp designs into the wet paint!

 

The results were amazing!



 

After they dried, we cut the paper into pieces (GREAT fine motor activities!)

 

and glued the pieces to a giant heart!

 

 

 

 Well, all I can say is WOW!!!!

BUT, we weren't finished!  Next we wrote "I LOVE YOU" on a big piece of construction paper and took a Valentine's picture for our parents.

So far, this project took 3 days to complete, but it was WORTH IT!  Next week we will work on the picture frame! 

I needed an easy but fun Valentine's project was needed for Thursday and I found this on PINTEREST.  It was perfect!

After we traced and cut out the child's hand and arm onto red construction paper, the chidren took over!  After they glued their arm down, the children used cookie cutters dipped in different colored paint to make our "Valentine Love Tree". 

Friday is always fun in our class and this Friday was NO exception.  We made our "Valentine Vulture". 

(Sorry no pictures of the construction process, we were too busy laughing!  Here is another view and write up about him ). 

We spent a good deal of time on Friday in the kitchen talking about volcanoes

and making our very own "colorful volcanoes". Add a little paint to your vinegar and you get super fun!

SERIOUS FUN!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you add some paint to your vinegar. 

It is a great way to help work on team-work

while enjoying a little science and color play at the same time.

 

Our Valentine theme will continue through next Thursday so I hope you stop back by and see what else we are up to!

Getting Crazy with the Letter "C"

Our "C" week was so much fun!  We are all still getting to know each other, but all in all my tiny little class is doing great.  Since one of my favorite authors is Eric Carle, I knew we had to do some special to honor him.  And what better way than to read, The Very Hungry Caterpillar!  It is now officially a class favorite!  Of course a great book has to have a great art project to go with it and this one was so CUTE!  I had seen the caterpillar made with balloons and knew we had to give it a try.  I think we did a great job, don't you?

The children even drew on their own legs!  I'm so sorry I don't have pictures of the actual process, but this got a little wild and crazy!  The body is made by using 2 different colors of paint.  First, we used a balloon dipped in yellow paint, then put a balloon with green paint right on top.  Meet the Deubiens is a GREAT web site for instruction on how to make the caterpillar with balloons.

I'll go ahead and admit that I am a big 'ole softy when it comes to fingerprint and handprint art.  (Now what he is all grow-up, I wish I had more of it from my son!).  Our next little piece of artwork was so simple, but so cute - CORN!

We start out with our handprints - 

Then we glued them on our colored sheet (blue was our color of the week!)!  Easy-peasy!!!  NOTE:  You can also do this a little closer to Thanksgiving and make it into Indian corn by letting the children put different colored fingerprints on top of the yellow corn.

Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was spent baking a color cake and since we knew there be NO leftovers, we made our very own birthday cakes to take home.

It is difficult to see the actual cake, but it is made from 3 different size squares (our shape of the week).  The children mix up shaving cream, glue and food coloring to make our special icing.  (There is no exact measurements for the shaving cream and glue.  I try to use equal parts of both.) 

Then we spread on the "icing"!

We added our candles and lit them with our fingerprints!

These are still puffy when they dry!  It is literally a science experiment AND an art project all mixed together!

We also had a wonderful time making our color tables, so all in all we had a great week!

Thanks for coming to visit us, I hope you pop back by again!

Valentine's Week!

Oh the madness has begun!  Yes, it is the week before Valentine's Day and we are SO busy at school.  We have been working on the most amazing present for our parents.  Our present includes a big surprise - we are writing and more than just our names!  Yes, for months now we have been working on our writing skills.  We have all different kinds of "pre"-writing activities that the children do everyday.  Most are so much fun they don't even realize they are learning to write.  I have page after page of laminated sheets that we write on each day (thanks to some wonderful dry-erase crayons!!!).  We also use our chalk box to write and draw on every day.

This HUGE box was given to me by one of my sweet parents.

 With a little contact paper our class now has a chalk board box.  

We love writing on it especially with the colored chalk.

OH NO!  I'm off topic again!  Let's get back to our Valentine presents.  Here they are . . . .

Let me tell you how we did this.  First we started by taking our pictures.  Look closely at our background.  My friend, Mrs. Christi found an old table cloth with hearts on it!  Isn't it perfect?!?!?!? AND thanks to my local Walgreens Store and all their fun editing choices, we made our present extra special by adding a HEART shaped photo.  The fun continued when we made our photo mat.  We used marbles and rolled the colors on!

My class loves to do marble rolling!  

It is a great fine motor skill activity 

and they love "reminding" me that we are using my Daddy's old marbles!

Now, let's talk about the "FABULOUS" part!  Look at our writing . . . 

YES, WE WROTE BY OURSELVES!!!!!!  Can you tell I'm proud?  I can hardly wait until Tuesday!!!

We also worked on some artwork that my class called the "Eric Carle Heart".  I guess I've read enough Eric Carle books to make a serious impression on them :0)  We started by painting our paper.  Now, we can't just "paint paper" that would be boring so we PAINTED the paper using all kinds of different objects.  We used a toothbrush - 

We used a make-up brush - 

We also used a plain 'ole paintbrush too!  Then we smeared all the paint together with a scrapper that I found.

The end results were awesome!

But we weren't finished yet!  We cut and tore the paper into strips and pieces (more fine motor skills!).

and glued them on a giant heart.

I added a little glitter glue around the edges and WOW!

These are proudly displayed on my bulletin board wall now and will be kept for our end of the year art show.

Since it was "H" week we wanted to incorporate something with our hands.  I love what we came up with.  This is our first very simple hand project -

 Here is a close-up of our poem.

I loved when the children realized they had made a heart with their hands!

Our second hand project was a little more fun and a lot more yummy!  We made our hand print with some red glitter paint.  

Next, we stamped on some hearts and added the yummy part - Sweet Tart Hearts!

Of course we had to eat some too!  The end results were pretty, fun and tasty!  We called it our "Tree of Love".

I think this year's class loves our weekly science experiments as much as I do.  This week we used the left over "Sweet Tart Hearts" as our experiment.  First, we dissolved them in a small amount of warm water.

The purple and green made a strange combination!

Then we added a small amount of baking soda.  

The acid in the candy and the baking soda made bubbles!

I love doing science experiments with everyday items.  You can find this experiment and others at Candy Experiments .  It is one of our favorite sites!

Thanks for checking on us this week.  I hope you come back and visit us again.  Next week we will have our annual Valentine's Party and talk about the letter "L".  After all, "February is the month of LOVE"!