Farm Week



This past week turned out to be even more exciting than usual.  Our unit was "The Farm" and after a very fun week of discussing Dr. Seuss, I knew I had to bring in some extra fun.  Little did I know, some of the other teachers were helping me out!  With that said, I have to start with our "Fabulous Fun Friday".   The four-year classes were talking about animals and pets last week and Mrs. Emily had one of her friends stop by and talk with us about puppies.

(The amazing Mrs. Emily is on the left!)

She brought wonderful pictures and told us all about mother and daddy dogs and they care for their puppies.  Then she showed us her surprise!

PUPPIES!

 

We even got to pet them and give them a little preschool love!  Of course everyone went home and told their parents they wanted a puppy!   OOOPPS!  THANKS MRS. EMILY FOR INCLUDING US!!!!!!

 

Back in our room we busy talking about the letter "R".  We worked on one of my favorite art projects - a red recycled rabbit!

He/she was really easy to make thanks to some recycled toilet tissue tubes and lots of red paint!  The eyes are stickers (everyone had to find a matching pair of eyes!), the feet are cut from cereal boxes and he/she has a cotton ball tale.  SUPER FUN!

Talking about the farm is fun but it is really hard to explain to children the art of milking a cow.  So instead of talking, we milked a cow! 

Yes, that is me holding a rubber glove and the cutie milking the rubber glove is my buddy Max!  I pricked tiny holes in some rubber gloves and my glass pretended to milk a cow.  It was great fun, messy but fun!

I'll continue our week in reverse order and show you what happened in our class on Thursday!  I've had a box of interlocking cubes in my room for over a week now.  Mostly the students just connected them together and that was fine, it was a good work out for our fine motor skills.  But, on Thursday I got sneaky!  Before they got to class I made a pattern with the cubes and set it on the table.  Of course that was the first thing everyone saw when they came in the door.  The next thing I knew the entire class was sitting the floor trying to make their very own patterns! 

I had to crop this picture to show you the SMILE on JB's face!

HE WAS SO PROUD!!!!



 



I had to pry some of them away from the cubes to work on our art project, but since we were cutting with scissors, no one really minded. 

As you can see, the students wrote the word, "cow" and cut the cow's spots all by themselves!  (Just a note:  I don't insist that my class write, I simply encourage it and let them give it a try!)

Writing words seemed to be extra fun this week because we also wrote the word FARM on our hand print animal project!



 

I especially like this farm scene. 

The child didn't want the sheep to be with the horse and cow!

This child wanted his fence to be broken!

 

I don't do many of the same projects year and year.  I always seem to find something that I think would be more fun.  BUT, one of this week's art project was so much I do it every year!  First, we paint a pink pig -

 

Then we had some mud!  

Okay, it is really brown paint, oatmeal, sand and glue!

 

And we have some really muddy pigs!

My class loves to cut with scissors!  I have never had a class that gets so excited about cutting.  We made a quick horse this week and it was the perfect opportunity to hand them the scissors

 

First, we wrote the word HORSE.

Then we cut some strips of black paper.

OH BOY, it is time to glue it all together!

I LOVE THEM ALL!

All in all, I must admit we had a great week!  Thanks again for visiting with us and I hope you will stop by again soon!







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.


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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!