Transportation and "T" Week

AHHHHH!  "T" Week!  This is an exciting week for us and yes, it is ONE of my favorites.  Let me show you some of the terrific stuff we did during our "T"ransportation Week!

We started off the week reviewing the shapes we have been talking about and making our wonderful shape car!  This ended up being more fun than I expected because everyone got so excited when they recognized the shapes.  I know this is simple, but it was very fun and effective.

Tuesday is a day when I try and have "extra-fun" art for us because we do not have any of our "special" activities (i.e. Spanish, Music, Chapel) and that can make for a long day.  This Tuesday really was extra special because we started our day with SCISSORS!!!!  I have to admit that this class LOVES to cut with scissors and they are very good!  We cut and cut and made these adorable little sailboats.

Of course everyone got to pick their favorite colors!  While our sailboats were drying we started working on making some water for them to float in.

The water was really fun to make because we just squirted blue, green and white paint onto the paper and started mixing it up!  WOW, the results were amazing!  I love projects like this because the children are so proud of them.  Here are the final results!

 

Everyone had such a good time all week practicing our "T" sounds.  We decided our favorite "T" word was turtle so we decided to make one.



 He is very simple but look closely . . . .

there is a tic-tac-toe board on his back!!!

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was extra special this week!  We headed to kitchen was all of the plastic trucks and cars that I could find.

 

We had a great lesson in sharing and mixing colors!  Can you see the green????

 

Now, finally my favorite part of "T" week began . . . "T"ubes and "T"ape!!!  OH MY!!  This is the one of the best days ever!  All we did was collect lots, lots and lots of paper towel, toilet paper and even wrapping paper tubes.

(This is only a small portion of the tubes.)

 

My friend and co-worker, Mrs. Christi and I cut long sections of masking tape and the imagination took over!

 



Some were small, some were tall, some were just plain HUGE!  No one cared, we just had a great day.  My favorite part of this activity is seeing the children's faces as they proudly take their creations to their parents at the end of the day!!!!!

 

WOW, this was really a terrific week.  Thank you so much for visiting with us and I hope you stop back by again.





"T" Week and Transportation

"T" Week was TERRIFIC!  But then again, I knew it would be ;)  I had tons of fun activities planned and to be perfectly honest, heck, I was even excited about it!  Nothing says Transportation like a good 'ole Truck, so we had to do an art project involving a truck.  We started by making truck tracks all over our paper.

Everyone enjoyed picking out different colors of shapes for their trucks.  The final results were TERRIFIC!

It didn't take me long to realize that for some strange reason EVERYONE was very excited to be at school.  We tip-toed our way to our big Music/Spanish room to work off some energy and what better way to burn off the wiggles then with a game of tennis!  That's right, we played "Balloon Tennis".  The rules were very simple, just hit the balloon with our special tennis racket, (a.k.a. paper plate) and try not to hit anyone else.

It took a little longer than I expected for everyone to grow weary of our game.  But after a while we noticed several of the little girls sitting over on the side.  Okay, time for a good circle time!  

I had a fun surprise for our circle time discussion.  A taxi cab!  Not a REAL taxi (we are in Central Alabama after all!) but look what I found.

Can you believe that someone was actually going to throw this away????  REALLY!  Well, it now has a new home with me!  Everyone loved climbing in and having their pictures taken in the taxi.  I made a little take home sheet for everyone that said, "T is for Taxi" and we glued our pictures to it.  I thought it would be just a little something special for the parents to keep.  I like to keep an eye out for film developing specials.  I think it is nice for the parents to get little "surprises" from time to time.

Since our taxi pictures were going home on Tuesday, I decided that we should call it "Taxi Cab Tuesday".  We even did a special piece of art to go along with it.  

Don't you just LOVE Rick Allen's hat?
He had been to New York over the summer and

he told me that the "Taxi People" all wore hats!  

I LOVE IT!

Okay, I know there has to be more to transportation than just taxi cabs and trucks, but wow they were so fun.  Wednesday we spent the day talking about other forms of transportation.  I loved it when one of the boys started talking about "boats".  That was it, we had to do an art project with boats!  We started by painting our water.  I love to paint with unusual items.  I want everyone to "think outside the box".  We painted our water with old make-up brushes.  They were the perfect thing to help us swirl the paint to make our water.  

I just dropped big blobs of blue and white paint onto a sheet of paper, then a added some glue for texture.  We swirled and swirl!  WOW, what fun and what beautiful art!  Unfortunately someone (that would be me!) forgot to take pictures of the final results.  But, I sure you can use your imagination to see our boats and the airplanes made from shapes.   :(

No good "T" week would be complete without a turtle project and I didn't want to miss an opportunity to do something extra fun.  Our Tim the Turtle started off the night before. My sweet friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Christi and I used hot glue fun to add a little extra fun to our turtles.  

Everyone was so surprised when they started painting.  

All of a sudden, Tim the Turtle had a tic-tac-toe board on his back!  Our end results were truly amazing!  

I love him!

Now anyone who knows me knows how much I LOVE Fridays!  Not because it is the last day of the week, but because we have Tremendous amounts of FUN on Fridays!  (I always want the students to WANT to come back to school on Monday!)  This Friday was no exception.  Our artwork was simple, but fun.  Lots and lots of hand prints made lots and lots of great art.

These alone are just terrific, but we live in Alabama AND it is football season.  So a few of my die-hard football guys got to make something a little different.  

See, I really am an equal opportunity teacher! ;)

I took out all the blocks from my classroom and replaced them with bottle tops!  

At first everyone just looked at me kind of funny.  But soon the fun begin.  By the end of the day everyone wanted us to keep the tops in our room all the time.  It seems they were a little more fun that I thought!

I also had trucks instead of cars in our room AND all our fun counting games had the counters replaced with tops!

The real fun for Friday started when we headed down to the kitchen for snack-time.  We ate a train!  

It really tasted terrific!

While we having our snack my sweet, sweet friend and fellow teacher, Mrs. Tiffany slipped in the back door.  We all had an amazing time watching her twirl her baton.  

WOW, she is really good!

Don't you love her tennis shoes, tutu and tiara!

Of course she gave each child a chance to twirl and everyone loved it!

The big surprise of the day was waiting on us we when came back to our classroom.  Tons tons of tubes and tape!  We spent the rest of the day working on our wonderful sculptures.  Some were tall 

some were not 

and some were . . . . well, I guess you could just say, some were just fun! 

What a terrific week!  Don't forget when having your own "T" week be sure to walk on your tip-toes, remind everyone to talk, not yell and when lining-up be sure to touch the wall with two fingers.  Adding fun little distractions like this not only reinforces the letter of the week, it sure does make the week more fun!

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you come back soon and check on us!

"C", Triangle and Yellow Week

"B" week was going to be hard to follow. But, I think we did a great job trying! This week it is all about the letter "C", the color yellow, triangles and the number 3! Oh, and don't forget our topic of the week - transportation. WOW, that is a lot to squeeze into one week.


Let's start out with Mrs. Karen's surprise! I found my son's old catching gear and brought it to school. It was still a little stinky, but no one seemed to care!


One of our fun projects this week was a cool looking car. Check it out and please notice that we used all of the shapes and colors that we studied, red circles, blue squares and yellow triangles!
Our special snack this week was a wonderful car cookie! I guess we could have just bought some cookie dough and cut a car shape but that's just not us. We made our from graham crackers, round vanilla wafers and yellow icing. They were a big hit!


Our two science experiments this week were a lot of fun. The first was ISO/THIXOTROPY. huh? Corn starch and water! :)

Here are my instructions -

Procedure: Place about a cup of cornstarch (aka corn flour) in a large bowl and add about a ¼ cup of water to the cornstarch. Keep adding water until the mixture appears somewhat thicker than pancake batter. With your hands, take a handful and knead the mixture, like you would bread dough. As the mixture is agitated or squeezed, it will become firm as long as continuous kneading or pressure is exerted. As soon as the pressure stops, the ‘batter’ will revert to its original form and ‘pour’ through your fingers. Even though the cornstarch and water is a liquid, you can form the stuff into a ball if you can squeeze and knead it quickly enough. The sensation of this in the hands is unique and must be experienced to be believed. It feels great!

What’s going on? This experiment demonstrates iso- and thixo-tropy properties of certain emulsions (fluid mixtures).
Isotropy is the property of a fluid to become firm when agitated. This is what you’re experiencing with the cornstarch and water. You can also see this while walking on wet sand at a beach. The sand firms up below your feet as you first touch the sand and then becomes more fluid, as your feet sink into the sand, just a moment later. If you run over the sand, the sand will feel very firm. If you walk slowly, your feet will sink below the surface with every step.
Thixotropy is the opposite of isotropy in that the fluid mixture becomes more fluid (less firm) as it is agitated. An example of this is where you strike the end of a ketchup bottle to get ketchup to come out of the bottle. The striking force temporarily causes the ketchup become ‘runny’ and it flows more easily from the bottle (and on to your new clothes - white ones). Another example is the infamous “quicksand”. If you thrash around in the quicksand, you will sink “quicker” because all that wiggling causes the sand to liquefy.

Mess Factor - Cornstarch is an edible, non-staining, harmless substance (probably one of the cheapest food stuffs you can buy), but this experiment tends to get cornstarch on clothing and the floor. The other thing about this experiment is that once you’ve put your hands into the cornstarch & water mixture (aka ‘glop’), you won’t want to take your hands out. It is quite a unique experience!

Things to Remember - Isotropic = cornstarch & water or beach sand Thixotropic = ketchup or “quicksand” [think of ‘thick ketchup’ for Thixo]

Think this is too hard for a group of three year olds? Think again, they loved it and tried to say every word!

The next experiment was just as simple but it had a WOW factor that even shocked me! I call it the Colorful Mixtures Science Experiment

What You Need:
Milk
Food coloring
Liquid dish soap
Dish- wide rim
What To Do:
1) Pour milk into a wide rimmed dish, and let sit until it warms to room temperature (THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP, the milk must be room temperature!)
2) Place drops of different food coloring in the milk
3) Place two drops of liquid dish soap into the mixture

Now stand back and watch!
Sorry there are no pictures, it is hard to coordinate photos with mess! :)
It was a great week! Next week we will be reviewing our shapes, colors and numbers while we study the letter "D" and talk about autumn! I can't wait!