"U"nited We Stand!

This past week was all about the good 'ole USA and we had so much fun studying about our country!  We started the week with an amazing activity.  This is an art project I have done before BUT it has evolved.  My class cuts extremely well for 3 and 4 year olds so I let them cut their very own stripes for our flags.

Cutting 7 red stripes takes a lot of patience but my class was up to the challenge!  Gluing down the stripes was fun too!

We added fingerprints for our stars and the results were beautiful!

I think Betsy Ross would be very proud!

 

We also started talking about The Constitution.  Now I bet I know what you are thinking . . . is she kidding???  NOPE!  And my little sponges loved it.  We really just focused on the Preamble, you know the part that says, "We the people . . ".  We couldn't actually recite the Preamble but at least we got the first few words AND their meaning.  After all these years my class can still amaze me! 

 

Wednesday was spent talking about our first president, George Washington.  I shared fun facts and read wonderful books about him.  We even made our very own "George" art project.

 

Thursday was spent discussing our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln.  The fact that he lived in a log cabin had everyone talking!  So, of course we had to make our very own log cabin and Abraham Lincoln.

 

This time I cut the strips and the children glued them on.  I'm going to veer off topic for just a second (skip down to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear me rant.)  Do you see the "dried glue" on these (and ALL) of my class' art work???  Do you see the smeared handprint on the bottom photo???  Do you see the crooked eyes and logs???  This is proof that my students do their OWN WORK!  I cannot stand to see children's art work that looks . . . hmmm . . . well . . . like an adult did it!  Because if it does, then the child did not do it by him/herself.  Children are messy and they should be!  I will NOT do an art project for my students!!!  I will guide them, I will cheer them on, I will support them with every fiber of my being but, I WILL NOT do work for them.  OKAY, I done.  Back to our week . . .

We also learned about what it means to vote.  On Thursday, we pretty much voted on everything.  We voted on what color we like best.



You can see blue won by a landslide!

 

We voted on what books we read too!  I think everyone liked voting because I was asked if we could "keep doing it"!  YEA!  Success!

 

I found these cute little "Pledge Badges" over at Little Miss Kindergarten.  I enlarge ours and each child colored them.  (I KNOW . . . "Mrs. Karen's class actually used crayons!"  SHOCKER!)  Everyone was very proud to wear them in carpool!  Oh, yes, everyone in my class can and does recite the Pledge of Allegiance each and every day!

 



Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was turned into our Unusual Day!  We have done this for several years and I do believe each year is more fun.  The children came in to find new books.  All the books about our country and the presidents were gone!  In their place were Christmas books, books about Thanksgiving and even books talking about summer!  AND our blocks were gone too!  I traded them in for . . . .

 

 

well, I don't really know what they are but they sure were fun to build with! Everything we did on Friday was unusual!  We even drew pictures under the tables!!!

After our unusual art work was finished we gathered in one of our "large" rooms and played a little under the table game.

Everyone seemed to enjoy crawling under the tables and over the chairs! 
This was our "U" week (you know . . . for United States of America)!  We had to eat something fun . . . red, white and blue cookies?  NOPE!  Uhhhh . . . how about Ugly cookies!  YEP, that sounds better!  We headed to the kitchen . . .

 

we put drops of EVERY color food coloring we had into the bottom of little cups.  Next everyone got a spoonful of vanilla icing.   Here comes the fun part . . . . . we stirred it up and spread it on our cookies!

 



 

We had some rather strange colors but no one minded because they tasted so good! 

 

Thank you for stopping by!  I hope you come back again.  Next week is our Dr. Seuss week and I'm sure it is going to be even more fun!

USA!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . "I LOVE THE USA!"  What an amazing week we had talking about our wonderful country and some of the people who made it great! 

We started out with one of my all time favorite ideas.  Each child was assigned a specific person who helped shaped our country.  I went to the library and found historical books about each person.  My class loves when I show them "grown-up" books.  I know, most of the information in these books was too advanced for my class, but we loved the pictures and there were a lot of exciting details that our normal books lacked.  I also gave them little details all week about their specific person and by the end of the week everyone was referring to each other by their character's name!  My favorite moment came when I overheard Abraham Lincoln say, "Hey George (Washington), do you want to play with me on the playground?".  SUCCESS!

We started our week by talking about George Washington.  Talking about President Washington was fun and exciting for my class, especially when they saw his hair and clothes.  We spent the day chopping down the cherry tree and working on this amazing craft.

This was so simple but so much fun!  At the same time we were talking about George Washington we started discussing Betsy Ross.  Well, sweet Kloe (a.k.a. Betsy Ross) said she wanted to make Betsy Ross instead of George Washington.  Uhhhh . . . . okay, here is Kloe's version of Betsy Ross!

The bonnet was ALL Kloe's idea!  She saw it in one of our books and nothing would do until we figured out how to put a bonnet on Betsy,  I LOVE IT!!

Wednesday was spent talking about our flag.  We talked about the 13 stripes and counted ALL the stars (over and over and over again!).  We looked at pictures of older flags and flags from other countries.  We also made our very own American flags!

The only part of the flag that had any assistant from me was the blue square.  I drew it and the children did the rest. 

 The children used their fingers to make the stars.

We had a wrench thrown into our plans on Thursday but since it was such an opportunity, we did not mind.  One of our local TV meteorologist came to visit us.  James Spann came to talk to us about the weather. 

'

Since we were talking about our flag, we made Mr. Spann a very special flag!

 

I think he really like it!  We even made it onto the local news on Friday night!

 

After Mr. Spann left we spent the remainder of our day talking about Abraham Lincoln.  Since everyone was amazed to learn that he lived in a log cabin, we made one for very own.

 

 

Look closely and you can see the numbers written down the side.  I took ten strips of paper and wrote 1 through 10 on them.  The children had to put them in order to form the log cabin.  Of course the rest of the art project was a good way to review our shapes.  Good 'old Abe had a circle for his head and 2 rectangles made his hat.  And the log cabin had a rectangle door, a square window and a triangle roof.  We used the child's fingers to make his beard.

Finally our Fabulous Fun Friday arrived!  Our letter of the week was "U" so we declared Friday "Unusual Day"! 

Our day begin by our class coming in to see all our new unusual classroom.  We removed the "regular" blocks and replaced them with . . .

well, I'm not real sure what these are but I found them in our supply closet.  I think they are some type of cardboard supports.  We used them along with some cardboard boxes my friend Laura gave us for some really cool buildings.

We actually called them "logs" and used them for our log cabins. 

I also added a new fine motor skill game.  It was so simple, I glued little cups to a large rectangle box and added a golf ball.  It was a big hit! 

We had so much fun trying to move the ball through out simple maze.

I will admit the most fun activity we did this past week was very unusual!  We drew pictures under the table!

We used markers and colored pencils to make some amazing art work (which of course I didn't get any pictures).  But, it was so much fun!

As our week came to an end we headed to the kitchen to make some (very) ugly cookies! 

We added several different colors of food coloring to our vanilla icing to make the "ugliest" color.  We spread it on some graham crackers and YUM, they were so good!

Because of President's Day on Monday, our week was a little short, but we managed to squeeze in a lot of fun.  I hope you find some of these ideas helpful for your classroom and hope you stop back by again!

Friends Around the World and "O" Week

This week our unit was scheduled to be "Friends Around the World" and the letter "O".  If I have learned nothing else from teaching pre-school for the last 16+ years, I have learned that things change!  And change they did this week!   I did start off the week planning to stick to my lesson plan of "Friends Around the World" by talking about the amazing country of Italy and Leonardo Da Vinci.  We looked at the beautiful flag of Italy and discussed the meaning of each of the colors.

Green - Hope, Joy and Love

White - Peace and Honesty

Red - Hardinesss, Bravery, Strength and Valour

But of course if you are a preschooler, when you see an Italian flag you automatically think of Francesco Bernooulli!

Ahhhhhh, the power of media!

We also talked about Michelangelo his wonderful sculptures and art.  I had several wonderful pictures of the Sistine Chapel and the students loved looking at them.  It's fun to look at pictures of great art, but how about let's make some Michelangelo art of our own!  We hit the floor for this lesson and drew UNDER the tables! (Edited because this crazy teacher wrote Leonardo de Vinci instead of Michelangelo!)

As soon as I said "u"nder the tables, several students yelled "under starts with U"!  OHHHHHH they remembered last week's letter of the week, "U"!  A sweet teacher moment for sure.  Some of the children would have stayed under the tables for the entire day, others spent only a few minutes on their art and they were ready to move on.  It didn't really matter because we all had a wonderful day!

Tuesday we talked about the letter "O".  We spent the making the "O" sound and laughing.  For some reason making the "O" sound is extremely funny.  It was a very happy day in our classroom.  We did a very impressive art project on Tuesday.  We started with a plain black piece of construction paper and covered it with chalk.

Next, we poured black paint on the bottom and let it run off the top of the paper.

Everyone loved letting the paint dripped into the garbage can!

After it dried we added a little owl, a moon and lots of stars!

The end results were nothing short of amazing!

It is hard for me to believe that these were done by 3 and 4 year old children!  

BUT THEY DID IT ALL BY THEMSELVES!

I'm ending this posts now because as I said earlier, "things change".  The rest of our week was devoted to Leap Year and good 'ole Dr. Seuss' Birthday.  

Our Country!

Last week was spent talking about "Our Country".  I will make no apologies for being a "Born in the USA; Pledge of Allegiance Saying; Star Spangle Banner Singing; Red, White and Blue Wearing; Flag Flying; Bible Carrying; All American Girl"!  So with that being said . . . let's talk about MY country!

No week would be complete without talking about a couple of my favorite presidents.  Here our a couple of our George Washingtons -

and here are a couple of good 'ole Honest Abraham Lincolns!

No "Our Country" week would be complete without making an American flag.  I think our class did a wonderful job with their flags.

There is a little special surprise about the stars that I wanted to share with you.  Our letter of the week was "U" so we used some very small cocktail umbrellas to paint on our flags!

FUN!

In honor of "U" week we spent our "Fabulous Fun Friday" doing unusual things.  First we painted an umbrella with unusual objects - no paint brushes were allowed!

Everyone had so much and the end results were very unusual!

This week cooking activity turned out to be very unusual to say the least!  We made ugly cookies!  Everyone  added several different colors of food coloring to their vanilla icing . . .

and stirred!

And stirred!

Finally we spread our ugly icing onto our cookies

and enjoyed!

For our weekly science experiment we headed outside.  We are having some unusually warm weather right now, so we just couldn't stay inside!  We did a fun science experiment with baking soda, vinegar and a plastic bag!  Put the baking soda into a bag  -

 Add a little vinegar -

 AND then WATCH!

POP goes the bag!

I've got a riddle for you.  Do you know how to tell if it was a good day at school?  Look at the teacher, if she smells like vinegar and has paint and baking soda ALL OVER HER, it was a good day!

Thanks for visiting with us.  I hope you got a few good ideas to do with your class and I hope you come back again to check in on us!