Baby It's Cold Outside!

The great state of Alabama, as well as most of the country, has been COLD lately!  School started back for us on Tuesday!  But, due to the extreme cold, our school, like so many others, started an hour later.  This was NOT, repeat NOT a good way to welcome the students back from Christmas break.  Now, I know my students do not know how to tell time, but their little internal clocks were all off.  It took most of Tuesday to get things "normal" in my classroom.  It was fun listening to everyone tell me what they received for Christmas.  We giggled and laughed most of the day and listened to some "regular" music (that's what "T" called it since I didn't have Christmas music playing).  Our first fun art project for 2014 will be kept for our upcoming art show. 

We started by letting the children cut some white construction paper for our snow.  Next, we glued our snow onto a piece of blue construction paper and added our hand/arm print for the tree and our palm prints for our little snowman/girl.  It took just a few minutes for that the dry and then comes the FUN part, we added the snow.  Earlier that morning, I found an old tube from a roll of plastic wrap and covered it with hot glue.

  We rolled the tube in white paint and then rolled it onto our paper.

After everything dried, we mounted it to a large piece of black construction paper and added window panes!  A WONDERFUL Winter Window!

 

Tuesday was bitter cold down here in Alabama and since we aren't accustom to this kind of temperature we forced to stay inside for our recess time.  YUCK!  Well, not really!  I saw on one of my favorite sites Teach Preschool where the children were weaving through a rainbow.  I loved it of course (because I love everything on this website!) and wanted to try it.  Here is my version, we call it "Sneaking Through a Snowstorm"! 

WOW!  It was fun!!!!!

 

No fun winter themed week would be complete without talking about PENGUINS!!!!  I must say, our penguins are very cute.  His/her fat little belly was made white by sticking different white objects to contact paper.



 

Our Thursday was spent talking about polar bears!  Of course we read Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear by one of our favorite authors, Eric Carle.  Our polar bear craft was taken right off of PINTEREST .  It was very simple but oh so much fun.  We really gave our fine motor skills a workout.

 

 

Since we were talking about polar bears, we had to play a polar bear game, right???  Meet "Pete, the Polar Bear" . . . .

He was made from a vacuum cleaner box (don't worry, I didn't get a vacuum for Christmas! LOL).  I covered him in white butcher paper, added ears, eyes, a nose and cut a hole for his mouth.  We talked about how polar bears like to eat fish, so I made us some little fish to feed him.

 

All the little fish were turned upside down on the floor.  They looked like they were swimming.  Each child picked out a fish and told us what written on it.  If you got it right, you got to feed the fish to the polar bear.  SUPER FUN!!!!!  I think we could have done this for an hour!

Our "Fabulous Fun Friday" was one of my favorites.  We started the day painting with ice!  On Wednesday, we all went to the kitchen to make ice paint.  Everyone stirred up little cups of paint and water.  We covered them with foil and stuck a popsicle stick in it.  On Friday, they were ready, no instructions were needed.

This one was fun because it had yellow and red paint in it.

The child who mixed it together didn't mix it thoroughly,

so we got to see the yellow and red paint.

This green ice paint was made with glitter paint!

LOVE!

They were ALL amazing!

 

As soon as we were finished painting we headed to make a snowman.  Now, by the time Friday came around, the temperature in Alabama was back into the 50's (ahhhhh . . . . winter in the south!), so we made our traditional "southern" snowman.  First, we had to make snowballs, and lots of them.

 

 

As you can see, we use newspapers!  We stuffed three large white garbage bags with old newspapers to make "Frosty"!

 

Hopefully, he will stay in my classroom for a few days.

No "Fabulous Fun Friday" would be complete without a little "cooking" time!  This Friday we made a snowman cookie. 

Everyone loved him!  We used one white powdered sugar donut (we cut it half),

 

added M&M eyes and a candy corn nose!  MMMMMM. . . . it was so good!

 

Thanks so much for stopping by!  I hope you come back next week, we will continue our unit on "Winter"!





Merry (Belated) Christmas

Looks like I did make a New Year's resolution this year - more blogging!!!  I apologize for my lack of post lately, hopefully I am back on track.  My class had an amazing few weeks of Christmas fun and I hope you can get a few ideas for your classroom.  If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably already know that I don't normally do the same art projects year after year.  To make my list of "must dos" an activity has to be very special and most of our Christmas activities are just that.  Let's started with one of my favorites, our name Christmas trees.

I love watching the students carefully pick out their triangles.  Then the excitement in their eyes as they write each letter of their name.  Finally, the sheer joy as they glue everything together.  This activity always gives the children a wonderful feeling of success!

Our Christmas gift to our parents are always a hit.  This year I actually had a couple of parents "ask" if we would be making our special ornament.  That was seriously a proud moment for me!  Here is our ornament.

We dress the girls as angels and the boys are shepherds.  The children always love painting their picture frames.  Then, we have to make our wrapping paper!  Since it is "B" week we use balloons

 

and baseballs!

It was a little messy, but it was a lot of fun!

Here is another oldie, but goodie . . . our puzzle wreath!  Everyone glues on some old puzzle pieces to our circle.  It is always fun to watch the children "put the ugly side" up.  They think it is funny that we are not using the "pretty side".

After the glue drives we put on the green paint.

 

After the paint dries we added little red sequins. and a pretty red ribbon.

I know these look pretty on every one's Christmas trees!

 

We have worked very hard all year on our scissor cutting skills so everyone was ready for our next project.  First we cut strips of red paper and glued them on to a large circle.  Next, we added our hand prints and the results were wonderful!

 



Isn't this the sweetest peppermint?

 

Our next couple of projects really helped us to explain to the students the real meaning of Christmas.  The parents have not seen the first project!  It is being saved for our big end of the year art show.    I love this and children enjoyed it too.  The children enjoyed making the "sand" with some old make-up brushes and the star was painted with glitter paint!

 

You know every now and then a simple project is fun and since we had to rehearse for our big Christmas program, our classroom time was limited.  I think this next project was perfect!

I loved when one of m students said she wanted this to stay in her room so she could "see Baby Jesus all the time".

 

Okay, one more art project to close out our Christmas theme.  This is a new one!

 

Each child tore pieces of different colored green construction paper into small pieces and glued them on a triangle shape cut from poster board.  This was a great way for us to use up some scrap paper, review our shapes and work on our fine motor skills all at the same time!  We even used our fingers to make little glitter paint ornaments!

 

Thanks for visiting with us!  I hope you use some of our ideas and if you do please let me know how it turned out!!!  







Let's Talk Turkey!

First of all, let me issue a big 'ole apology for being away from my blog so long.  We had a wedding at our house!  Let me introduce you to our family . . .

My husband, Bill, Me, our son Jay and his lovely bride Brooklyn!

 

I plan to go back and play catch-up, hopefully during the Christmas holidays.  But, for now let's talk about Thanksgiving!!  One of our very first projects this year was special.  Last spring our Director of Children's Minister, Mrs. Brenda Clark did a little house cleaning.  It was like "Christmas in April" for me.  I found so many things little treasures!  One of my favorites was several packages of very "strange" looking artificial leaves.

Trust me, NO ONE would want to use these for leaves!  But, I did want to use them for feathers!!!  It was so much fun letting the children pick out their very own combination of leaves.  If you look closely, you may notice that the turkey is made from shapes.  The body is an oval, the eyes of course are circles, the beak is a diamond shape that magically turns into a triangle when you close it and finally those cute little feet are stars.  I think he is so cute!



THANK YOU MRS. BRENDA!!!

 

Like most teachers, I love new supplies!  Look what showed up in our supply closet . . .

This is some very good stuff and the children love it!  It isn't as messy as regular glue and a lot more fun to "dab" on.

 

Our next project came to us by one of my former student's Mom.  We loved it!

 

We used vegetable rotini.  I think I like it because as with most project, the process was so much fun.  It didn't take long for everyone to realize that it was fun to "dip" the pasta in the glue.  Yep, it was messy - very messy, but lots and lots of fun.  By the way, walking around all day making turkey sounds NEVER gets old for a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds!  We have had so much fun gobbling around our classroom.

 

Our next project is an old favorite.  I say old because we have actually done it before and if you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I like to add new things each year.  But, this is just too cute and fun.  The children got so excited painting the toilet tissue rolls.  I kept asking them what they thought we were making and I loved their answers.  I got everything from "trees" to "a dirty truck". 







The feathers are their hand prints and the feet are stars (again).  The turkeys actually stand up so I hope at least one or two of these little guys will be the centerpiece of someone's Thanksgiving table.

 

Okay, you know those good 'ole hand print turkeys that we have made for years and years??  Well, we have given them a little twist.

 

 

Since we are 3 and 4 years old, we need something more than just a hand print!  The children had the best time putting beads onto a pipe cleaner.   I love watching them pick out their favorite colors.  Can you tell what color "B-man" likes . . .

Yep, he spent so much time picking out his beloved "green" beads.  Oh, the little pieces of burlap were placed on some old pieces of cardboard and held on with large gold brads.  SUPER CUTE and FUN!

 

Goodness gracious, we did a lot of turkeys these last few weeks.  I will post our other Thanksgiving ideas later (I promise).  In the mean time, I hope you give a few of these ideas a try.  

Greatest Art Project EVER!

I'm skipping ahead and posting again today because I want to share with you what I think is the GREATEST art project ever.  WOW, that is a big, bold statement isn't it???  Well, you be the judge!

 

 

Our letter last week was "M" so this just seemed perfect.  We are reaching for the moon and the stars.  YES, with the exception of cutting out the moon and the children's bodies), these were all done completely by the students themselves!  I saw a similar art project on a children's museum website last year.  I'm sorry that I don't have the original art piece (it was done by an adult artist) but if you do, please let me know and I will give them credit.

NOTE:  A big thank you to Katy Mitchell!  She lead me to the original picture I saw.  Here it is Artsonia.  THANK YOU so much Katy!!!

This project was really very simple but the children were all so proud of themselves.  I loved watching each child finish their art and look at it.  They were so happy.  I hope you will try something like this with your class and if you do, please send me a picture, I would love to see it!

Thanks for dropping by!

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.