Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Gardening Week

What a dreary week for Gardening week!...I had a ton of plans to dig in our dirt box, plant seeds and weed.  We didn't get to do any of it and this week has been more of the same...rainy :( Oh well! We did get to do some fun activities inside though and I can't wait to share them with you.

We started off the week talking about vegetables.  We painted with vegetables!  We used potatoes, cucumbers, carrots, broccoli and peppers with lots of different colored paints!  They turned out really cute and were all very different...




We had also talked about different colors of fruits and veggies and also worked on sorting and counting veggies!
For some reason I L-O-V-E worms.  I think they are so neat, and fortunately for me, I have a job in which I get to play with them!  The kids love them too!  I bought 50 red worms from the gas station! lol :)  We examined them, touched them (and washed our hands afterwards of course), picked them up and drew our own drawings of them.  I forgot to take pictures of the drawings but they are super cute!


We even painted with gummy worms! :)



One of our themes was worms AND snails so we completed a shape matching worksheet and colored the snail at the bottom.  It was great for reinforcing shapes!!


Touching Worms!


On Friday we worked on our sunflowers.  We cut around the yellow circle to create the "petals".  It's neat to see how some kiddos cut little snips close together and some cut using big snips and space them far apart!  They used a paintbrush and black paint to make the "seeds" of the sunflower and added the leaves and stems.


We also worked on the parts of the flower.  Miss Becky gave them four pieces to put together the flower puzzle and than talked about what parts of a flower we know.  The older kids were able to identify the beginning sound of the word and knew where to put it...these kids amaze me! :)

This was Miss Cindy's favorite activity of the week!  I even let her play it not once, but TWICE!  The object of the game is to get the most beans but you have to count out your own beans and also count the number on the dice so you know how many spaces to travel!  The kids did a great job!!!
Mr. Jason was being silly helping our friends in art!!
Being an photographer on the side, I had to take advantage of May being "National Photography Month".  I found this neat program that makes photographs into polaroids.  I am (secretly) fascinated with polaroid cameras and really want to own one!!  Mr. Jason made the camera and I took the photos and turned them black and white because I like black and white photographs a lot!
 This was our dramatic play area for the last two weeks.  It's hard to see but we have flowers, watering cans, cameras and binoculars, bug nets and bugs in addition to our baby dolls and dollhouse!

We love our outside time!  The kids really want to play with the chalk and bubbles lately!  We always bring one of our sensory tubs outside as well.  Here are some of the chalk drawings from the week!


 The picture below is me (drawn by Miss Cindy I think) and the girls added the details.  Baby Travis is upside down on my shoulder which really makes me laugh.  The kicker to this picture is if you look closely I have a yellow circle on my chest and that's "Miss Danielle's new baby"...

Most of you don't know but I am 9 weeks pregnant (crazy I know...) but none of the kids know that! LOL...Baby #2 is due 12/12/12.  We are hoping that it's not a Christmas baby.  Going through birth at one holiday (Thanksgiving) was enough!!  I can't wait to share this journey, yet again, with all of you!  I have the most supportive classroom parents ever and I thank you all so much!!!!


Have a great week!
:) Danielle

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Earth Week

It was Earth Week!  I forgot my camera all week...whoops...so I could only take pictures of some of our art work but I'll try to fill in the blanks as best as I can!  We had lots of trash to recycle this week in our dramatic play center and we did a good job figuring out what was trash and what was not!  We even used big trucks to haul our trash away!  On Thursday and Friday we even built with our trash...we had an Earth themed sensory tub with green dried peas and marbles that looked like the Earth.

This was actually the middle of the week craft.  We made owls for our slogan, "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute"...they turned out super cute!  They all look the same, but some have eyelashes, lines on their bellies and funny feet! :)


These were our fingerprint trees.  They turned out super colorful!  The kids love fingerpainting, smearing and having fun with paints...


This might be my favorite craft of all time and it was so fun for the kids...I found this idea on Pinterest (where else?? lol)...The kids used blue and green markers to color a coffee filter and than sprayed it with water and we let it dry.  Miss Becky and I painted their hands a neat blue color so it looked like they were "holding" the earth in their hands!



On Monday and Tuesday we read the story of The Lorax and talked about why we should take care of the trees.  Our three part craft was to make the Lorax character, watercolor the background and than add the truffula trees because truffula trees are what everyone needs!  A lot of the kids knew who the Lorax was from the movie! :)


We also worked really hard to explain what would make the Earth happy and sad.  We talked about things like air and water pollution, smoke, and garbage make the Earth sad.  Things like recycling, throwing away trash, and planting the garden make the Earth happy!


We had a great week learning about the Earth but are very excited about gardening week next week!  We will be playing with worms! :)

...Danielle...