overwhelmed

Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed by all of the words and images that float on the screen before me as I scroll through blog-world. To be honest, that's why I've been avoiding it lately. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE that so many ideas are right there at my finger tips. No more searching through magazines and books for something to do with the littles. No need to do the same thing each year with every one of my classes. But sometimes and on some days, it is just too much. For one thing, it isn't humanly possible for me to try each and every one of the activities that I find that I like. Secondly, I have a little trouble keeping track of all the ideas I see. I print them off or stick them in idea folders. I jot down notes on a pad that I keep near my laptop. But, invariably, I forget where I found a great idea just when I need it most. Case in point: these triangles. A few weeks ago (I think!), I saw an idea for teaching organic shapes. The littles trace the shape with a sharpie and then color it in with water based markers. Finally, they spray water over the paper so that the colors run. I loved this idea and the littles had a great time with it but I'm sorry that I can't give proper credit to it's originator :( The computer should be making my life easier - why do I feel like it's just making me crazy???

little miss muffet has nothing on us . . .

The littles took turns acting out "Little Miss/Master Muffet" while I snapped photos. Once the photos were developed we glued them on paper and drew spiders.

I attached the following poem to each of their papers:

Little Miss/Master __________ sat on her/his tuffet eating her/his ______________ all day. Along came a spider who sat down beside her/him and frightened Miss/Master _________ away!

The littles had fun telling me what they were eating out of the bowls.

F is for fingerpainting on foil

jack smiled back and then replied, "i'm just a pumpkin with a light inside"

a little color mixing with watercolor paint

some tearing construction paper for a stem

sharpie for a cute face

a bit of teacher help for the face cutting

scraps of kite paper behind the faces

and . . . voila! adorable jacks

i love these every year

log hotel

I was first introduced to Log Hotels when my daughter was a toddler and we took several classes at our local nature center in Michigan. As part of each class we would take a walk in the woods, stopping to observe nature all around us. When we'd come across a fallen log we would stop to examine the plant and animal life that had moved in and taken up residence.

Our logs are painted forearms/hands. We used photos from old Ranger Rick magazines, stickers, foam leaves and acorns, and silk leaves to adorn our logs. Some of the littles really got into this activity - making up elaborate stories about the animals inhabiting their log hotels.

What's in a name?

I gave the littles watercolor paint and the first letter of their first names cut from watercolor paper. Once the letters were dry we glued them on black cardstock and the littles tucked a photo of themselves somewhere on the letter. I do a lot with the children's names all during the school year because their names are a meaningful connection to the world of reading and writing for them. Next up: a class alphabet book using our names.

apples

I try to stay away from themes that aren't really relevant to the experiences of four year olds that are growing up in hot and humid southwest Florida. That being said, we do explore apples every fall. Even though we don't grow apples here and can't go to the orchard, apples are still "in season" at our local grocery stores. Today we cut open some apples and explored them with our 5 senses. We talked about what we call the different parts of the apple (core, seeds, flesh . . .) and we also discovered the "star" surprise inside when you cut an apple horizontally. Then we put all of those apple halves to good use making apple prints. I also found some large green, red, and yellow apples in an old Mailbox magazine and after laminating them they made good sorting bases to be used with stickers. Because they were laminated we can re-use them.