Easter

We had a lovely week discussing Easter and celebrating the resurrection! I hope all of your families had a wonderful weekend in prayer and thanksgiving.

rice and tile letters in the sensory table

broke out the light projector again to explore  light and shadows

painting egg shapes with plastic easter eggs; these eggs had upper and lowercase letters printed on them and so many of the kids looked for "their" letter to paint with

painting our egg carton crosses

another cross activity involving important moment's in the life of Christ

He made a backpack for his bear!

Resurrection scene made from toilet paper tubes, the kids enjoyed playing with the characters and retelling the story to each other

chalk easter eggs

hidden message on our water coloring page

Thank you for bringing in a couple of sweet little visitors! These baby chicks were the  hit of the week.

More special visitors, my daughters Maggie and Grace spent the day with us. here Maggie is reading them The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle, they were very attentive

Universe and Underwear

Universe provocation: books, flashcards, displays of the solar system, plus paper and crayons to reflect on what they were exploring

upside down drawing

One of our friends brought in a coloring game that he had created at home so we set it up for all of his friends (and teachers) to play along with.

Using our umbrellas to count raindrops

They all loved showing off their undies!

painting planets; this project was a wonderful representation of how they all approach things in their own unique ways. Some kids were very thoughtful and careful about what colors they chose, others mixed and swirled with so little hesitation that I thought their paper would tear! Some used one or two small paintbrushes, some were up to their arms in paint. Some kids experimented with new colors combinations, others went with the classics. I loved this whole process.

Here's an example of one kiddo's use of different tools and textures

splattering white paint for the backdrop to our planets

glow in the dark paint for our galaxies

These guys discovered that they could make the magnets on top of the table move by using another magnet underneath the table. Lots of excitement and experimenting here!

Made our Jumbo U with some vibrant colorful chalk and continued it with some blank paper for them to use on their own. We also recorded a couple of stories about their drawings. Those are posted in the room.

Today we shared with each other some interesting things  we've learned about space. As you can see, there is a wide range, from the sun not being the biggest star to the fact that aliens have butt cheeks! You just never know what you'll learn!

Weeks S & T

We had so many fun things going on the last couple of weeks! Our family visitors helped us make rain sticks, oobleck, props for the story The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, and we decorated delicious cookies. Here is a sampling of a few of our recent learning experiences.

straw painting

decorating and enjoying our desserts

salt trays for writing exploration

color sorting with tubes and pom poms

T is for treasure maps! 

Look how many "T" words we thought of!

The sensory table was empty this day but one little learner  organized a hand tracing and cutting project for the other kids to play with.

Inspired by a wonderful book called "Stuck". We cut things out of magazines and stuck them to our tree.

triangle art

squishing our oobleck

new tool for Handwriting Without Tears centers

Add caption

soapy water and sponges in the sensory table

painting with toothbrushes

Rock Stars

We celebrated the letter R this week with some rock and roll! Not only did we color, cut and glue some rockers and design our own guitars, but we painted with actual rocks and studied fossils in rocks at the sensory table. We also read a great Noah's Ark story called Rock Steady by Sting. We freeze danced to some music by Wilco and at the end of the day had a special family visitor to make us some green smoothies. They were delicious. We wrapped it up with more family visitors who helped us make box guitars and egg carton caterpillars inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was a very fun week!

There was a large sea shell fossil in this rock and he was holding it up to see if he could hear the ocean.

rocking on his new guitar

beautiful finished products of our pebble painting

trying our healthy and yummy  smoothies

shaking our rock paintings

decorating our box guitars

caterpillars