Apples and Honey for a Sweet New Year!

Nothing beats the sweetness of Rosh Hashanah, or Jewish New Year.   Apples and honey offer hopes of a sweet new year, and also give us great focal points for the week's curriculum.

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A couple of simple activity trays get us in the mood for our apple picking adventures at Gidzich Ranch!

Sorting "apples" (wax paper balls covered in masking tape) by color  into bushels (dixie cups covered in masking tape with masking tape handles)

Stick the apples to the tree, then pick them off with the tweezers

This is why we have been continuously introducing new works...the children eat it up!

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It wouldn't be Rosh Hashanah if we weren't satisfying the sweet tooth with some honey cake.  With a few adaptations, we used this recipe and it turned out delish.

L'Shanah Tova!

Works Wednesday: New Works in the Classroom

We call activity trays "works" at Beansprouts Preschool.  But just because they are work, doesn't mean they aren't a whole lot of fun!  Fun...and developmentally meaningful.

We set up a table of activity trays in the middle of the classroom to appeal to the visual impulsiveness of some of our newer, younger children. It totally worked! This table has seen continuous use as children walk by, take a seat, and get to work. It calls upon something within each child that I cannot articulate, something that craves order and completion and a feeling of competency.

Each day we update the works a little bit by changing the materials or tools on the tray, and they become new and fresh and interesting all over again.  Strategies like this make a classroom manageable in these early months of the school year. If you have four little stations in the room that engage two to three children at any given time, this makes for a very focused (and calmer) classroom.  We are very much Reggio Emilia inspired in this way. The classroom is most definitely a "teacher" here at Beansprouts Preschool.

American Flags Collage and Open-Ended Art

DISCLAIMER: I have not been my best blogging self lately. It's usually a matter of scrounging up photos that I happened to take during an activity.  I wanted to post about this one so I could pin it on my own Pinterest board for July next year : )  I tend to organize my boards by month so that it's easily referenced according to seasons and holidays.

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Bl brought in an American flag for "America's birthday" on Tuesday.  This inspired the children to make American flags of their own, with their unique creative twists, of course.

Our star hole punch was indispensable here.

One of my long time friends and mentors, Diane, used to say that when we put out activities that are open-ended, they will appeal to children of all ages. I find this to be very true, and children use the materials according to their level of development. 

The following are the "final products" of a 3.5 year old and a 5 year old. Can you tell which is which?

Guada also found this to be true when she put out a shaving cream block activity.  She presented the materials and the idea of sticking the foam blocks together with the shaving cream. Which do you think is made by the 3 year old versus the 5 year old?

Who do you think had more fun? Who do you think learned more from the activity? 

Well I can't say for sure, but they both stayed at the station for an extended period of time, indicated to me that fun and learning were taking place!

I think I'll try to practice a little open-ended thinking myself today.  Letting go of models, expectations, products.  Welcoming spontaneity, new ideas, inspiration.

*Stephanie*

Models and expectations

Last week, I introduced a tray of sorted color strips for the children, and I showed them how to make 3 dimensional rainbows.  There were a ton, but here is a small sampling. Interesting how different they can turn out!

Definitely not like my model, which told me how creative and 'outside-the-box' thinkers they are!!!

 Well with all of those paper strips, I had lots left over.  So I thought I'd show the children how to make paper chains.  I thought that since we've been exploring the idea of rainbows and colors, the paper chain would make a beautiful garland around the classroom.   You know, a long colorful chain, where we all connect our chains to those of others.

Yeah, right. That's not how it went at all.

Nobody wanted to connect their chain to anybody else's, and they all wanted to decide where to hang their own up in the classroom.

Imagine how frustrating it would be for the teacher and the children if I had enforced my model about how this activity "should" go.  The children were learning a new skill, so focusing on color arrangement and even looping two circles together took a lot of cognitive and fine motor control.  Creating the chains based on my model was totally out of the question.

I had a model, but the kids had their process.

And once they realized they could make me "faint" because of how beautiful they were making the classroom, then the fun began.

What makes these children happy? Making Stephanie faint!!!

I was too busy fainting to take photos of what was happening, but I told the kids very firmly that they can't hang up their paper chains because it might make the classroom so beautiful that I would faint!!!

But of course they did it anyway.

They had so much fun making me faint and then waking me up that we ended up with paper chains all over the place!

The classroom is theirs. They chose where to put the decorations and how long to make them.  The most important thing is that they had fun. This would have been a very unlikely outcome if I had made this activity go my way!

And, better than my expectations, our Rainbow Tree is also quite lovely these days.

Science-y Bubbles

We had a science-y sort of morning.

I mean, any teacher who dares to leave dish soap blended in the food processor next to a tray full of colors and droppers is asking for it! 

Asking for scientific discovery, that is!!!

We discovered that it is very hard to mix the colors that were dropped into the foam.

After experimenting with using multiple droppers in one hand (many kids tried this independently of each other--I guess they are ready for the next level of fine motor)...

Stirring was a must.

Making prints would have worked, but they were pretty bubbly.

Here is the stirred and non-stirred one.

We rinsed and refilled the bubble trays several times.

When these two got together, the scientific exploration took off! (De ja vu!)

They rocked and shook the tray, at first gently and then more vigorously:

And they observed the results.

Here are the results.  How would you describe them???

So, of course, they had to shake the other tray to test the hypothesis that shaking works!  

Eventually, every new child who came to the activity thought that shaking was just part of the process, leaving no tray unshaken from this point on.

My favorite part was hearing the children use the language that I normally use. "I wonder what will happen if we..."


That statement is a scientific mind in the making.

Oh, and in the above photo, they learned how to make crevasses. These don't come from standard dropping.  These require squeezing at a certain pressure and coming in from a certain angle.  Try it! 

And we made a good ol' Beansprouts Preschool Mess.

Chalking things up

I finally used the Rust-Oleum Chalk Board Paint that I purchased months ago at the hardware store. (Amy at Child Central Station led us to a recipe for home-made chalkboard paint and it looks so simple that I'm going to have to try it!)

The side of this shelf definitely needed to be covered in chalkboard paint! I used painters tape to create two sections. My goal is that the top would be used for text, maybe a label for the picture below or something.

Here's me wondering what the kids will do with this cool little chalkboard space?

Well, they did use the top for text...

We made sure to equip the area with the right tools...

namely a reliable supply of chalk and a wet rag for a dustless and thorough erase. 

I also used chalkboard paint to cover the ugly pre-decorated side of this beautiful train table.  Okay, I might have "helped" kick things off by adding roads and a skyscraper.

Which they promptly erased and fixed.

Sometimes one path is all we need.  Makes things much less complicated.

So with these chalkboard spaces available, I can get rid of our chalkboard easel, right? 

OR I can add baby food jars of water with feathers and watercolor brushes so the kids can do a little zen water painting.

Some day, I will find black chalk board paint and paint a huge wall of it!!!

*Stephanie*

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