Wordless Wednesday

Thanksgiving Feast Placemats

Who knew that microwaving frozen mixed berries would make some great watercolor-like paint? From the same bowl of berries, the children could get different shades of red and purple and pink.  So in a way, it was like art and science!  We used our berry-stained leaves as decorations for our placemats for the Thanksgiving Feast.

Here are what the children are feeling grateful for this year:

Br: "I am grateful for my family."
Za: "I am grateful for princesses, horses, cats, and Ak. I miss her."
Le: "I am grateful for my dog, Rucca, Lucy, and Katie."
Gi: "I am grateful for my brother named Ta."
Bl: "I am grateful for my mom, my dad, my baby brother. I sometimes love my friend, Aiden."
Ta: "I am grateful for the sun and the moon that shines and dogs and kitties and cows.  I'm almost thankful for everything! I love all the things in the land, even lions and bears."
Be: "I am grateful for my cat and my next door dog."
Sa: "I am grateful for a snake and drawing.  I used to like rainbows and I still like rainbows."
So: "I am grateful for riding on bicycles!"
Ha: "I am grateful that my mom and dad are coming to the feast."

Te: "I am grateful for my dogs, Ha, Gary, Le, Stephanie, Renee, and Ab."

Bird Seed

Since it's been colder and wetter, our mud pie kitchen area has been used a little bit less for some reason. After visiting my new friend's preschool and seeing how much fun the children had with birdseed in their outdoor kitchen, I just had to try it.  Boy did it enliven the area.   

If you are a preschool teacher, well, you know that finding this empty margarine container and metal pan full of bird seed would be an irresistible opportunity for some imaginative play.

 The sheer quantity of it gave everyone opportunities to use it for something.

Here is one of the squirrels who thinks bird seed is delicious:

I'm thinking that I will make this a regular part of this area. Flax seed, millet, bird seed, all come in bulk at some of the feed stores.

Leaf Man

Today's Bean Patch time was all about representation.

First, we read this great book from the library:

One of the children pointed out that it feels like a sad book, and in a way it can be. It's about the Leaf Man, who blows away with the wind and goes where the wind blows.  It takes the reader through a journey whose destination is unknown.  It has beautiful pictures of leaf collages that represent different animals, sceneries, and the leaf man.

Last week, we went on a leaf hunt and pressed our findings in a phone book. We had beautifully pressed leaves to work with for this activity.  We placed the leaves on a canvas, but our art was as transient as the Leaf Man and we deconstructed the art after photographing it.

"Aiken Drum" by Bl 

"A Flower" by Za 

"Aken Drum" by Sahil 

"A Tree with a Seed of Love (To Help It Grow)" by Ta 

"A Tree with Lightening" by Be 

"A Monster" by Br

Ha made Abiyoyo and I can't believe we forgot to photograph it! And Gi got through the planning phase on what he wanted to make (Aiken Drum), but didn't quite get to the "making" phase.  That's okay, though, because this activity was all about the process of thinking, planning, representing on paper, and translating it to art.  This symbolic reasoning is all about pre-literacy but most importantly, it gave is a chance to work in small groups to connect and be noticed.  And for the younger children,  the latter is all that this activity was about.

Music Together

What took me so long to bring the electric keyboard to the classroom? It's been collecting dust for years in the basement.  We finally took it out last week and it has received a ton of love from the children.  Do I have to constantly turn the volume back down to a reasonable level? Yes. Worth the noise? Totally.

The children get to explore rhythms, volume, pitch, cause and effect, and get lots of social time with one another. Plus, we've listened to "Flight of the Bumblebee" (by request of the children of course) so many times that even I'm inspired to get my hands on the keys.

Guada has also plays some great little jigs during circle time to get the kids up and dancing. What a treat!

Fava beans

My friends at Barron Park Preschool are constantly inspiring me with their ideas.  I made a humble attempt to copy them during this activity.

We explored and "planted" fava beans this week at preschool.  The children touched and looked and almost all of them had to smell the fava beans.  I told the children that the beans will pretend that the coffee filter is soil, hoping that would make sense to them why we were sprouting beans in cups.  Many children went home with fava beans in their pockets yesterday...

 We also stole some beans from Guada's morning activity!

In the photo above, Be is helping Br by explaining the process of planting the beans in the cups. After explaining it to the few children who had risen from nap, I thought I would charge those children with the duty of mentoring the longer nappers.

Pattern Activity

Bean Patch time at Beansprouts often consists of any of what I consider "pre-academic" skills.  Pattern recognition and repeating plays an important role in the development of literacy and math.  Without the ability to identify and recognize patterns, the ability to recognize letters and literacy symbols will not emerge.  Also, the spatial reasoning skills practiced during pattern games is also critical in both math and reading.  

On a more philosophical side, patterns can lead to extensions in thinking.  It brings singularity into multiple. It reflects and repeats and is consistent. What would have been inside the box, now extends beyond the box.

This day during Bean Patch, we were making patterns with wooden sticks and the patterns began to remind me of a book we got from the library.  The author places Chinese characters into the picture of the story as well as a translation on the bottom of the page.  We used these characters as models for our stick patterning. It was fun to bring the book to that level of interaction!

Cheap Thrills

Sometimes I add liquid water color to our clear soap just for fun. The small deed never goes unnoticed.

*Happy Wednesday!*

Meet Frederick

Frederick is our new classroom plant.  This umbrella tree has gotten a lot of love from the children.  While he takes up a lot of space, it's space well designated, as plants and natural materials infuse a very positive aesthetic quality to any environment.

In the photos below, Te dons the identifying "plant care" bracelet, designating her to be in charge of the cleaning and watering of the plant.  Here she is using a tissue to gently wipe the dust off of the leaves.

Here, Te fills up a cup to the delineating marker on the watering cup to water Frederick.

Double checking that she has the right amount of water, she ensures that she will give Frederick enough water while leaving some room for other children to water him as well.

And there are definitely lots of children who are ready to help with the watering!

Fall colors baggies

While we are pretty sure the inspiration for this project came from Teach Preschool, I couldn't find the exact activity so in order to give credit where credit is due, I'll link you up with Deborah's sensory bags.

Guada set up this activity with the kids. She prepped the bag by using a sharpie to draw fall leaves, pumpkins, or turkeys on the outside. She then offered the children spoons and babyfood jars of paints in fall colors. It was fun to watch the colors combine and sometimes and mix together into a nice autumn brown, and other times just swirl for a marbled effect.

Here it looks like somebody had a system for getting himself an orange pumpkin!

In the link above, Deborah informs us that a little nail polish remover will take the white "ziplock" label right off of the baggie. Useful knowledge for us preschool teachers!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!