April

The kids and I are excited that spring is finally here and the snow is melting so we're going to celebrate by spending the next month studying spring and spring things :) I'm looking forward to this as ive slightly changed the way i made the curriculum this month and I think its going to fit better for the group I have.. Because I am doing a new style this month I'm going to try and post every day so that I can look back and really see how its working and what parts arent working.. Heres a rough skeleton outline of our month...

Now to just hope this good weather continues for us and the rest of the snow goes away fast!

A childs plea

I've heard this poem many times over the years and I find it still just as useful today... So many times I see people asking whats in your bag? and the kids don't know what to say because some days we just get so busy its hard to find time to make a tangible item to take home.. Every parent should read this poem and ask instead, How was your day? what did you do? instead of whats in your bag? what did you make

A Childs Plea

Today I did my math and science.
I toasted bread, I halved and quartered, counted, measured, and used my eyes, ears and hands.
I added and subtracted on the way.
I used magnets, blocks and memory tray.
I learned about a rainbow and how to weigh.
So please don't say -

'ANYTHING IN YOUR BAG TODAY?'

You see. I'm sharing as I play, to learn to listen and speak clearly when I talk
to wait my turn and when inside to walk.
To put my words into a phrase, to find my name and write it down.
To do it with a smile and not a frown,
to put my pasting brush away. So please, don't say -

WHAT NOTHING IN YOUR BAG TODAY?'

I learned about a snail and a worm.
Remembered how to take my turn.
Helped a friend when he was stuck.
Learned that water runs off a duck.
Looked at words from left to right.
Agreed to differ, not to fight.
So please don't say -

'DID YOU ONLY PLAY TODAY?'

Yes, I played the whole day through.
I played to learn the things I do.
I speak a problem, find a clue
and work out for myself just what to do.
My teacher's set the scene, and stay near-by to help me when I really try.
They are there to pose the problems, and to help me think.
I hope they will keep me floating and never let me sink.
All of this is in my head and not in my bag. It makes me sad to hear you say -

'HAVEN'T YOU DONE ANYTHING TODAY?'

When you attend your meeting today and do your work I will remember not to say to you -

'WHAT NOTHING IN YOUR BAG? WHAT DID YOU DO?'

~Author Unknown

Easter activities Part 1

So I started putting out the easter activities over the weekend. Theres still lots more to come but heres the start of all of our fun :)

The start of our sensory bin.. I'm going to continue to add to this over the month *and maybe give it a bigger container... the paper grass ended up popping up bigger then it looked like it would in the bag and of course they dont want me to get rid of any of it now :)* So far its jut the grass and eggs and the kids find random things to hide in the eggs to play hide and seek.. Later on in April I'm going to put some little animal pictures and figurines when we learn about egg babies and live born babies.. I cant wait to get this set up a bit better :)

Another awesome dollar store find - Tic tac toe egg style!

Scooping work.. the kids take the scoop and pick an egg up out of the 'nest' and pour it into the egg carton until the carton is full

More to come soon!

St Patricks day!

Still missing my phone for writing posts so this is a few days late!

Putting Shamrock picks into the holes of a strainer.. This activity actually surprised me, I put it out for my older kids to help with eye hand coordination and the one who loved it the most was actually one of my youngest! Hes just turning two soon and just sat there with such intense concentration trying to get these into the holes.. By the end of the day you could see improvement already!

Of course we also had to make some decorations. This was a great opportuinity to teach about the color spectrum. To help I used the song by They Might be Giants off of my new favorite cd of theirs, 'Here comes science', called Roy G Biv.. The kids thought it was hilarious that there was a guy whos name spelled the color spectrum :)

No party is complete without party hats as one of the little girls told me the day before the party.. Luckly when I went to the dollar store they had these awesome shiny little hats for the kids!

Pin the shamrock on the leprachaun! I just printed off a picture of Lucky and used foam shamrock stickers

Every party also needs some cool plates and tasty snacks....

Green pasta, Fish sticks, and rainbow vegetables for lunch (we also pretended the corn was gold)

Turnovers with green icing one of my clients brought in

And last but not least, green milk to go with it all!

The kids all had a great time at the party... now to start getting ready for our easter party!

Lost

So the posts may be fewer and farther in between for the next little bit.. it appears my phone which i did all my blogging from is either lost or stolen.. ive been searching everywhere since i noticed it gone saturday morning but still have come up with nothing :(

I will try to get my camera up and running again though so I can continue with this.. hopefully ill have things up and working for tomorrow when we have our St Patricks Day Pajama Party!

Bananas!

To start off our banana day we talked about the colors yellow and white, inside and outside as well as crescent shapes. We then looked around the daycare to find examples of things, though the only thing they could think of that was crescent shaped other then bananas was the moon!

After that we HAD to do the banana song, this song is always a huge hit with kids
(motion like your picking) Pick banana, pick pick banana,
pick banana, pick pick banana,

(motion like your peeling) peel banana, peel peel banana,
peel banana, peel peel banana,

(motion like your cutting) cut banana, cut cut banana,
cut banana, cut cut banana,

(motion like your eatting) eat banana, eat eat banana,
eat banana, eat eat banana

(go crazy!) go bananas, go go bananas,
go bananas, go go bananas


Then of course I couldnt lose out on this chance to talk about the letter B. I find a lot of kids have problems with b's, p's and d's since they all sound and look similar when they are lower case. To do this we made a banana, cut it in half and added paper to the inside to write on. For the littlest ones I made tracer letters but my big kids did this all by themselves!


Last but not least, we made banana 'ice cream'. I love this recipe, you just cut up bananas (or convince the kids to do it.. great for saving time and for them to practice their knife cutting skills!) and freeze them. Once they are all frozen stick into a blender (i love my magic bullet for this) and blend until it makes an ice cream like substance. Add some chocolate syrup and its delicious!

Apples!

Today we studied apples.. We looked at their life cycle, tried red and green apples to taste the difference(red won their taste test), painted with apples and made apple trees!

Watermelons

I love these watermelons... We made them by gluing red circles onto green circles and then using black paint, we made the seeds to go inside

For our grapes we used a toilet paper tube and dipped it into purple paint

Food pyramids

For march since we are studying food I thought we would start out with making food pyramids.. I'm so proud of the work they put into these.. I let it be a completely independent work for them to do on their own time and each of them chose to make a minimum of 1, concentrating so hard the entire time!

To make these they colored in the pyramid and then had to cut apart the labels and glue them to the right sections.. This work has shown me they are rest for more independent works like this!

March calendars

Every month I try to do a calendar with the kids using foot prints and/or hand prints... I love being able to look back through the year and see how much they have grown!

The idea for these came from http://www.littlegiraffes.com/handprintcalendar.HTML

The poem:
I'm a little leprechaun,
Cant you see?
I'm as tiny as I can be.

I only come around
Just once a year
That's when st Patricks day is here