Oceans!

For the month of May we are focusing our first two weeks on oceans and the last two weeks on forests.. We started out of course by making our monthly calendar...

The idea and the poem for this came from http://funhandprintart.blogspot.com/search/label/handprint%20and%20footprint%20calendar%202 -- I love doing these calendars every month to see how much they have all grown.. it amazes me each time!

This has been my favorite craft we have done for oceans so far... All I did was cut some ovals of felt ahead of time and 8 pieces of ribbon. Then, with my help, the kids used a hot glue gun to glue the ribbon legs all around the oval and then we wrapped the oval around their finger and secured it with a rubber band.. After that all that was left was giant googly eyes *after all GIANT googly eyes make every craft more awesome as my son puts its*. The kids wouldnt put these down at all for the rest of the day, they were excited that they had made themselves a toy.

And of course one of our felt octopuses had to end up in our new sensory bin.. The kids are loving this bin, I recycled an old rock band box into their bin so it is a lot bigger and more kids can play at the same time. In this bin I put a mixture of beans, rice, lentils, and pasta dyed in different shades of pinks, blues and greens. Then I took salt dough and made the small blue balls which so far have represented everything from bubbles and eggs to raindrops. Throw in some green easter grass for seaweed, a few ocean animals and a boat and a scoop and youve got hours of entertainment! And of course a bit of mess everywhere ;)

For open art times I managed to find this cute set of ocean stamps and 2 multicolored ink pads at my local dollar store. Then in the next aisle these great ocean stickers!

This activity has been the most widely used since I have put it out and its being used by all the age groups too. All I did to create this was wrap duct tape around a small box and poke holes into one side.. In the bowl are some party favour picks of ocean animals. This way the kids can design their own ocean. I love it because it really works their fine motor control and well nothing is cuter then seeing a 2 year old trying to fit these into the little holes. It takes such concentration!

Also, although its not related to oceans, we have been doing a lot of yoga lately. Ive been using the first 3 Yoga kids http://yogakids.com/ videos to help me teach the kids. They are getting to be quite awesome at a lot of the poses now!

I will be linking this to One Hook Wonder's Montessori Monday. To see what other kids have been up to this week check out the links at http://onehookwonder.blogspot.com/

Random bits

These past few weeks have been fairly quiet with the holidays going by so heres a post of just some of the random things we've been doing.. more regularly scheduled posts will be coming along now that we are back to our normal days :)

Snowman Shaving Cream Puff Painting

Playdoh monsters

Footprint Penguin calendars for January

Constellation bottles - When you look inside the constelation has been pinpunched into the bottom of the container so the light can shine through and look like little stars

Light Bright to make our own constellations on

Our word wall - The kids worked together to pick 21 jobs they wanted to learn about and these are them

Our calendar with the days of each occupation we are working on

And lastly, our group calendar. This months pattern for the numbers is Astronaut, Artist, Athelete

More to come soon!

The start of Christmas crafts

Now that it is getting close to Christmas we are starting to make our Christmas crafts.. To start, we made rudolphs! First we traced their feet onto cardboard and then used handprints to make antlers.. and of course we couldnt forget the sparkles to make his shiny red nose!