Conversation Hearts

Valentine's Day is right around the corner and this lovely holiday is perfect for learning!  One of my favorite things about Valentine's Day is conversation hearts!  They are inexpensive, super cute  and pretty tasty if you get the right brand.  They can be used in the classroom or the home classroom in many different learning areas including math, science, language, and fine motor.  The children in my classroom love to graph, so I always make sure to have the conversation heart graph in my math center.  A favorite activity anytime is making things fizz.  So, I use conversation hearts, baking soda, and vinegar to make a fun, fizzy science tray.  Both of these activities are simple, cheap to make, and offer children fun and educational experiences. 

Conversation Heart Graphs: You can make a graph or you could print one off of several websites.  Once you have your graph color in the bottom rectangle to match all the colors of the conversation hearts you have.  Place the hearts in a bowl and encourage your little owlet to pick a heart, name its color, and place it in the matching column.  If you want to add fine motor practice to this activity hand your child a pair of tweezers to use to pick up the hearts. 

Fizzy Hearts: Place conversation hearts on a tray (I always used a cookie sheet) and sprinkle baking soda over the hearts.  Put vinegar in a cup and give your little learner a turkey baster.  Have your child fill the baster with vinegar and drop it onto the tray.  Watch the magic happen, colorful fizz everywhere!  It gets even better as the hearts melt!  This was always a favorite in my classroom.

Have fun! 

What's in the Box?

This mantra runs through my head...a lot...more like everyday...and it makes appearance mainly during art..."It's a process, not a product."  I find the most adorable art activities on one super addictive website, I envision these beautiful creations decorating the walls of my classroom...and then we do the activity...it never turns out like the picture, but that is 100% OK because, well, it's a process and I have to step back and let the creativity happen!  Every single person that works with children knows that art, creativity, and imagination are huge parts of the early childhood experience and the majority of children love to paint, so I have the painting box.  My calendar is broken down by themes and of course in those themes are art activities.  Each day of the week brings a new art experience: Painting, Drawing, Prints, Clay, and Collages and we follow that general rule, but sometimes, my kids just need to create without me telling them what they can use or giving them an idea of what to draw, during those moments the painting box comes out.  My painting box is just a cardboard box full of things other than paintbrushes for the kids to use.  I have found items in dollar bins at box stores, had parents donate items, and just collected things I found that I thought would make a unit painting experience.  There are no rules when the painting box comes out...the children can use whatever they choose in whatever way they choose (so long as nobody is getting beaten with a dish scrubber!).  The painting box comes out once every couple of weeks, it is especially helpful on rainy days when we have run out of theme related activities.  So, what's in my box?  Here is a list:

- Dish Scrubbers (long handled and round ones)
-Wine Corks (purchased at the craft store)
-Newspaper
-Bath poufs
-Paper towel rolls
-Bubble Wrap (both small and large bubbles)
-Milk Jug Lids
-Lids off of plastic bottles
-Egg cartons

I am always on the lookout for more fun things to experiment with and add to our box!

Happy Painting!!

Water Play Bubble Day

 

 We have been doing a unit on bubbles and I wanted to incorporate bubbles into our water play day, so I got out the bubbles for us to blow and added dish wash soap to water, put out washcloths, babies, and even some of our riding toys to wash...but I wanted more!  So, I searched for bubble recipes...and found two pretty cool ones...bubble dough and bubble foam.  I made the bubble dough, and even though it didn't turn out exactly like I thought it would, it was fun for the kids.  The next project was a huge hit!  Bubble foam!  I have never, in my 20 years of teaching preschool, used a mixer to make a sensory activity...that changed today!  The recipe was super simple and the kids thought it was awesome!  All you need to make this foam is dish wash soap, warm water, food coloring (gel or liquid), and a mixer!  In the bowl of the mixer add 2 tablespoons of dish soap, 2/3 cup of warm water, and 2 drops of gel food coloring (more of the liquid kind).  Turn the mixer on the highest speed and let it go for a full 2 minutes (I did mine for about 4 minutes though so the peaks would be stiffer).  When it's done, it's like a colorful meringue!  I added it to the container I use for sensory play and let the kids go to town!  This will definitely be a go to for bubble week from now on! 

Get in Shape, Girl!

When we lived in Alaska working out was a normal part of my day.  I loved it, Jillian Micheal's was someone I spent about an hour with everyday even though she loved kicking my booty...it helped me deal with the stress of a deployed hubby and three little kids!  Once we moved to Alabama it seems like my love affair with weights and cardio has died!  I opened my FCC, still working on my degree, have a family, and have this crazy hip issue that sometimes has me in so much pain I can barely move.  Sounds like I'm making excuses, right?  Well...I guess I did for a while, but not anymore.  I know I have to take care of me in order to take care of everyone else and that is what I am doing!  I have been going to the gym on post every other night.  Pounding the treadmill with my ear buds in is still the best stress reliever I know of!
I have been eyeing the Bowflex Tread Climber for a while and I finally took the plunge and ordered one!  I am excited and filled with anticipation for it get here! On top of that, I got some new workout gear...my old Polar heart rate monitor watch finally gave up, I've had it for ever...so I ordered the Polar FT4 Heart Rate Monitor from Amazon.  I like it, it's easy to use, but I am not super crazy about the chest strap...oh well, I'll deal!  I also ordered some Diva Bands to keep my hair back during my sweat sessions...I love them, they don't slip and they are adorable!  Finally, I got really good shoes and a pair of calf compression sleeves which I am hopeful will help with the crazy painful shin splints I have.  I am committed to changing my eating habits, making my workouts a priority, and getting back in shape! 

 My adorable Diva Bands and Polar Heart Rate Monitor Watch

New shoes and calf compression sleeves to bring a pop of color to my mostly black workout attire! 

Sweet Sugar

I love sugar scrubs and I have spent large amounts of money in bath shops on their versions of them.  The day I walked into my favorite bath shop and discovered they no longer carried the yummy smelling pumpkin scrub I loved so was a sad day my lovelies!  During the week my showers are super quick, but Saturday is my long, hot, indulgent shower day complete with a sugar scrub exfoliation.  Since I can't buy the yummy pumpkin scrub anymore, I have been making my own combinations of delicious scrubs!  I made a pumpkin spice scrub that I felt was pretty comparable to the one I was spending about 20 bucks on!  Recently I made a brown sugar and honey scrub and I like it, but I used olive oil and it seems a little too greasy!  I need to play with the measurements a bit.  Today I made these two sweet sugar scrubs!  I am already in love with the sugar cookie scrubs, it uses both white and brown sugar and smells like a batch of sugar cookie dough!  I also made coconut lime scrub, it was so simple and smells like the tropics!  I can't wait to use it!  I have so many more combinations that I can't wait to try!  Another plus to making my own, they are so inexpensive!  I think the sugar cookie scrub cost me about $10, but I was able to throw it together today because I already had all the ingredients in the pantry!

A Monster of a Week

While Halloween is not one of my most favorite holidays on the calendar, my children and my daycare kids love it.  Instead of doing a Halloween theme this year I chose to do a week of Friendly, Fuzzy, Adorable Monsters.  I had so much fun making games and researching for activities.  Even though this was only supposed to be a week long theme, it ended up being two weeks thanks in part to a nasty stomach virus that wiped out my whole FCC for four days and kept us from taking a very cool field trip to the pumpkin patch.  I took lots of pictures of the things we did, but something happened and I can't find them...ugh.  So I will try to re cap the week with a couple of the pictures I do have and tell you about some of the cool monster activities we did! 

We made Monster frames.  I bought some Crayola Neon paint and the kids painted the frames and then they glued lots and lots of wiggly eyes on it.  I thought it would be perfect for pictures of them in their Halloween costume!

For one of our group activities I covered a box with paper, added eyes, a nose, rainbow hair, and cut out a where the mouth would be.  It turned out quite cute, just wish I could find the pic I took!  I cut out shapes and passed them out to my kids at morning meeting.  When I called out a shape the kids that had that shape "fed" our monster.  Of course the box monster needed a name, so after much deliberation over names staring with M we decided to name her Merryweather!  

The most popular table activity was based on the book Even Monsters Need Haircuts by Matthew McElligott.  I made a simple monster head and taped yarn to it.  I placed scissors on the table next to it and encouraged the kids to give the monster a haircut.  We played a monster math game too, my kids really enjoyed it because I played it with them!  I made two simple monsters without noses and put a bowl of colorful pom poms on the table along with a die.  We took turns rolling the dice, counting the dots, and adding that many noses.  

Of course during Monster week we had to listen to The Monster Mash!  One day while listening to it the kids painted with potato mashers! 

It was a great week full of cute monster art, songs, and activities.  I think adorable monster week will have to make a regular appearance every year around Halloween! 

 

Creepy Crawly Spiders

What a great week we had learning about and doing spider activities!

 Painting with spaghetti...a new twist on string painting...to make a spider web

 Painting with plastic spiders.  I attached yarn to spider rings and the kids dipped the spiders into orange and black paint and "danced" across the paper.

 

Spider Math...practicing one to one correspondence.  I cut out the webs, colored the spiders, and added the dots.  When a child chooses this activity they put a black pom pom on each dot.  I also encourage them to count the pom poms. 

We did a group mural, more spider art, two spider related science activities, and more!  I plan on leaving some of the activities out and adding to them until the end of the month!