Growing Vegetable Soup, BRIT's storytime

Have you met this beautiful book?  Lois Ehlert creates wonderful and vibrant illustrations, and in Growing Vegetable Soup her vegetables are almost enough to make you hungry.  This was the featured text at BRIT's storytime this week.  As always, the follow up activities were perfect for young children, engaging and playful, and highly educational.  I firmly believe Bella's book club is the best story time around!

 Activities were laid out on the tables in the library, including a fun pumpkin counting/ matching game that the children were drawn to immediately.

 We also looked at photos of vegetables, and categorized which part of the plant each one was before hearing the story, and singing a song about seeds.

 Ms. Pam cut some ripe tomatoes and cucumbers for the children to see and smell, and we admired how different they look when cut different ways.

Downstairs, in the "tree-house" room, there were vegetables to scoop...

 ... and to sort.

 Art supplies were available for children to create a vegetable plant mural.

 My group spent the most time at the seed scooping center, filling and emptying various containers for so long, that I got our seeds out back at the house, so we could continue the play later.

 There was also sand to scoop and pour, with seeds and letters hidden in the mix, and pumpkin seed planting.

I love Bella's book club and BRIT, and am so glad I get to take my kiddos and learn in such a hands on environment!  If you are in DFW, please check out First Saturdays at BRIT, 8am - 1pm on the first Saturday of the month.

Pine cone science

Have you ever noticed that pine cones that start out closed and green on the tree, fall, dry out, and open?  Or that after they get wet, they close back up?  I have some dry old pine cones in my yard for the children to play with, so when I found a bunch of closed green pine cones while walking this morning, I gathered them and brought them home.  Instant science lesson!

 Here are two of the "new" pine cones - including one that has just started to open.

 Here's an "old" dry one, with all it's scales wide open.

 When we looked carefully, we could still see many of the seeds in the partly opened pine cone - the little papery looking "wings" laying inside each scale.

We gently pulled some of the seeds out, and after someone accidentally dropped one, and saw how it spiraled to the ground, several children enjoyed dropping the seeds.

Next, we set up our experiment.   We put the dry pine cone (shown in the second picture of this post) into a bucket of water.

Two children wanted to plant their pine cone seeds, one at home, but the other was ready to plant right away. I took her to a pot of soil, and she made a small hole for her seed...

 ...dropped it in, and covered it...

 ...carried over  a watering can...

 ... and got her seed started!  I labelled it, so we can see how long it takes to germinate.  She predicted that it will take "a long time," but then sat and watched it for a few moments before heading off to play.

About 30 minutes later we went back to the "dry" pine cone in the bucket of water.  Check it out!

So do you wonder why this happens?  Here's an excerpt from an online article from
http://www.utsandiego.com/news, written by staff writer Katie Burns:

"Q: Why do pine cones open when warm and dry and close when cold and wet?

A: "There are actually male and female pine cones," said Betsy Read, a biology professor at Cal State San Marcos. "The female pine cone is the one we are most familiar with that opens and closes. The opening and closing of the cone is part of the life cycle of the pine."

The male pine cone, which is small and bumpy, produces pollen. Wind-blown pollen falls on a female pine cone on either the same tree or another tree. Over the course of a few years, seeds develop under the scales of the female cone. The female pine cone opens when the seeds are mature and the conditions are right.

"The reason why the pine cones open when it's warm and dry is because that's a more favorable condition for the seed dispersal and germination," Read said.

Wet and cold weather would prevent the seeds, which are often winged, from spreading far enough from the tree to find a place to grow. Seedlings also wouldn't last long in winter rain or snow.

After a pine cone falls from the tree, it can still open and close. The scales open when dry because their outer halves shrink more than their inner halves, and they pull away from the cone. When wet, the scales swell shut."

We pulled our closed, wet pine cone out of the water, and admired it.  I asked the children what would happen to it now.  They all agreed it would probably dry out, and open again.  I wanted to put it somewhere that no-one would bother it, but we could all observe it, so I put it a few feet behind a fence, in the sun.

 Here it is six hours later...

It's now the following day, and it has hardly changed at all.  How long will it take to dry out completely?  I don't know - but I'll keep you posted!

It Must Be Summertime...

 It may only be the beginning of June, but here in Texas, it sure feels like summertime!  When the temperature hits 90*, it's time to break out the popsicles.  This was the first popsicle of the summer.

 With summer break here, we have some old friends graduating, and new friends starting.  My main focus for this week and next is making that transition, reestablishing routines, and learning about each other.  If we can add in some fun and a few popsicles, all the better!

 I've started turning on the misters while we are outside.  It's funny how children and adults see things differently.  To me the mister is a lovely cooling device, a spot to stand for a moment to cool off.  Do the children see it that way?  No!  They think it's a shower.  Or if they bring buckets over, maybe a bath tub, or the beginnings of delicious mud soup.

Here are some of the other things going on at school right now...

Quiet moments with friends, looking for ducks and herons, or maybe turtles...

 The cabbage plants that flowered a month ago are drying up now - and releasing their seeds as they do.

 The children spent a lot of time this week picking the tiny seeds out of the seed pods, and gathering them in envelopes or tiny cups.

 They enjoyed it so much, and were getting such great fine motor work outs doing it, that I brought them inside to work on after lunch one day.  They collected hundreds of seeds!  One day next week I'll have them count them out and glue them in groups of ten, so we can find out just how many there were.

Do you remember the nasty old carefully nurtured potatoes I wrote about a couple of weeks ago?  You can see that post here.  They are growing beautifully!  Not all of them survived, but there are several plants growing, and the children have already helped me add soil around them twice.  Potatoes will grow in the space between the original planting, and the top of the soil, so we'll keep adding soil as the plants grow, and hopefully have a delicious harvest in a couple of months.

 My kindergarteners helped me pick beans, strawberries and tomatoes at a neighbor's house one afternoon this week.  Their garden is so much more bountiful than mine!  It was such a pleasure for us to search for green beans, hiding under the leaves, and for ripe red tomatoes.  One of the children kept picking tomatoes, and telling me they were "as red as candy".  Guess what?  They tasted like candy too!

 Look closely at this child's smile... yes, that is a strawberry in her mouth!

One more fun activity that I want to share this week is our "junk box exploration".  Yes, I know, junk box sounds... lovely.  Just what you'd want your child to play with.  Really.  The truth of the matter is, the children loved this so much, they begged to have it again the following day - and we did.

 So what exactly is "junk box exploration?"  Just what it sounds like.  Over the years I've collected lots of little bits of junk that I know will fascinate the kiddos. 

Do you remember being a child?  Do you remember what fascinated you, and what you wanted to play with and check out?  I remember being fascinated with paper - any kind of paper.  Little pieces of colored paper, the marvelous acordian folded dot matrix printer paper with the tearable seams... any paper!  I also loved the junk drawer in our kitchen.  I never knew what I might find in the junk drawer: keys, coins, buttons, rubber bands, book marks, lost game pieces... treasure!  Maybe I've made this collection for myself more than for the kiddos, but they love it just as I did.

Looking at these pictures, I see a block the boys played with when they were little, a coin purse one of them used for a short time, a glow in the dark star that was once on the ceiling above the bunk bed, a plastic top that used to be in my treasure box at school, a key ring - from where?, a tiny yellow traffic cone that may have been Bob the Builder's, a cork, a marker lid - how many of those have we worn out over the years?, the bow from a Snow White dress - the one we could hardly get off a daycare child long ago- it was so loved.  There's a white pinecone left over from a craft project, tiny plastic mazes the boys were given one Halloween, the magnet from a magnadoodle toy... all flotsam and jetsom of my life as a teacher and a mommy. 

When I think about it, this is not really a junk box at all.  It's a memory box, already full of memories for me, and just beginning to open itself to possibilities for the children.  Little wonder they see it as a treasure!

Farm centers and other fun

Last week I asked the children what activities they most enjoy doing at school.  Field trips, cooking, reading and sensory play were all favorite activities - as was nap time!  I guess by the time we've done all those other things, we're all pretty worn out, and ready to rest and recharge.

I was surprised that the kiddos didn't seem to have strong feelings about what to learn about next.  Sure, dinosaurs, vehicles, and dancing came up as themes, but the children were just as enthusiastic about everything else I suggested too.  Lucky for me, one of my families has a small farm, and we're planning to visit soon to see the animals - and there's a fantastic and fun theme for us.

I put out lots of farm puzzles for my friends to work on, as well as some farm themed listening centers, and of course, a bunch of fun farm songs on youtube.com for our singing and dancing time in the morning.  We worked on the farm part of abcmouse.com with the ipads, which the children are all very eager to use.  We've made our avatars, learned how to push the x button to close pop up windows, found the home button and the back button.  I'm so glad I added a second ipad for our class to use!

 

I created a sensory bin with farm animal sorting and counting.  The children love digging in the beans, it feels so good to run our fingers through them.  I hid plastic animals in the bin, and made a sheet for the children to match animals to as they found them.

We worked on making farm words with letter tiles and magnetic letters too.  Each of the pages I put out at this center had a farm themed picture and matching word, and space for letter tiles to make the words.  Looking through all the letter tiles was a challenge for some friends, so midweek I changed this center to just three words, with only the letters we needed available.  Much better!

One of my wonderful neighbors cleaned out her craft supplies recently, and donated some scissors that make fancy cuts and even 2 hole punches.  Oh my!  We LOVED them - thank you Ms. Dixie!  We cut paper scraps over and over again this week - working on strengthening hand muscles, cutting skills, and hand eye coordination having fun.  The resulting confetti treasure went home in recycled envelopes, and the children are already asking to do this again.

Outside this week we had a Fisher Price Barnyard Boogie dance mat.  There are four different games on it, from hearing animals sounds to remembering a sequence of animals.  It's a loud game - I wouldn't enjoy it inside - but it was perfect for outside!

So was having a table full of bubbles!  My bubble solution is just one part regular Palmolive dish soap diluted with about seven parts water - and makes fantastic bubbles.

We had a cool science discovery moment in the bubbles when a pair of kiddos discovered that they could hold bubbles in their hands - if their hands were wet.  A lot of bubble blowing, chasing, and catching followed!

We're also playing hopscotch in the backyard this week.  Okay, we don't all play it the same way.  Some of my friends can switch between hopping and jumping as they go, some friends can skip over a number... we eliminated the rock throwing part of the game for safety.  But hey, we're counting, practicing reading numerals, and moving our bodies while we have fun! 

We had to enjoy the lovely balmy weather with a picnic lunch one day.  When I looked for paper plates, I discovered I didn't have any plain ones left - but I did have left over Christmas plates, enough for the kids.  Teachers had to have Halloween plates, and when I looked for a bowl to put our apple slices in, I found a Valentine heart bowl.... so I decided this was a mixed up holidays picnic, and brought out a bunny (Easter) and a squirrel (fall/Thanksgiving) to round it out.  If I had realized ahead of time, we would have added some hats and costumes, and been even crazier!

This week we also enjoyed farm themed toys with our play dough...

 ... played a Scrambled Eggs game (and ate real scrambled eggs for lunch)...

 ... used farm themed paint stamps...

 ...read a farm rhyme and riddle on the pocket chart...

 ...played with farm animal  toys and manipulatives...

 ...and measured farm animals with non-standard units.  I found this activity ready made here.

 It's only fitting that we ended the week with a surprise visit from some Canada Geese swimming in the creek with the ducks.  Duck, duck, goose!

We'll continue our farm fun for two more weeks - I can't wait to show you all the fun learning activities we have in store!