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.

Back to school week

The first week of school is always crazy, busy, and exciting - for the children AND the teachers.  Here's a peek at some of the things we've been doing...

We put injured animals in an "ambulance" and made /a/ sounds as we drove it around.

 We made uppercase letter A crafts, cutting out the shape, writing our names on it, and then adding a poem about alligators and an alligator paint stamp to it.  We also made lowercase a crafts that look like apples with ants crawling on them.

 We made new friends...

and played in the sand.

 We found new perspectives, new ways of looking at the world we're in.

 We tried out all the playground equipment, from swings...

 ... to the climbing gazebo...

 ... and of course the slides!

There were new things to try out, like pattern blocks...

                                                             ...dinosaurs...

                                                                                              ... and other math manipulatives.

We threw bread for the ducks that live in the pond behind my house...

 ... got messy

 ... and found quiet places to hang out with friends.

 We ran ourselves ragged - and my dog Patriot too!

 We took off our shoes and felt the sand squishy and soft between our toes...

 ... and played with colorful ice on a hot afternoon.

 That meant negotiating with friends for the toys, cooperating and sharing.

 We mixed, poured and dripped the melting purple ice water, fascinated with the cold, the color, and the process.

 We found yummy ways to cool off too!  We all know what it means when Ms. Paula starts singing her "Pop, pop, popsicle" song.

 We read about astronauts, and dressed up in an astronaut costume...

 ... made a page for our abc album with stamps and stickers of things that start with the letter A.

 We hunted for roly pollies, and collected them in a container so we could check them out.

 We dug with trucks in the dirt at the sensory table.  Did I mention we got dirty and messy?

 We each made a page for our class book, Up On Top, a variation of Dr. Seuss's Ten Apples Up On Top.  Class books are our favorites to read, because we helped to make them!

 We told which kind of apple we each like the best, and made a graph to show which we think is the yummiest flavor.  Several friends signed "equal," because red and yellow both had 4 votes!

 Next we had a blind taste test, trying out (peeled) pieces of green, yellow and red apple, and deciding which bowl of apples tasted best.

 When Ms. Paula revealed which flavors were in each bowl, we found out that many of us prefer different kinds of apples than what we thought we did.  We did some clever thinking, and decided that when Ms. Paula goes to the store, she should probably buy red apples the most often, because the most people like red ones the best.

We played in the water table, and of course, got completely soaked.   Good news!  It is very hot, and the water helped us to feel cool and comfortable outside.

 We enjoyed the sunshine, but most of all...

                                                                      WE HAD FUN!

By the way, as of this writing, it's only Thursday.  We still have to make and eat our applesauce tomorrow - but that's another post.

More ice play!

 A few weeks ago I blogged about our fun ice play, and about how long the children played and worked together to get all the little toys out of the ice.  It was such a successful play experience, that we've revisited ice play several times since.  This week I added some new twists.

 When we went outside to play with the ice, we found it was very difficult to get the ice out of the bucket.  The sides of the bucket are straight, and as I took it directly from the freezer to the play table, there hadn't been time for the ice to melt enough to separate from the bucket.  I asked the kiddos what we should do.

 There were a lot of suggestions, everything from "hit it hard" to "pour water on it," to "leave it in the sun until it melts."  We tried hitting it first, taking turns to smack the bottom of the upturned bucket.  Not surprisingly, it was very hard and unyielding.  I was really proud of the kiddos towards the end who decided they really didn't need to hit it - they'd seen their friends' faces, and the lack of results, and just didn't need to go there for themselves.

 Pouring water on it didn't work very quickly, but we continued, and sat it in the sun at the same time, and were eventually able to release it from the bucket.

 This time I offered empty squirt bottles as well as cups for the children to pour the water.  They were fascinated with the squirt bottles, which was just as well, as I had (foolishly!) only made one large block of ice for them to share.

 Here's some great recycling and reusing: empty mustard bottles and snowcone syrup bottles.  Refilling them was also a fascinating process - most of the children tried to pour water back in the same way it had come out, only to find the tiny openings very frustrating. 

I helped out with loosening a few lids, and they quickly caught on, removing and replacing lids as necessary.

 Just as before, some kiddos were happy to work at releasing the trapped "treasure", and others wanted to play with the pieces that had come out.  Others just played with the water and the pouring experience. 

 Fast forward a few days.  We played ice again!  This time I had prepared several frozen containers, and replaced the cups with tiny pipettes.  We got a fine motor workout!

 Learning how to get water into the pipettes was tricky, I had to hold several children's hands and talk them through the process a few times, but eventually everyone could do it.

 It definitely took a lot longer to pour enough water over the ice to melt it to release the new treasure: reused lids. 

 As you can see, the children were very engaged with what they were doing, very focused on their self directed goals.  Even though we all played with the same set of materials, every child had a unique experience, using the materials in their own ways, and in their own time.  This is what I believe early childhood education should look like!

If you are interested in enrolling your child in my program, please also check out my website at www.paulaspreschoolandkindergarten.webs.com and submit the "contact me" form.