Grassheads!

Is anyone else bummed about the groundhog's six more weeks of winter? Here in Utah, the weather is just teasing us. Yesterday it was sunny and 65 degrees. This morning we woke up to snow. Being a California girl at heart, I was not very excited. I tried to convince my husband that I wasn't getting up until it stopped snowing, but he didn't think that would go down with the kids very well. 

If you are missing the beautiful green of spring and summer like me, I have just the solution for you!

We had a lot of fun growing grass this year and creating some fun characters with some funky hair. (Sorry about the bad pictures, I had to snap a few before these guys went home the next day.) We like to use clear cups so the kids can observe the roots and grass as it starts to sprout.

We found this fast growing grass seed at home depot and they weren't kidding. It did grow really fast.

I printed some cartoon eyes and mouths on sticker paper. I used the kind that you find in the address labels section that is a full sheet. I also printed each child's name so they could watch their grass head grow.

We filled the cup half way with dirt

Push seeds into the dirt.

Filled the rest of the cup and put it in the window to get sunlight. I watered it every other day and pretty soon we had some long haired grass heads.

Brandon thought it would be fun to cut his hair into a mohawk.

Sink or Float Center

Here's a great activity that's as simple as it comes. Do the items sink or float? Before the kids were allowed to touch water, we made predictions and sorted the items between what they thought would sink or float. 

After testing everything, we discussed our predictions. 

To create a little bit of flare we added a writing component to the activity. The kids drew pictures or wrote letters or words to represent the items that sunk and floated. Do you see that cute little "roc?" I was so proud of the kids for trying letters and sounds to create words. And that adorable little two legged dog is pretty fun too. 

Click here for a free printable of our sink/float chart to use with your little ones. 

When you click on the link, there are a lot of ads on the page. You want to click the small grey download button right beneath the box that says view document. You will need to sign in to download the paper. You can sign up for a free 4shared account or use your social media outlet to download. Please leave a message below if you have any problems or questions. 

Whirlpool Maker

Want to keep kids mesmerized and help them explore science at the same time? 

I give you one word: whirlpool. 

We have these awesome caps that you use to connect two soda bottles. If you shake it just right the water will funnel through one bottle to the other and make a whirlpool. They loved it!

You can buy it here.

W is for Wind

Hello world. So it's been a while because, if I'm keeping it real, I've been in a slump. Has that ever happened to you where the things that you used to enjoy seem not so enjoyable anymore? 

So, I'm trying to get myself out of it by just jumping back into things. Usually when I blog, I post things in order of when we have done them in class and I am super behind. So I made an executive decision - I'm going out of order. It goes against my nature that my husband might argue is slightly ocd, but it's what I feel like doing, so that is that.  

The great thing about teaching preschoolers is that so much of the world is exciting and new. This week we explored the concept of weather and wind. We read this awesome book:

Then we gathered around the table with a variety of objects in front of each student. The objects we used were a feather, penny, fuzz ball, straw, shell, rock, plastic spoon, and decorative pebble. We talked about what was in front of us and then made a guess whether the wind would blow each object or not. After we made a guess, I turned on my blow dryer to low and simulated a wind blowing. Then we would see if our guess was right. After, the kids sorted their items. 

 A simple, but fun science project for your littles!

C is for Cloud

M is for . . .

. . . maracas

. . . magnets

. . . marble mazes

. . . music

I have to say that I was super excited for our music lesson. We have started doing rhythm and basic notes during our carpet time. So it was fun to explore music a little more during this lesson. We listened to different genres of music and the kids danced to them. FYI country is not a big hit with this class. :) We watched a clip from Blues Clues the Big Musical with Ray Charles and the Tones as the voice of musical notes who teach Steve and Blue about high/low, tempo, and rhythm. While we watched the kids used their maracas to play along while they learned. We listened to some classical music and the kids drew pictures while they listened. We played on different instruments like the recorder, piano, drums, etc. It was a busy day, but a lot of fun!

G is for Growing Grass

 We are so excited to have some new class members in our class. They aren't the smartest bunch in the class, but they are going to have some awesome hair in a couple of weeks!

Meet the Grass Heads

We planted these during letter G week and talked about how seeds grow. Since grass starts with G, we decided to plant some. To make it more fun, we added faces to our containers and the kids are having fun watching their hair grow. It's like the poor man's chia pet. ; )

This is what they look like after a week and a half. (Sorry for the poor quality picture. I think I might need to ask Santa for a new camera this Christmas. )

The cool thing about these guys (once their hair grows in) is you can practice those awesome scissors skills like we talked about before, here. The kids can cut their hair or style it. however they want. It's pretty fun! I'll keep you posted on how they are doing. 

 Making one is pretty easy too! 

• Print out some cartoon faces. I printed some out from here. 
• Glue them onto a clear cup. You want to use clear because then you can see the roots grow.
• Add some dirt, a thick layer of grass seeds, then another layer of dirt. 
• Water it about once a day and watch your grass heads grow their own hair!

M is for Magnet Math

We love exploring with magnets - seeing what sticks and what doesn't, talking about why some metal things work and some don't, talking about why some things that don't seem metal (i.e. pipe cleaners) but still stick, etc. 

This year we also added a little bit of math to our magnet fun. I cut up pipe cleaners into little pieces. Then, the girls tried to see how many they could get to stick on. After, we counted how many pipe cleaners were stuck to our magnet. It was good for practicing counting to high numbers.

Quick and Easy Catapults

This summer, we had a lot of fun making some simple, homemade catapults.

Even though I have a house full of girls, they love shooting, flinging, and chucking things just like their daddy! We definitely enjoy watching the Mythbusters Pumpkin Chunkin each year.

What started as a craft with mommy, quickly turned into a family affair. My husband couldn't resist jumping in and helping with target practice once he saw what these babies could do. I was quite surprised at the capability of these little guys.

My girls started by coloring two popsicle sticks with permanent markers. I stacked one of the colored popsicle sticks on top of 5 others (6 all together) and rubber-banded them together on each end. 

We attached a bottle cap to the end of the other colored stick. (We used hot glue, but it didn't quite withstand the torque and pressure so we had to reglue it a couple of times.)  We tried it a second time by using a drill and drilling a hole into the bottle cap and the popsicle stick. Then we used a brad to attach them together. It worked great! After, we rubber banded that stick and another to the top and bottom of the stack of sticks we already made.

My girls had fun seeing which things from around the house would fly the best. They tried everything -  cotton balls, rubberbands, polly pocket clothes, blocks, . . . 

The thing that worked best . . . mini marshmallows! 

Of course if mini marshmallows were the projectile, the target quickly became someone's mouth. I was having so much fun participating in the launching of the marshmallows, that I didn't get any pictures. But, you can take my word for it that it was fun for the shooter and the target and all the spectators as well.

So go out and make your own, you won't be sorry and it is a great boredom buster for any season of the year!

Here's What You Need:

• 8 popsicle sticks
• permanent markers 
• 5 rubber bands
• bottle cap (from a plastic container)
• brad & drill
• mini marshmallows

Here's What You Do:

1. Color  two of the sticks with the markers.
2. Stack one colored stick on top of 5 other sticks (6 total) and rubber band them together on each end. (We tried this again with big popsicle sticks - we ended up having to stack 10 sticks together to really make it fly. You can play around with how many you stack together to get the height that you want.)
3. Drill a hole the same width as the prongs of your brad into one end of the other colored popsicle stick. 
4. Drill a hole into the bottle cap. 
5. Use the brad to attach the bottle cap to the colored popsicle stick.
6. Stack that perpendicularly on top of the stack of 6. (Like a cross)
7. Stack another underneath the pile so it lines up with the stick with the bottle cap. 
8. Use two rubber bands to attach the sticks as seen in the picture above so they make an x across all 8 sticks. 
9. Pinch together the stick ends opposite the bottle cap and use a rubber band to hold them together.
10. Find some projectiles and some targets and fire away!

Camping

 We had a lot of fun on our annual "camping" day during the last week of school. I set up a tent, river and wild animals around the room and the kids had fun doing different camping activities. 

Here are some of the things that we did this year: 

We went fishing . . .

I put paper clips on the fish mouth and magnets on the end of a string on a dowel.

We went on a bear hunt (and of course sang Dr. Jean's Cool Bear Hunt song) . . .

We roasted S'mores . . .

We star gazed . . .

I put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. We turned out the lights and blocked out the windows to find stars. We looked for different colors, different sizes, shooting stars and practiced counting.

Our main lesson was focused on animal prints. . .

During free time, the kids had fun exploring different animal footprints using plastic animals and play dough. First they just pressed them in and looked at the features of the foot - toes, claws, shape, etc. Then, the kids tried to group the animals with similar feet - hoofs, clawed animals, etc. Next, the kids closed their eyes and I made a print and the kids had to identify what animal it came from. Last, we looked at pictures of real animals and their feet and the kids did a matching worksheet where they matched the animal print to the animal picture. 

All in all, a pretty fun day!

W is for . . .

. . . whirlpool

. . . web

We learned how to draw a spider web - start with a small circle, draw larger circles around it, then crisscross through the middle. 

Our younger class got to make these spiders using pipe cleaners, puff balls, and googly eyes. We tried using white glue to put the head on top, but I think hot glue would have been best.

  . . . weather

When I was doing my student teaching, I spent 1/2 the time in the preschool on campus at Brigham Young University. My favorite thing we used to do with the kids was go on campus to survey the college students and ask them questions about the things they liked. 

I decided, why can't we have as much fun surveying each other in class? We did a weather survey in which the kids asked their classmates "what was their favorite weather". We talked about saying "excuse me," asking our question politely, then saying "thank you" after we marked their answer.

I don't know what it is about watching a preschooler walk around with a clip board and asking people questions, but it is awfully cute. Even though we weren't asking big college students, I still think this is one of my favorite things to do.