Just a Bunch of Tubes

Last week, during our Dr. Seuss week, I had this "great idea" to do something with empty paper towel and toilet tissue rolls.  You know those lovely tubes that "you just can't throw away".  I have everyone collecting these for me so I have quite a large supply.  Alas, my "great idea" just never came to be.  There were so many other things that I wanted to do that week so I crammed all the empty cardboard tubes into my closet for another day.  Well, this past week I was in the mood for something different.  Right after lunch on Wednesday I pulled out my stash and dumped it on our tables.  I had already punched holes into each end of all the tubes (I know, but it was a great way for me use up some nervous energy) and added some chenille sticks (better know to us old folks as "pipe cleaners") and stepped back.  OH MY GOODNESS, we had fun!!!

Can you see the look on the little boy's face in the stripped shirt?
He just realized how to connect the tubes so they would not fall apart!

 

Of course for the first few minutes I heard, "what do we do?" and "I can't!" but soon those negative comments turned into "LOOK Mrs. Karen!".  I knew they were having fun!  I loved watching my sweet "S" when she realized how to bend the pipe cleaners so that the tubes would stay together.  That was all it took!  Soon everyone was busy building their very own sculptures.  By the way, I knew this was really fun when I announced that it was time to get ready for our playground time and no one wanted to go!  I hope you try this and if you do, please let me know how it goes. 

The Box

I did an experiment in my classroom the past two weeks.  I rescued a box from the garbage pile,

 

and covered it with white butcher paper.  I set out some markers and did not say a word about it.  On the first day, no one said anything about the box.  No one even asked me about it.  BUT, on the second day . . . .

it became an easel!  It also became a wonderful place to make . . . .

PATTERNS!!!!!

The power of junk!  I'm a going to try and find something "different" each week for my students to draw on.  Do you have any ideas for me???  If you do, please post them in the comment sections!
THANKS!

Let's Talk Turkey!

First of all, let me issue a big 'ole apology for being away from my blog so long.  We had a wedding at our house!  Let me introduce you to our family . . .

My husband, Bill, Me, our son Jay and his lovely bride Brooklyn!

 

I plan to go back and play catch-up, hopefully during the Christmas holidays.  But, for now let's talk about Thanksgiving!!  One of our very first projects this year was special.  Last spring our Director of Children's Minister, Mrs. Brenda Clark did a little house cleaning.  It was like "Christmas in April" for me.  I found so many things little treasures!  One of my favorites was several packages of very "strange" looking artificial leaves.

Trust me, NO ONE would want to use these for leaves!  But, I did want to use them for feathers!!!  It was so much fun letting the children pick out their very own combination of leaves.  If you look closely, you may notice that the turkey is made from shapes.  The body is an oval, the eyes of course are circles, the beak is a diamond shape that magically turns into a triangle when you close it and finally those cute little feet are stars.  I think he is so cute!



THANK YOU MRS. BRENDA!!!

 

Like most teachers, I love new supplies!  Look what showed up in our supply closet . . .

This is some very good stuff and the children love it!  It isn't as messy as regular glue and a lot more fun to "dab" on.

 

Our next project came to us by one of my former student's Mom.  We loved it!

 

We used vegetable rotini.  I think I like it because as with most project, the process was so much fun.  It didn't take long for everyone to realize that it was fun to "dip" the pasta in the glue.  Yep, it was messy - very messy, but lots and lots of fun.  By the way, walking around all day making turkey sounds NEVER gets old for a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds!  We have had so much fun gobbling around our classroom.

 

Our next project is an old favorite.  I say old because we have actually done it before and if you are a regular reader of my blog, you know I like to add new things each year.  But, this is just too cute and fun.  The children got so excited painting the toilet tissue rolls.  I kept asking them what they thought we were making and I loved their answers.  I got everything from "trees" to "a dirty truck". 







The feathers are their hand prints and the feet are stars (again).  The turkeys actually stand up so I hope at least one or two of these little guys will be the centerpiece of someone's Thanksgiving table.

 

Okay, you know those good 'ole hand print turkeys that we have made for years and years??  Well, we have given them a little twist.

 

 

Since we are 3 and 4 years old, we need something more than just a hand print!  The children had the best time putting beads onto a pipe cleaner.   I love watching them pick out their favorite colors.  Can you tell what color "B-man" likes . . .

Yep, he spent so much time picking out his beloved "green" beads.  Oh, the little pieces of burlap were placed on some old pieces of cardboard and held on with large gold brads.  SUPER CUTE and FUN!

 

Goodness gracious, we did a lot of turkeys these last few weeks.  I will post our other Thanksgiving ideas later (I promise).  In the mean time, I hope you give a few of these ideas a try.  

We are Wild About the Zoo!

What a fun week we have had!  I think we spent more time this past week just "talking" about our topic than ever before.  Zoo Week was just plain fun!  Our circle times were lively and not only full of questions, but animal sounds too!  Here are just a few highlights from our busy week.

We celebrated "Earth Day" on Monday.  We talked about "reusing" items to help protect our planet.  One of the things that we do in my class is recycle lunch containers.  It seems that at least one child brings applesauce to school each day in a disposable container.

The students love to rinse them out for me so we can use them to hold paint or glue when we do an art project.  It may not seem like much but we are trying to do our part!  In case you missed it, here are a couple of our beautiful recycled spring flower -

 

Everyone loves monkeys so our very first zoo art project had to be a monkey!  Ours was so cute and so much fun to make.

 

 

It is probably hard to tell by the pictures, but the students actually cut the arms, legs and tales out my themselves.  We let them dry just a bit before we accordion folded the arms and legs.  I just love them.  We also spent the ENTIRE DAY talking about monkeys and apes.  Of course there was a lot of monkeying around too!

 



I was really excited when I saw this next art project on PINTEREST .  I instantly fell in love with it.  I also knew my class AND their parents would really like it.  But of course, I had to add the "Mrs. Karen" twist to it. 

The original art work used the child's hand prints for the zebra and the grass.  We needed something a little more fun.  Can you guess what we used to make the grass? 

If you said a "fork", you are right!

 

Everyone really enjoyed painting with an old plastic fork, which by the way we had leftover from lunch on Monday!  (Don't worry, we washed it!)

 

On Tuesday, we painted old paper towel tubes green and after they dried, we added dots with fun little paint dabbers.  Now that was just plain messy, fun but messy!  Everyone kept trying to guess what we were going to do with them.  Finally on Thursday they all found out! 

 

Let me be the first to say that this art project DID NOT turn out like the original one I saw.  Here is it-

http://eighteen25.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/arts-crafts-tp-roll-snakes.html

But to honest, I like ours better!  They were silly fun!  We also spent the entire day talking about snakes!  (Footnote:  I do NOT like snakes!  But my class does, so I an forced to keep my feelings to myself.)

 

One of the topics that came up during our circle time was zoos versus wild.  Hmmm . . . kind of a deep subject for a group of four year olds, isn't it?  Well, that started a unique discussion about the pros and cons of being a zoo animal versus being an animal living in it's natural habitat.  WOW, my class really surprised me with their ideas and comments.  So, we did an art project that represented the animals in their natural environment.

We found some jungle stamps in our supply closet that had never been used.  It was fun to use "new" supplies.  Again, since our cutting skills are SO GOOD, I feel like I must mention that our "tree trunks" were cut by the children!  I really wasn't sure how much the children would enjoy this art project.  It really didn't say "FUN" to me.  I WAS WRONG!  Everyone loved picking out their favorite animals and stamping them in the jungle.

Friday was our "ZERO DAY"!  This year's class loves to do BIG group projects.  We covered our tables with butcher paper and laid out different circle shaped objects along with some colored pencils and markers.  Everyone had a blast tracing the circles and make ZEROES! 

 

Honestly, several of the students could have done this for HOURS!  I will say that the trick to making this successful is having a LARGE variety of traceable objects.  This was just an easy and fun way to work on our fine motor skills AND our sharing skills too!

Thank you for visiting with us.  I hope you can use some of these ideas for your classroom or just to do with your own children.  Next week we will be talking about the OCEAN!  I hope you drop back by and see what we have done!

Spring is Here!

The good news is that my husband and I actually survived Spring Break 2013.  The bad news is, it cost of a small fortune!  It all started with a freak wind storm that his our little area of town, ripping shingles off of our roof.  Then, my washer and dryer both decided to break down.  You are now reading an article written by one very unhappy preschool teacher.  But, we are getting a new roof and my classroom got a new reading room courtesy of my old washer and dryer boxes!  First they needed a little painting!

 

The final result was very colorful!



This amazingly colorful reading box sits in the corner of my classroom (not on a table, this picture was taken while it was drying!).  It is filled with pillows, blankets and a small flashlight.  The children are invited to take a book in our new reading room and spend some alone time reading.  It has quickly become a class favorite!

 

The washer and dryer also had some wonderful cardboard supports that I just could not throw away.  All we did was all a Styrofoam ball and . . . . .

 

 



instant balancing fun!  The best part is that it cost us $0.00 and when we get tired of them, another class can use it or we will just throw it away!

 

To be honest, I really don't like doing the same art projects year after year.  But our first art project is an exception.  I love our giant sunflowers!  They are very simple but a lot of fun!  We start out by painting a large paper plate yellow.  After it dries, we cut the petals.

 

Next, we add some real sunflower seeds!

While that dries for just a few minutes we paint our giant stems and leaves.

 

When everything is glued together we have a beautiful sunflower!

  

In Alabama, spring means rain (and an occasional tornado!).  So we made it rain on Tuesday!  We glued an umbrella shape onto a piece of light blue paper and the children followed the dots to draw a handle.  Next we added rain drops!  Well, they were really drops of blue paint!

Some drops were bigger than others! :)

 

Here comes the FUN part! 

 Now we have umbrellas with rain falling on them!

The trees in our area are just beautiful right now.  We spent an entire day talking about the trees and how they are "waking up".  Here is our beautiful spring tree project.  We started with a hand print (well, it really is a hand print AND arm print!).

 

 

Then we added the grass. 

We've been working on making patterns.

Look closely, can you see the pattern?

 

 

Finally, we added some little pieces of colorful tissue paper to represent the beautiful flowers on the trees. 

Please note that this one has the flowers falling off the tree

because the wind is blowing!

 



We were also talking about the letter "K" this week and since the wind is blowing so hard we made our very own shape kits.  Of course, we started off with a diamond shape and the children traced the lines to make our pretend kite "sticks".

 Our tails were long pieces of ribbon with different shapes attached.

I don't think they will fly but it is was a fun way to review our shapes!

We also made some yummy springtime cookies.  I made up some sugar cookie dough at home and each child got to cut out their own cookie.  We baked them and added some fun colored icing.  I wish I had some pictures to show you but  . . . . well, my hands were a little sticky! :)

Have a great week and I hope you stop back by soon!