Under the Sea

WOW, I am STILL trying to catch my breath after our last week!  We had so much fun talking about the amazing under the sea world.  Each day we went into great detail discussing a particular creature that lives in the water.  On Monday we started by talking about "fish",  just fish.  Pretty soon the movie "Finding Nemo" was brought up and we quickly talked about the clown fish.  One of our teachers has a large collection of sea shells and other sea objects.  She was happy to share with us and we loved it all, especially the shark teeth!

Our art project this week got out of hand - literally!  We started by painting our water.  Everyone had a choice to either use paint brushes or their hands.  Mrs. Christi's class opted for their hands, mine the brushes - oh well! 

 

 

Once the water was dried each child cut and added sea weed.  We also added some very cute hand print sea creatures.

 

 

But, we were STILL not done.  Next came my favorite part - a scuba diver!  And not just any scuba diver, a personalized diver.  That's right, we added our own picture and turned ourselves into underwater divers!



TOO CUTE!

 

This project took several days and was very time consuming. But I honestly think it was worth it, don't you????

 

We spent an entire day talking about jellyfish!  Did you know that a jellyfish does not have a brain?  It doesn't and it made us giggle!  Lucky for us, we have wonderful people who donate things to our school and someone has sent us a some leftover fabric.  We put it to good use this week by making a jellyfish.



I don't think anyone could be afraid of this jellyfish!

 

We also had two big bottles of jellyfish in our room this week.

 

I made them with plastic bottles.  You can get the instructions here .  My class really enjoyed them.  (Just a little word of advice, be sure to either glue the cap on or do what I did and use tape.)



 

One day was spent talking about our friend the octopus.  We counted his/her eight legs and read about their feeding habits.  We even made our very own octopus to take home.  It was made with an empty paper towel roll.  

 

CONFESSION TIME!!!  I made this octopus! 

I have never posted a picture of something I did. 

I always post pictures of the children's work,

but I forgot to take a picture of the octopus before sending them home. 

 

 

Now you know that you cannot spend a week talking about things that live in the sea without talking about sharks.  Okay here it is, the theme to JAWS!  Sorry, I just had to do that.  After much discussion about sharks we quickly came to the conclusion that . . . . WE LOVE SHARKS!  Here is the shark we made.

The children cut a small paper plate for his/her teeth.

 

Our Fabulous Fun Friday came too quickly and we headed to our kitchen for science fun and cooking!  We spent a great deal of time playing "Sink or Float?".  Everyone grabbed objects from our room to see if they would sink or float.  There was only one rule - NO BOOKS!  It was a lot of fun! 

 

Next, we had some fun with Skittles.  Everyone got a clear plastic cup and two different colored Skittles.  We patiently waited (and we did not have to wait long) and watched.

 

We quickly found out that if you DO NOT touch the cup, the colors will not mix!  OHHHHHH!  FUN!  Then, the coolest thing in the entire world happened . . . .

Can you see it??
The little "S" on the Skittles floated to the top!

COOL!

Of course no week would be complete without a little cooking fun.  This week we made "ocean cookies".  

 

If you are wondering what the red Skittle is doing in an ocean, you aren't alone.

We just wanted to eat a Skittle, so we called it a clam!

 

Now do you see why I am tired????  We had a great week and I am resting up to do it all over again on Monday.  I hope you stop back by to see what we are doing!

Under the Sea

Our "Under the Sea" week turned out to more fun than even I expected!  Usually by the time we get this deep into the school year, the students tend to get bored more easily.  NOT WITH THIS UNIT!  WOW, we had so much fun! 

This is my classroom!

I don't even remember where I got this large poster.

Someone threw it away and I retrieved it from the trash!

One of the most fun things we did this week was walk down our  hallways.  REALLY?!?!?!  Yes, we had so much fun swimming like a fish, crawling sideways like a crab and even floating like a jellyfish down the hall.  A real plus here is that fish are very quiet, so it was a wonderful way to keep us quiet as walked.  Okay, now let me show you some of the fun (and messy) things we did this week.

For the past couple of years, we have made a giant ocean scene.  It takes a couple of days but it is really fun.  First we have to paint the water.  Now that just didn't seem fun enough for us, SO we decided to do it the Mrs. Karen way!  First we squeezed on paint different colors of paint (green, blue, turquoise, and white).  Next, we used different types of rollers, brushes and scrappers to spread around the paint.

 

While that was drying (and it did take a full 24 hours to dry), we made different sea creatures out of our hand prints and cut out seaweed.  

Everyone was so very proud of their work!

One of our favorite books this week was Please Don't Eat the Teacher by Nick Ward.

 

This quickly became a class favorite and I was asked to read it everyday!  After reading it, there was no way my students were going to let me get through the week with a shark art project.  I think I nailed it!

 

Of course, there were those who wanted to make a hammerhead shark!



 

Here is a close-up of his/her mouth.  The children painted the inside of a small paper plate.  Then they cut (I drew the lines) little triangles all the way around the plate.  When you fold it in half it makes a perfect mouth!



 

I saw this amazing file folder game on PINTEREST but unfortunately the link did not work.

I loved the idea and I wanted everyone in my class to be able to do it.  Guess what?  We did!  Here is our Counting Octopus.

The octopus is a girl.  See her hair bow!

 



A close-up of our legs.

I will admit this activity is not for everyone.  There was a lot of circle punching involved in this, but I think it was worth it.  The children loved counting the circles and gluing them onto the legs.

Friday was our "Q" day.  We tried (really, we did) to be quiet, but as you can imagine it was more fun to be quick!  We also started working on our big Friendship Quilt.  This year we used real material.  Everyone picked out their favorite color construction paper and glued on different shaped pieces of material.

This is where I get to say "OPPS!"  I forgot to take pictures of the finished pieces, but I will and I will post them in a day or two.  We will join all the pieces together to form our giant "Friendship Quilt" and it will be on display for our end-of-the-year Art Show, which will be this Thursday.

 

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope you come back and visit with us soon.

Ocean/Sea Unit

(I'M STILL BEHIND!!!  AHHHHH!  I guess this will be my battle cry until the end of school and I am so sorry.  Little did I know that remodeling a few rooms would be so stressful and time consuming!  But then again, it could just be me!  OKAY, enough excuses, let's talk about our week.)

What an amazing week we have had!  We just completed our unit on "Ocean/Sea"!  We have spent the entire week "barking" like seals, "blowing" like whales and dolphins and "putting a fish bubble" in our mouths while we  walk down the hall.  Let me show you some of our fun . . . .

We started on Monday with one of my all-time favorite activities - finger paint!  I've had several classes over the years that just flat would not finger paint!  Lucky for me, this year's group is all in!  We mix blue, green and white all together to make . . . .

an ocean!  The next day we cut some seaweed.

and made a few hand prints for our sea creatures.  On Thursday,we glued everything on, we added some tan paint for the sand.  I like to find different and sometimes unusual objects for my students to paint with.  To paint our sand we used some old make-up brushes that a sweet neighbor of mine gave me.

The end results were amazing!

Sweet "H" ask me to take a picture of artwork!  

I guess they are getting use to my camera!

During the week a came across some alphabet stickers in our supply closet.  Everyone loves stickers and we have several fine-motor skill activities that are always a big hit.  Like this one - 

(I know SANTA STICKERS!).  Instead of tracing the circles (BORING!), I laminate the pages and we use stickers to make our circles or other shapes and numbers.  The stickers come right off with a little wipe of water.  Okay, back to the alphabet stickers I found!  I laid them out on the table one day after lunch 

and WOW . . . .

suddenly we are making words!  VERY COOL!

I found some large old copies of a fish stashed away in my cabinet and I thought we could do something  neat with them.  First we colored them using good 'ole Dot Markers.  Hmmm . . . I could see my class was looking at me and thinking, "really, this is it?".  I had to do something and quick!  I found some rubbing alcohol in my cabinet

 (WHAT?  You don't have rubbing alcohol in YOUR cabinet?) 

and the FUN began!  Everyone loved smelling it (YUCK!) and painting with it too!

The alcohol made the ink from the markers soften a bit.

The results were pretty cool!  Later in the week, I cut them out along with an extra piece of plain construction paper.  Next, we stapled the two pieces together and the children stuffed them with some old pillow batting that I found in our supply closet.  (Sorry, no picture of the final results, but trust me . . . CUTE!)

I found some activity cards over at Tiddler Approved and we have had so much fun this week in circle time as we acted out each of the sea creatures.  I hope you will check them out!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was even more fun than usual this week because of an amazing gift I received.

Can you believe someone was going to THROW THIS AWAY????????  Good thing we rescued it!  Our class spent the entire day Friday painting the box.  The final project . . . .

The world's LARGEST aquarium!

All four sides of the box were paint with every shade of blue and green that you could imagine!  We added some seaweed (see the pieces floating?) and some little fish from the Ellison machine.  Someone asked me at the end of the day if I was going to throw it away.  REALLY!?!?!?!  NO, we are saving this masterpiece for our art show in a few weeks!

Thanks for stopping by and visiting with us.  I hope to catch up with our other activities very soon.  I hope you will check back soon!

"T" Week and Ocean

Yes, this is actually me and I am wearing a tiara, a tutu and a tangerine shirt while trying to twirl a baton. Goodness gracious, is there anything I won't do to get a child's attention????? Obviously not! ;0) Keep reading and you will find out why I am wearing this lovely outfit!

Well, you've probably guess by now that we had "T" week and it was terrific. The only bad part of the week was when my camera died. I had no idea how much I used it until I didn't have it. So a big "thank you" to our director, Cynthia, for taking all these pictures. I enjoyed this week because there was just so much to talk about. We started on Monday and made the cutest shark. He turned out so cute. We cut triangles out of a circle for his teeth. I just loved him.

I especially loved how the children recognized all the triangles we used in this project and then they started screaming "triangles start with T!" Ahhhhhh. . . success!

We also painted a silly looking fish this week. We used our regular paint and watered them down a bit. After they dried we stuffed them with some old polyester batting that one of our Mom's donated. I love the look, especially those big 'ole eyes! One of the girls in our class said they looked like a pillow. Hmmm . . . I guess they did.

Our Thursday was filled with FUN! We had a guest speaker, Ms Diane McKinnon, a Marine Biologist, come and talk to us about fish and all the other interesting creatures that live in the Mobile Bay and Gulf of Mexico.

I was really proud of our classes. But I guess it is easy to listen when you get to see wonderful pictures of fish, crabs and even sharks!

Our Fabulous Fun Friday was so much fun! We started off making our very own fish aquariums our of old 2-liter Pepsi bottles. (Sorry, no pictures). We used our hand print for the fish, added some seaweed that the children cut out of green construction paper and then dropped in real shells. We held the whole thing together with blue tissue paper stuffed inside to look like water. SUPER CUTE and I'm trying to see if one of my Moms will take a picture for me.

We also made an apple tree cookie out of graham crackers (for the trunk) and vanilla wafers (for the leaves) which had green icing spread on top. YUMMY! But to top it all off we added red M&M's for the apples!

We headed back to our classroom to work off some of the sugar and I dumped a HUGE supply of wrapping paper tubes, paper towel tubes AND of course toilet paper tubes, right in the middle of the floor. I then pulled off big long strips of masking tape and told everyone to "have fun!" Boy, did they ever have fun. We had all kind of towers and even a trumpet! Super fun and believe it or not, no one fussed or complained. WOW!
Now comes the reason I am in that lovely outfit. You see, my sweet friend, Mrs. Tiffany, came to school (she's the cutie in the other tangerine shirt with the "T" on it) and twirled her baton for us. She was originally in the tutu, the tiara, the tangerine shirt, and the tube socks then she shared them wish me. I don't get many opportunities to wear a tiara and a tutu so I took full advantage of the situation and literally wore it the rest of the day. Oh my, next it the letter "U" hmmmm . . . I wonder where my son's old "u"niforms are????????