Fox Hill School

Boston Strong

2013-05-10T19:04:00.000-07:00

Carter Lucido, Fox Hill School alumni, is currently a 1st grader in Georgetown. He was invited to read two of his poems in front of the Georgetown School Committee last night at Town Hall and it was also on TV. This is one of the poems he wrote and recited in front of the school committee. I am so proud and touched I wanted to share it with everyone.

Boston Strong

by Carter Lucido

Big friendship

One fund

Super police

Tall police

One criminal left

Next month the criminal will be gone

So many nice people

The people came together

Russian brothers

Our great survivors

No more hurting

Great news

Boston is Strong

Savvy Sand Toy Storage

2013-05-08T18:09:00.001-07:00

The giant sandbox is one of the busiest areas on our playground. Sometimes we will bury "treasures" in the sand and see how long it takes the kids to find them. The treasures might be shells, fancy rocks, Hot Wheels, or other little trinkets. In addition, we always have shovels, sifters, rakes and sand molds in the sand box. In the past, all of the sand toys could be a little overwhelming at clean up time. If the toys do not have an obvious, organized place to be stored, the kids will just leave them out for us to clean up. Since we are always encouraging independence in the kids and consideration for our classroom (indoor or out!), we felt it was important to have an easy system the kids could use to store the sand toys themselves. I found these colored wire baskets at the dollar store and attached them to the fence next to the sand box with zip ties. Now the kids have a convenient and fun place to put the sand toys when they are finished using them!

The Outdoor Classroom

2013-05-07T18:27:00.000-07:00

At the Fox Hill School we don't just view our play yard as a place for kids to let off steam. We see it as an outdoor classroom: a place where kids can explore, learn and have fun during their recess time. This week we'll be focusing on some of the new activities we have in our "outdoor classroom" that the parents helped us create/renew on Parent Playground Day!
Up until now we have had outdoor easels in our play yard as seen in this link. The kids loved being able to paint outside, but we found that we would hang up the paintings to dry outside and they would be forgotten. So one of the things we have used to replace the easels is an outdoor chalkboard. As you may know, typical chalkboard paint is not waterproof so we had to do a little research to find a solution. Leave it to Martha Stewart to figure out how to make waterproof chalkboard paint! We are fortunate to have a Home Depot in our neighborhood and they donated the supplies for this project (thank you Home Depot!). We started with a 4 ft. by 8 ft. piece of plywood and used Martha's paint to cover all sides. We used 1 cup outdoor paint (tinted black) mixed with 2 tablespoons of grout to make the chalkboard paint. Once it was dry we screwed it into the fence in our play yard and voila! - outdoor chalkboard! Chalkboards encourage, literacy, art, and fine motor skills just to name a few! Very easy addition to a school yard or back yard!

Parent Playground Day!

2013-05-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend we had our annual Parent Playground Day! The winters here in Massachusetts are usually quite rough on our playground, so each year in the spring we call on the talents of our parents to help us spruce up our playground. Parents help by painting, landscaping, making minor repairs, and preparing our garden for the kids to plant. Parents who are unable to attend can donate flowers or soil. This is a great event for parents to spend some time getting to know each other and their kids' teachers, as well as making the school more beautiful for their children. The kids are so excited to know that "Mommy and Daddy" did all these things to make their playground beautiful and fun! This year we added a magnet maze wall and a huge chalkboard and redesigned our system for storing sand toys in addition to all the landscaping, painting and garden preparation. Phew! We are very lucky to have families at our school that like to be involved with the program. We couldn't do it without them. It literally does take a village! Here is a montage our our morning yesterday:

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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Mastering Mondrian

2013-04-24T16:01:00.002-07:00

As we studied many of the great artists in our focus book, Vincent Van Gogh's Cat, we branched out to learn about some more modern artists, too. One of them was Piet Mondrian. Many of his paintings are made with straight lines and primary colors so his art was fun and easy for the preschoolers to use as a model.

We used heavy card stock and taped black painter's tape in various straight line patterns on the paper. Then the kids used tempera paints to make their Mondrian-style creation. Many of these were displayed at our FHS Art Show!

Another activity the kids explored was to try and make a Mondrian-style "painting" in the block area! We supplied them with primary colored pieces of construction paper in various sizes and challenged them to create something that looked like a Mondrian painting.

It was amazing to watch them putting the pieces together! Each group of kids had their own strategy about how to do it. Not only was this a fun way to explore art, but a great activity for spacial relations, too!

Click on the pictures below to purchase these great art books from Amazon.

The Art Show!

2013-04-22T13:00:00.001-07:00

The Fox Hill School was on April Vacation last week. Before our week off we had our annual art show! This year the show featured kids' work from both of our programs: PreK kids from the Fox Hill School and all the kids from the Fox Hill School PreK/Kindergarten! As they say - a picture is worth a thousand words so click below to view a montage with photos from our art show.

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
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Pollock Potential!

2013-04-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

Jackson Pollock has to be one of the favorite artists of preschool and Kindergarten aged children. How can you blame them? What's more fun than throwing paint?!? Our art show is coming up this week and I wanted the kids to make a Pollock inspired piece to display. Many sites on the internet that I have visited and books about children's art have all kinds of different ways to emulate Pollock's art without getting messy. I'm all about getting messy so we brought the project outside and let them fill their canvas in true Pollock form! In the past we have made one big canvas to display at school. This time I wanted each of the Kindergartners to have a canvas to take home so I taped 15 canvases (5x7 sized) together and had them work on the painting together. Then after the piece is displayed at the art show, they can each take a canvas home! These are a few photos of the masterpiece in the making and I will post the finished product after the art show!

Here are some of the books we have about Jackson Pollock in our classroom. Click on the picture to purchase from Amazon.

Lost a Tooth, Gained a Book!

2013-04-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

All of the curriculum at the Fox Hill School is based on children's literature so needless to say, we love books! As you are probably aware, Scholastic has a wonderful program for schools that helps them build their classroom libraries. When parents order books from the Scholastic Book Club the school earns points that can be used to get new books. In addition to building our classroom libraries, we also like to use the points to buy books that we can give away to the children in our program. For example, at the Fox hill School Kindergarten, many kids lose their first tooth during the school year. When that happens, we give the child a copy of The Night Before the Tooth Fairy by Natasha Wang with a sticker inside the front cover congratulating them on this milestone. This is a no cost way to encourage the kids in your program to read while recognizing an exciting time in their life a the same time!

Click here to view books about losing teeth currently available from Scholastic!

Science All Around

2013-04-04T08:35:00.001-07:00

There are simple ways you can expose your students to science every day. One of the favorites at the Fox Hill School are crystal prisms. We have these hanging in the windows and skylights at the school. At the beginning of the year we explained that when sun goes through the prisms, it creates rainbows! The kids love to find where the rainbows are around the room at the different times of day. They have also realized that when the weather is not sunny, the prisms do not make rainbows. It's been a long snowy winter here in New England so needless to say, the reemergence of the rainbows in our classroom this week has been very exciting!

One activity we like to have the kids do is to try and "catch" the rainbows around the room. They get their clipboards, index cards and colored pencils and place the clipboard on the ground or wall under the rainbow. The kids use the colored pencils to color the rainbow as it shows on their paper. Then they can take the rainbow home with them! The crystal prisms are very inexpensive and once they are up you have a constant science lesson in your classroom!

You can get crystal prisms at Michael's or A.C. Moore or click on the picture below to purchase from Amazon!

Simple Straws

2013-04-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

We rotate our materials quite often at the Fox Hill School to keep things new and interesting for the kids. The same goes for our block area. We don't always have blocks out. Sometimes we have straws! If you already have this fantastic product at your program, you know how great they are. If you don't, this is a wonderful toy that the kids love and is a great material to rotate into your block area.

It is very simple - straws and connectors and away they go! This is a great fine motor activity because of the tiny connectors used to hold the straws together. Straws are also a super tool for learning spacial relations. The first couple times kids use them, they usually make long, flat structures. Once you show them that they can also build UP and OUT, it's a whole new ball game!

As you can see from the photos, they are also a wonderful toy for promoting collaborative building projects. Since there are many connectors all over the structure, it is easy for kids to join in and help with a building project. No arguing on this construction job! I played with something similar to this product back in the Jurassic period when I was young. Sometimes the old-fashioned toys are even more exciting that the new flashy ones! Put the straws out in your block area and watch the magic happen!

Don't have straws? Click on the picture below to purchase from Amazon!

No Toil With The Coil!

2013-04-02T18:27:00.003-07:00

I love doing projects with clay with my students, but sometimes I find it can be intimidating for them. They like to make flat things out of the clay instead of using the clay to make something 3-dimensional. We've made pinch pots in the past which they enjoyed but the pinching part did not come easily. It is a very good fine motor art activity but if you want a clay activity that is right up their alley, try making coil pots! Every kid can make a snake out of clay or play dough and this project puts that skill to good use!

First I had the kids make 8-10 snakes out of their clay.

Then they rolled the first snake to look like a snail. This is the bottom of the pot. Then they scored the clay (made little hash marks) on the top with a pencil and wet the clay with a slip (water with a little clay mixed in). Then they added another snake to the top of their pot.

They continued with the score, slip and stack method until all of their snakes were stacked on their pot. They were able to do this quite easily with minimal help from me. They liked using the art words "score" and "slip" - they sounded like real little artists!

When they were done stacking, they used the slip to smooth either the inside or outside of their pot together so the coils wouldn't separate when they dried. The next art class we painted the pots with acrylic paints, as they show up much better on the clay than tempera paints. Here are a few of the finished coil pots!

They are so excited to have their coil pot creations on display at the art show next week!

Easter Eggs and Angry Birds!

2013-03-29T07:45:00.002-07:00

Can you tell our schools are closed for Good Friday today?!? I'm at home with my own kids today so I thought I would get them doing something creative to start our holiday weekend. I saw this fun Easter Egg yarn project on one of the blogs I follow and I thought my daughter would love it. She's in 3rd grade and did great with the fine motor aspect of this project but I'm no so sure my preschool or Kinders would have the patience. All you need is some yarn, glue and a canvas. We used a 5x7 canvas but if you didn't have one it would work fine on sturdy card stock. Click here for detailed directions for this project!

My son wasn't as into making an Easter egg so he opted for pom pom Angry Birds, which I also saw on the blog. Click here to see how to make the pom poms. He made red and blue pom poms for the birds and green pom poms for the pigs. He glued googly eyes to the pom poms and made beaks and pig noses out of card stock which he also glued on. Then he set up a tower made from small plastic cups, set the pigs on them and threw the birds at the structure to try and knock it down. He's now looking for things to make a slingshot so we'll see how that works out!

If you're looking for something fun and crafty to do with your kids on their day off, try one of these! My kids are having a blast! Happy Easter!

Marvelous Monet

2013-03-28T13:09:00.001-07:00

We are still exploring our focus book entitled Vincent Van Gogh's Cat. One of the authors we learned about this week was Claude Monet. Years ago we had a guest artist (art teacher-grandmother of one of the kids in our school) who came and did a fantastic Monet-inspired collaborative project with our class. We decided to try it out for ourselves this week! We read a book called The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt. This cute story gives a little histrory about the artist and the illustrations reflect the style of his paintings. We asked the kids if they saw any white spaces left on the page when he made a painting. The answer? No! Then we explained that we would be making a giant mural like Monet would have made.

First we had our children who are going to Kindergarten next year make big flowers with oil pastels and cut them out. This mural will be displayed in our upcoming Kindergarten Readiness Art Show so our K-Readiness kids drew the special flowers!

Then we glued the flowers randomly to a huge piece of butcher paper.

We put a yellow tempera cake, a blue tempera cake, a little water and some white liquid tempera paint in recycled microwave dinner containers.

Then it was time for the fun! We told the kids that they needed to make leaves and vines for the flowers on the paper with the paint. All the children found a spot and kneeled next to the huge paper. We reminded them about their observation that Monet didn't leave any white spaces on his paper.

Some of the children were concerned that there was only blue and yellow paint available so we asked them what they thought would happen if they used both colors at the same time. Of course GREEN was the answer! Nothing like a little science mixed into an art project!

The only instruction we gave after that was that if the paper in front of them was already covered with paint, they should move to a new spot because if the paper had too much paint in one spot it may rip.

They had so much fun we could barely get them to put the brushes down when the paper was full!

Check back in a few weeks to see the finished product when it is displayed at the Art Show!

Here are some support books we have in our classroom for this unit. Click on the picture to purchase from Amazon.

Child's Play

2013-03-27T05:30:00.000-07:00

Last night we offered our families a parent workshop in place of our usual monthly parent collaborative meeting. Our guest speaker was Tere Bowen-Irish, OTR/L of All The Possibilities, Inc. She facilitated a workshop about the importance of play in children's development called "Child's Play - Let’s Play Alone, Next to and Together, Building Creativity, Independence and Intelligence…"
In addition to parent and teacher workshops, Tere has come into our classrooms to teach the children and teachers strategies and activities that promote strength and attention through a wonderful program she created called "Drive Thru Menus."
The Drive Thrus are a series of short, fun and engaging activities that we have now incorporated into our daily routine that really help the children focus. Children will now actually ask to do these activities if they are feeling their bodies are not in control or they need to get out some wiggles before they are ready for group time. They incorporate children's literature as well so they really fit right in with our curriculum. One favorite Drive Thru is candlestick jumping! We put each child's name in place of "Jack" in this nursery rhyme and say "Reagan be nimble, Reagan be quick, Reagan jump over the candlestick!" Then it is Reagan's turn to get up and jump over the "candlestick" (in this case a block) that we have in the middle of the group time rug. They are encouraged to jump with both feet off the ground at the same time, which promotes strength and balance, and the kids are able to get up and move around which helps them with their attention once it is time to begin group time again.
We regularly direct our families to Tere's website, All The Possibilities, Inc., because each month she posts a free download that has fun daily activities you can do with your child! In addition, Tere has written a fabulous book entitled Yoga and Me, Come Be a Tree, which is also available on her website.
If you offer parent workshops at your school, I would highly recommend having Tere come speak with your parents. Here is a sample of what we discussed at the workshop last night (quoted from Tere's handouts):
What we know about play…
* Solitary play builds independent work skills necessary for future school work.
* Parallel play allows the child to work next to others without distraction, problem solving independently but taking cues from the environment.
* Cooperative play lays the groundwork towards working with others at any stage of life.
Your role in play…
* Consider yourself a concierge, custodian, tour guide or perhaps a gatekeeper.
* No need to hover and control, but rather take on the role of tutor, facilitator and expander.

*remember, it’s the process, not the product that is important.
* Easy on the praise and protection. Allow your child to fail, re-group, go back and try again. End on a good note, take the opportunity to teach a lesson.
* Encourage risk taking (within limits). Remember only this child had to fall a few times before they walked.
* Ask open ended questions such as “How high do you think it can go?” “Where should we start?” “Why do you think that happened?” “Who do you think at your school would like playing this?” “When should we do this again?” You are stoking the problem solving fire!
* Follow the child’s lead, for once you begin to direct, it is not play anymore.

Thanks to Tere for yet another fun and informative parent workshop!

These are some books about play that Tere recommended to our parents. Click on the book to purchase from Amazon.

Readie went to Ireland!

2013-03-26T12:42:00.001-07:00

Readie is a bear that lives in our Kindergarten classroom. Sometimes he disappears with his suitcase and when he returns, he has always traveled somewhere exciting. When he comes back he always brings clues about where he has been. Readie has been to England and Canada and now he just returned from Ireland! He brought back a picture of the Irish flag and coloring pages of the flag and maps of Ireland. The kids were challenged to find Ireland on our globe and on Readie's world map and then color their own maps and flags. We also asked the kids to compare where Ireland is in relation to the other places Readie has been and asked how he could have traveled to each of these places (plane, drive, train, boat, etc). Having Readie teach us about geography is a simple an exciting way to incorporate a concept that may otherwise be a little difficult for young kids to comprehend. Thanks, Readie! We can't wait to see where you go next!

Van Gogh Across the Curriculum

2013-03-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Our current focus book at the Fox Hill School is called Vincent Van Gogh's Cat. Although this sounds like it may be difficult to plan a full range of activities from a book about art, we have come up with quite a few activities that tie into this focus book nicely.

Since the first artist we learned about was Van Gogh and we painted our own version of his famous sunflower painting earlier in the week, we put sunflower seeds in the sensory table for the kids to explore. We showed them on the painting where the sunflower seeds are on the flowers for this science and sensory activity.

As a math activity, we made pattern strips using only the colors in Van Gogh's sunflower painting. The children were challenged to copy and then extend the pattern with Unifix cubes.

I printed a few copy's of van Gogh's "Starry Night" and laminated them. Using the paper cutter, I cut one of the copies into many pieces. As a math activity, the children's task was to roll a die and put that many pieces of the puzzle on the picture. They could build the puzzle on top of the picture or next to it.

We explained that when Van Gogh painted, he used dashes and swirls to create many of the paintings. We gave the kids an example of what dashes and swirls look like and had them practice making the lines themselves as a fine motor activity.

As a literacy activity, we wrote the words "art", "swirl", "Van Gogh" and "dash" on tented index cards and had the kids use the magnetic letters to create the words on their magnet boards.

This is why we love literature based curriculum. We've given the kids fun activities across the curriculum and we're still only on the first page of the story!

Here are some of the support books we use during our Vincent Van Gogh's Cat unit. Click on the book to purchase from Amazon.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

2013-03-22T09:34:00.001-07:00

This week we started a new focus book called Vincent Van Gogh's Cat. This is a great story published by Scholastic that was written by a group of second grade students! The cat in the story has been cut out from famous paintings that the kids painted. I love using this book as a focus book because it is a great way to introduce kids to many of the great artists and their work.

The first artist we introduced this week was Van Gogh, of course so we had the kids try to make their own version of his "Vase with 12 Sunflowers" painting. We explained that Van Gogh used very thick paint for his paintings called "impasto" and that they would be making a painting with impasto just like Van Gogh!

First we had the kids pick 2 colors of watercolors for the background - one for the wall, one for the table. We used liquid watercolors and big paint brushes to cover the entire paper.

Once the backgrounds were dry, we made our impasto paint by mixing tempera paint with cornstarch or flour (depending on the allergies we have in each classroom. Both work great!) We also added some brown to the yellow, orange and green paint to more closely resemble the colors Van Gogh uses in his painting.

The kids used big brushes to paint their vases and sunflowers on their backgrounds, using a picture of the original work of art as their guide. Check out these amazing finished works of art!

Here are some of the support books we have in our classroom that we use with the focus book Vincent Van Gogh's Cat. Click on the book to purchase from Amazon.

Mystery Readers!

2013-03-21T13:18:00.001-07:00

Each year around this time, the Fox Hill School holds a Read-a-Thon for the preschool and Kindergarten programs. The beneficiary of this read-a-thon is the Peabody Institute Library in Danvers. They are raising funds to renovate the children's room at the library. Last year our families raised over $2,000 during our 10 day read-a-thon!

During our read-a-thon, the kids are challenged to read or be read to for 15 minutes per day for 10 days. That covers the ever important element of raising life-long learners; reading at home each day. We like to reinforce the importance of reading at school, too so we arrange to have mystery readers each day during the read-a-thon. Mystery readers can be parents, grandparents, siblings, friends or anyone else a child in the class would be surprised to see at school. Mystery readers give parents a chance to participate in the program, the kids LOVE being surprised by their loved ones and it reinforces that reading is super fun! What more could you ask for?!?! This week we had a very special mystery reader - one of children at our school has a sibling in 1st grade (who is also an alumni of the Fox Hill School!) who surprised her sister and was the mystery reader in our Afternoon Explorers class. She is a fantastic reader and the kids were on the edge of their seats listening to the "big kid" reading! We love our mystery readers! If you have the opportunity to try this at your school, I highly recommend it!

Mr. Seahorse

2013-03-19T12:19:00.002-07:00

I think I mentioned that I was taking this great online art class called Teaching Art 101 offered by a blog I follow called Deep Space Sparkle. The class is over now so I'm trying out some of the things I learned on my students at the PreK/Kindergarten! Yesterday in art, I read the kids Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle. The art project that goes along with this story is a watercolor resist.

Ms. Melanie's try at Mr. Seahorse

First, I did a directed line drawing with the kids and showed them how to draw the seahorse. They used metallic crayons to draw the lines.

Next I gave them blue liquid watercolors with silver liquid watercolors mixed in to paint the background. This gave the water a little shimmer!

Once the backgrounds were finished, each child used pan watercolors to paint their seahorses. I showed them that you can mix the watercolors right on their paper if they wanted their seahorse to be colorful like the one in the story.

The painting I did was on 12x18 in. watercolor paper, but I had the PreK/Kindergarten use 9x12 in. watercolor paper because 1) it is tough to get them to draw anything big and, 2) it takes a long time to paint the large background and I didn't want them to lose interest. The smaller paper worked great! They are not used to directed line drawing but they did a wonderful job. These turned out so well that they will be included in our FHS Art Show in April! Here are some of the children's Mr. Seahorse paintings!

Click on the book below to buy "Mister Seahorse" from Amazon!

The Classroom Leprechaun!

2013-03-18T12:03:00.002-07:00

That little mischievous leprechaun was at it again this week at the Fox Hill School. Irish or not, here in the Boston area we take St. Patrick’s Day very seriously! Since it is the seventh month in the school year, it is a great time to tease the boys and girls about taking care of our classroom too. To be honest, it is pretty fun to be the one secretly making a mess and mixing up some of our daily routine! Here I have listed some things we did on Friday that are simple and easy things to do at home or in your classroom too!

Our FHS tradition is to turn every liquid green. From the water in our sensory table (like the Chicago River during this holiday) to the milk and toilet water - everything is green, green, green! We use just a few drops of green food coloring to achieve this.

During group time while another teacher engaged the children, the “leprechaun” mixed up all of our markers. Since they had already been exposed to the green toilet water when they arrived at school, the children immediately assumed the leprechaun had been up to no good…Even when I persistently asked if anyone in the class had made the mess themselves!!

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many boys and girls joined in the fun. Some thought they heard him giggling or even saw him. Some searched for clues around the classroom using magnifying glasses, too.

All in all it was a fun day full of mischievous antics. Don’t forget! Even things like pretending that a marker cap is stuck or you cant move your chair can be a silly thing leprechauns do.

Since this year St. Patrick’s Day is on a Sunday, I decided to leave something else out for our Monday morning crew. We have small block dolls in our block area and leftover green paint, so I walked the doll across all our easel paper and sign in sheet to look like leprechaun footprints! Hope you enjoyed this festive holiday as much as we have lads and lassies! Cheers!

Here are some of the books about St. Patrick's Day that we have in our classroom at the Fox Hill School. Click on the book to purchase from Amazon!

Their Weight In Gold

2013-03-15T09:57:00.003-07:00

We've been talking about St. Patrick's Day, Ireland, potatoes, gold and those mischievous little leprechauns this week at the Fox Hill School. As one of our Math/Science activities we had the kids see if they could figure out how may gold pieces (rocks we have spray painted gold) it would take to weigh the same as the potatoes. Once they got the scale to balance they counted how many gold pieces and how many potatoes made the scale balance. As you can see from the smiles and clapping, they were very proud of themselves when they figured it out! Have a great weekend!

Got Milk?

2013-03-14T17:31:00.003-07:00

No kiddos today - we had a Professional Day. I always try to arrange for our team to visit other preschools in the area for part of our professional days. Today we visited a new Montessori school that opened in September 2011 by the mother of an alumni of the Fox Hill School! Her school, the Ipswich Montessori School, is a lovely and inspirational program! Most of us have learned a little bit about the Montessori philosophy in school, but it was wonderful to see it in action! Thank you to Patsy and Betsy for sharing their school with us!

Children at the Fox Hill School poor their own milk at snack.

Since it's our professional day, I thought I would pass along some administrative information today. Several years ago, in an attempt to have a more "green" school, we switched from using paper and plastic cups and plates to using real cups, pitchers, plates and silverware that can be washed and reused. We also discovered that Puleo's Dairy provides a milk delivery service! Each week the milkman leaves our milk in a cooler outside our door. The milk containers are made of glass so when we have finished the milk we leave the empty glass containers for them to take away when they deliver the new milk! The milk is DELICIOUS and we are never in a "no milk" situation. It's super convenient and green! Check it out if you live in this area!

Recycled Planting

2013-03-13T13:54:00.001-07:00

We went to the Legacy of Teaching Early Childhood Institute this weekend. If you are in our area I highly recommend attending this conference. We leave there each year with ideas we can use in our classroom the very next day! In Afternoon Explorers this week Ms. Amy wanted to try a planting project she learned about in one of her workshops about having a "green" classroom. We told the kids that we were going to grow some flowers using seeds and recycled materials. No soil! Here's what we did:

First we had the children cut four slices in the sides of toilet paper rolls.

Then we had them bend the flaps over and tape the bottom to create a pot.

Once they had created the pot we had them wet a paper towel and put a seed inside. Then they tucked the paper towel into the toilet paper pot.

We took all our new recycled planters and placed them in our classroom greenhouse.

The kids will keep the plants moist and document their growth. This post will have to be continued once we see what comes up! Stay tuned!

Monkey Bread Muffins

2013-03-12T18:38:00.002-07:00

I don't know why, but for some reason on snow days I am always inspired to bake! Since we had yet another snow day from school last Friday, my kids and I decided to head to the kitchen. My daughter found a recipe in her American Girl Magazine that was easy and delicious! If you have ever made Monkey Bread before, you know it is delicious, messy and gooey. These Monkey Bread Muffins eliminate most of the mess and just leave the fun!

Here's the recipe:
1 stick butter
6 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 (7.5oz) cans of refrigerated biscuit dough

Melt butter in the microwave. Let cool slightly. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together in another bowl. Open the biscuits (there should be 10 in each can). Cut each biscuit into 4 pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Fill a muffin tin with foil muffin liners Dip each dough ball in the butter, then roll it in the sugar mixture. Place 5-7 balls in each muffin cup. Pour the extra melted butter over each muffin. Bake at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Let cool lightly. Serves 12.

Hopefully we've seen our last snow day for the year, but now you are ready if not! These would also be super easy to make with your kids at school if you are ever looking for a fun baking project/snack!

Imagination Station: The Sneetches!

2013-03-11T17:54:00.004-07:00

Our Afternoon Explorers class couldn't get enough of Dr. Seuss! One of my personal favorite Dr. Seuss stories is The Sneetches. This story teaches you about similarities and differences in appearance. After reading through the story, we talked about what was alike and different about how we all looked. We even separated into groups based on eye color, hair color etc. By the end of this exercise the children agreed that it is OK to be different and we liked it that way (even our siblings in class found ways they were alike and different!) We also agreed that we could end up confused like the Sneetches if everyone was exactly the same.

The next step in our "Imagination Station" week was planning out our props for our Sneetch play. We used painted recycled boxes, blankets, a table and extra PVC pipes to create our own version of the STAR ON/STAR OFF MACHINE. I also laminated green stars that the children taped to their shirts.

When we were ready to perform, we placed the blanket over the table and put boxes and PVC pipes on top. Half of the class started with stars as the narrator, Sylvester McMonkey McBean (aka Ms. Emily), read the story aloud. They all loved the silliness of the machine as we continued to stick and unstick stars to and from shirts. The best part for me was listening to them recognize the poor attitudes between the two groups of Sneetches in the beginning and encouraging them to all get along! They all came full circle "...I'm quite happy to say that the Sneetches got really quite smart on that day. The day they decided that Sneetches are Sneetches and no kind of Sneetch is the best of the beaches"- Dr.Seuss!

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