Moo cows

We made these lovely cows towards the end of our farm unit. The students learned about the different parts of the cows and where milk comes from. They glued together the cows and then used letter stamps to use the letters of their names to make the spots. It worked really well and was a good activity for learning to spell their names, which we have been working on lately.

Shake shake shake.

Yesterday we made butter! I made a playlist of shaking on my iPod and we had a shaking party. It was surprisingly easy. All you do is take a little bit of heavy whipping cream and shake it up! We used the ziploc bags that have two zippers, but I've also seen it done with a mason jar. I added a little bit of salt and left over honey from when we studied bees to give it a little flavor. The kids shook their bags for 25 minutes, then we put the butter in the fridge to harden and set. We had it for afternoon snack and it was a hit!

I speak for the trees!

Happy Earth Day! Today we celebrated the earth that God gave us and discussed why we shouldn't muck it up!

We read The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. This is a pretty long book, to be honest. I expected that my students, who are just three and won't be turning four until the summer and into the next school year, would not be able to sit for the entire book. Imagine my surprise when not only did they sit, but they paid attention! They asked questions! They were interested in it and I had all of their attention. Way to go, Dr. Seuss! Reading this book went well over our usual ten minute story time into a 25 minute story time. I'm so proud of them for sitting. They were especially focused on the fact that you never see the Once-ler's face. They kept hoping it would show up!

After reading The Lorax we talked about the earth that we were given. I teach at a Christian school, so we took the line of discussing that God gave us this earth to take care of. We talked about how we should all be like a Lorax and speak for the trees and the animals, so they can keep living with us on the earth. They really grasped the connection between the animals having to leave and the trees getting cut down. It was totally awesome! I'm not going to lie, it brought a little tear to my eye.

We created our own Truffula Trees, using an idea I found on the internet. I can't remember where now! The kids loved it because they finally got to make rivers with the glue! Like any other preschool teacher, time spent with liquid glue means time spent repeating "A dot is a lot!" and "Dots! Not lakes!" My students ALWAYS want to make rivers and lakes with the glue, which is usually not necessary and we're working hard on not being wasteful! This is our finished product. Well, almost. They pasted pictures of themselves in the "unless" stand, because "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it's not." We used Easter grass for the truffula tops. They aren't as soft as described in the books, but it gets the visual across.

After nap, we took a hike! Our preschool is in a fairly developed area, and we're sitting literally in a parking lot with very little nature around. We try to take hikes as often as we can, but there's only so many times you can look at the same grass. And the grass is sprayed with pesticides, so there aren't even bugs! Today on our Earth Day hike, we picked up trash! Clean up the Earth! We filled one small plastic bag and then quickly washed our hands!

I think it was a good Earth Day. Tomorrow is going back to the farm and going to be totally awesome.

Pepper prints and salsa

Today we continued on with our farm and learning about what grows on a farm. Because my students love salsa, we made our own. I love cooking with my students. I do it often because I personally cannot cook. I like the idea that I can get a three year old into cooking so they won't turn into me: A 24 year old who is about to go out to eat because no one is home to cook for me. We used an onion, a red pepper, and a tomato, along with other spices. I cut up the vegetables, and the students put those vegetables into my food processor. Then we all took turns pushing the "pulse" button on the food processor. This is, by far, their favorite part of cooking.
Tada! Chips and salsa. It wasn't the world's greatest salsa, but it did spur a discussion about how we could make it better next time. And if that's not creating little cooks, I don't know what is.

We also did some painting, because I love painting almost as much as I love cooking. We took an extra green pepper, cut it in half, and used it to stamp on the paper.
This is my example to show them what they were going to be doing.

This is what most of them did! I love how I can always depend on my students to use whatever I give them to paint with to cover the entire sheet of paper. They had fun though, and that's the part that matters! And they can all tell you where our vegetables come from: "The farm!"

001: Aw shucks, you caught us being corny

As a preschool teacher, I find that blogs can sometimes be my best source of inspiration and craft ideas. I read many other blogs and finally got to thinking "Hey, me too!" I may also eventually give out this blog website to my students' parents, and let them see the thought process that goes behind the many, many art projects we do in class. We'll see how well this turns out first! And by that, I mean how often I actually keep up with this blog. I don't have the best blogging reputation.

So we'll start here. Our current theme at the preschool is "The Farm." I love farm animals, but I also love teaching students what a farm is for! Our science activity for Friday was shucking corn. We used this as a vocabulary lesson also. The students learned words like "ear," "shuck," "husk," and "stalk." The shucking took quite nearly 20 minutes and the kids were completely invested in the whole concept. I even had one extra ear of corn, because of an absent student, and had students clamoring to shuck that ear! I loved the look of amazement on their faces when they realized that I was actually telling the truth! There is corn under all that husk. We were unable to cook the corn that day. Because we were shortstaffed in the preschool, I was unable to run to the kitchen and boil it. I did send it home though, and I hope the parents cooked it!

After we were done shucking, we used the extra husks to paint! Painting is a much more rewarding experience for children when they are allowed to paint whatever they please. In preschool, we often forget this for the sake of making something that the parents and people coming in on tours will think is adorable and cute. It was great to watch how my students differed when they used the husks. Some held it like a paint brush and used it to spread the paint around. Others used it like a stamp, putting an entire length of it in the paint before pressing it flat on to the paper. Everyone loved it! I only let two students paint at a time, because I was doing this activity during center time at the art center. I had a line of students waiting to come do their painting. We used yellow and red paint in order to incorporate more learning, because then the students could see how the paint changed to orange as it mixed together.

I loved this activity and will definitely be doing it again next year.