Count Down Santa

For a Christmas count down, I decided to make the Santa's beard version.  I love this one.  I found the poem at: 

http://www.oopseydaisyblog.com/2010/12/christmas-book-advent-day-1.htm

Santa’s beard is very bare.

On his chin, there is no hair.

So each day,

Add one puff so white.

And when they’re all on,

He’ll come that night!

 The kiddos enjoyed the project even though there was a lot of cutting. 

I taped the poem on a baggie with the 25 cotton balls needed.

The kiddos created their own Santas with a bit of direction.  

For the beard, I stamped the circles before class.  The kiddos then got to stamp the numbers with a date stamp (which they LOVED).

 Once they finished their Santa, a couple of the kiddos wanted to try out the date stamp, moving the gears and
stamping different numbers.  I'm going to have to create a center with the date stamp I think!

 

Band-aid Butterflies

Continuing our Very Hungry Caterpillar theme this week, we created band-aid butterflies.  I got this idea from:   http://www.notimeforflashcards.com

What you need:

band aids
square gauze

I purchased both from the dollar store.

After attaching the band-aids, the kiddos can spread the wings, color them with markers and add antenna. 

Cute, quick and inexpensive.  Plus the kiddos LOVED being able to use band-aids!

Tp Butterflies

We made these simple butterflies today with tp rolls.

They turned our really cute!  We tied a string from them so the kiddos could hang them up at home and have them fly a bit.

Pictured here are my threes at work.  We were painting for another project, but we figured a bit of paint on the wings would be fancy.  I should have pulled out the glitter!

Egg Carton Caterpillars!

I love these, they're an oldy but a goody!

I did these today with my fours.  So very cute.  I think I'll do them tomorrow with my threes.

Balloon Very Hungry Caterpillar

I created a balloon version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar to be strolling down the stairs to our preschool room.  I thought he turned out very cute!

TP Cocoons

I found these little caterpillars back in September in the dollar bin at Target and they were on clearance (score!) so I got them for thirty cents a piece!  Wahoo!

We decided our caterpillars needed to create cocoons so they could be butterflies.  So we pulled out TP tubes and a roll of first aid gauze and set to work.

As one of my fours was wrapping her cocoon she told me, "My caterpillar is already turning into a butterfly!"  Yep!

Now, I may get crafty and fashion some wings for these little guys using felt and velcro.  That would be a nice surprise for my kiddos!  I'll let you know...

Clothespin Caterpillars

We created simple, hungry caterpillars using:
1 clothes pin
4 pom poms
2 googly eyes
a small bit of pipe cleaner
hot glue (teacher only)

My fours LOVED these caterpillars.  As you can see, the caterpillars joined us for snack.  Those are carrot sticks in their mouths.  They also ate gold fish and tried to eat our bowls.  "Oh no caterpillar.  Don't eat that!  You'll get a tummy-ach!"

Caterpillar Life Cycle

This week we are learning from Eric Carle's:
 
Today for science, we talked about the life cycle of a caterpillar.  Utilizing the book the kiddos (my fours) were able to tell me each of the steps, then we created our own life cycle wheel:

1. A little egg on a leaf.
We used green craft foam and a small white bean.

2. A very hungry caterpillar.
We used pom poms.

3. A cocoon.
We used a cottonball.  Some of the kiddos colored it brown with a marker.

4. A beautiful butterfly!
We used a piece of yellow construction paper that the kiddos colored.

Water Painting

We had some surprisingly warm weather this afternoon, so we took full advantage of it and played a bit outside.  Today we tried something new.  We painted with water.  I love this version of painting.  It's all the fun with none of the mess!  And it cleans itself up!  Our paintings simply disappeared!

When we were done painting we dumped our bucket of water down the driveway.  We watched our small river run down to the gutter.  Then we followed it along the curb, watching what it would do when it came upon a cluster of leaves or a pine cone.  Interesting and fun!

Pigs in a Pilgrim Hat

  Idea from Family Fun Magazine
This is what we were going for today ...  tee hee. 

But this is what my fours created:

 

I had them cut the hot dogs, then cover them with crescent roll dough.  They tasted yummy, even if they did not look like pilgrim hats.  Ha.

Pudding Turkeys

We made pudding turkeys today!

I got this idea from: 

http://www.allkidsnetwork.com/crafts/thanksgiving/pudding-turkey-craft.asp

 The kiddos had so much fun!  I popped open a snack size pudding and let them create a turkey body (my fours pretty much just painted the page with pudding) then they added googly eyes and feathers.  When they were done they got to eat the remaining pudding.  Yummy and fun!

Thanksgiving Feast

We had our Thanksgiving feast today, here are a few pictures:

 

Tee pee cupcakes, I got the idea from:
http://stiesthoughts.blogspot.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-teepee-cupcakes-revisited.html

Thanksgiving Feast Table,  I asked each family to bring a finger food to share.  That worked out wonderfully.  We had yummy things to eat.

 Our Fall Lanterns.  These turned out fabulous!  We used the l.e.d. tea lights.

Fall Lanterns

I saw something like these on Pinterest.  I thought they would make fabulous table decor for our Thanksgiving feast next week.  I will use l.e.d. tea lights to make them glow. 

I simply saved salsa jars.  The kiddos coated them with modge podge and then added tissue paper squares.  Both my threes and my fours enjoyed the activity.

This three decided to decorate the inside as well as the outside.  Ha!

 

 

TP Turkeys - Gobble Gobble

This week we made these fabulous TP Turkeys.   I got the idea from Thrifty Crafty Girl:

http://www.thriftycraftygirl.com/2011/11/24-days-of-thanksgiving-obligatory-kids.html

 I love it anytime there is a cute craft utilizing tp rolls!  

My threes and my fours loved it!  First I had the kiddos glue their eyes and beaks onto their tubes.  I cut the beaks for my threes (although I probably should have had them do it.)  

Then the kiddos painted their paper plate half.  We used the left over paint from our salad spinner leaf art (see post: Our Classroom Tree and Salad Spinner Leaf Art).  I simply scooped all the left over paint out of the salad spinner and saved it for the next project.  The globby bits are from all the glitter we used on the leaves. 

Once the paper plates dried, I hot glued the plate to the tp turkey.  They turned our really cute!

 

 

Salad Spinner Leaf Art

This was so much fun!  I thought I had posted about it, but I haven't!  So here goes!

I bought a salad spinner at Ikea for $4.  Cut a bunch of white cardstock circles to fit in the bottom.  Pulled out red, yellow and orange paint.  Found some gold glitter.

I had the kiddos write their name on the back of their circle, we switched to first letter of their name as they did more and more.  Then I squirted in the paint and they got to add the glitter.  Lots and lots of glitter!  Ha!

Then I snapped the lid on tight and let them spin to their hearts content.  We found that spinning REALLY fast first off is the best.  Here are a few shots of our finished spinnings.

We were able to cut two leaves out of each circle to decorate our classroom tree (see post by same name).

I love how they turned out!

The kiddos will take them home next week after our Thanksgiving feast.

I can't wait to use the spinner for another project.  Maybe green cardstock that we can cut into tree shape for a decorated Christmas tree!

I did scoop all the excess paint and glitter out of the spinner bowl when we were all done and saved it in a container for another day.  (See post:TP Turkeys)

Play Dough Fun

Today we enjoyed some time with play dough.  I made pumpkin pie play dough ('tis the season) and our classroom smelled yummy all day!  The recipe is below in an earlier post.

Here are a few photos of my fours at play.

This kiddo enjoyed all the ocean animals.

This kiddo has so many toys in her play dough you can't see the dough!

 They love to pull out all the plastic animals and make tracks in the dough.  The various skin patterns, feet, horns, tails, and spikes also create wonderful prints.

This kiddo created a "dinosaur mummy".

Dyed Pasta

Today in our learning center I set out dyed pasta to create necklaces with...

 To create dyed pasta simply place pasta, 1 TBS of rubbing alcohol and 8 - 10 drops of food coloring into a large ziplock baggie.  Shake until all pasta is coated, then spread out on a cookie sheet that is lined with paper towels.  Allow to dry before working with them.

 I taped one end of the yarn to the table and then wrapped a piece of tape around the other end of yarn to keep it from splitting.

My fours enjoyed this today.  They created patterns without any enticement from me and just chatted back and forth as they worked.

Thursday:  My threes also enjoyed this activity.  I was impressed, they really stuck to it until their string was full of pasta.

 

One of my threes started munching on a noodle.  She told me, "This is a little crunchy."  Yep, I didn't cook them.  "I like pasta -- but we cook it." Ha ha ha!