The Garden Gals

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been focusing on gardens. This topic lends itself to many activities in all areas of development. Plus, Leia seems to be interested in gardening, so choosing this topic was easy.

Sensory

I had searched all over pinterest for ideas on garden themed sensory boxes. I found so many suggestions and went to the store with a clear vision in my head of what I wanted. However, when I finally arrived at the store and was standing there in the garden center, I began to second guess myself and had the question, "what potting soil or dirt should I use and is it actually safe for children that may decide to eat it?" So instead of risking death by potting soil, I decided to go in a different direction, and used different types of dried beans. I also purchased some plastic gardening tools and Leia picked out different artificial flowers. I added a pair of gardening gloves and the sensory tub was ready to go.

Literacy
The library had a ton of books to choose from on this topic.

•  "Jack's Garden," by Henry Cole. This story is a take-off of the rhyme, "This is the House that Jack built."
• "The Tiny Seed," by Eric Carle. This was a favorite of Leia's. She enjoyed searching for the tiny seed on the different pages. 
• "My Garden," by Kevin Henkes. This story is about a little girls dream garden, which includes chocolate bunnies and growing seashells. 
• "Whose Garden is it?" by Mary Ann Hoberman. This book asks the question, to whom does a garden really belong. It suggest many different characters and parts of nature from the gardener all the way to the seed. It is a fantastic book to illustrate everything that is needed in a garden.
• "Planting a Rainbow," by Lois Elhert.

Art
The first art project touches both on art and science. The girls created their own flowers out of construction paper and a muffin liner. After doing this we discussed the different parts of a flower and labeled the flower parts.

For the second project, the girls re-created flowers from "Planting a Rainbow." I drew the stems on the piece of paper using just a plain marker. I then re-read the story to the girls and told them to paint flowers from the story. I let the girls choose the paint colors they wanted and they all chose purple and blue.

I also purchased "stone stampers" from Wal-Mart, but we used them on paper instead of stone.The stampers went well with the garden theme.

The final thing we did was painting with leaves.

This also connected with science because the girls investigated the leaves in many ways and math because the girls sorted the leaves into different piles.

Annabelle blowing on her leaf

Brenleigh tearing her leaf apart

Leia getting a closer look.

Math
Other than the leaf sorting, we also did a "carrot patch number match." To do this I wrote a number on a triangle "carrot" and the girls had to match the proper amount of green rectangles to put on top. With Annabelle, age 2, I talked her through each of the numbers to give her age appropriate support. With Leia, age 3.5, we first discussed the different numbers, I then told her to match the proper amount of green rectangles on her own. When doing this, she placed one too many green rectangles on a "carrot." This allowed her to do some problem solving. I simply said, "oh no, I think something is wrong here." We talked about the numbers again and she took it upon herself to recount the green rectangles and fix the problem.

Removing part of her "stem" from the number 2 carrot.

 Outside
Another bonus with the gardening theme, is that Leia was eager to help pull weeds and water the plants. This of course hits on different areas of development and learning from science, fine and gross motor, and teaching her responsibility. For more information on my gardening theme, please visit my contributing blog here.

Leia watering the garden

Annabelle giving Leia water

F is for....

My daughter, Leia, has seemed to be interested in learning her letters more and more lately. Being a former preschool teacher, one would think that I would know the perfect order in which to actually teach the letters, but I don't. So, I decided to go to the web to search different recommendations. Ultimately, I decided to go with the order suggested by Handwriting without Tears. The order makes the most sense to me and so far seems to be working with Leia. I will be teaching her a new letter each week, but also will continue to have her practice writing her own name on EVERYTHING she does.

The first letter that we tackled was the letter "F". To kick off the letter of the week, I decided to have everything that week have something to do with the letter "F," this is something I will not be continuing because I want to make sure I am also focusing on topics that the girls are interested in.


 Math
Leia practiced number recognition this week. We used a farm themed worksheet and I turned it into a file folder game, that way she could continue to to practice.

 Sensory

We made "hot chocolate" play dough this week. I figured "hot chocolate" is a food and went with the "F" themed week. I used this recipe but instead of adding food coloring, I added a packet of hot chocolate mix. It smelled yummy! What a great way to really include the sense of smell to sensory play.

Ripley exploring the play dough through a bag.

Leia using one of her play dough mats.

Annabelle feeling the play dough with her hands

Letter Practice
Here are a few of the different things that I do with Leia throughout the week to make learning her letters fun.

Walking the letter is great for kinesthetic learners

Tracing with water. She also wrote with chalk.

Built the letter "F" with paper.

Building "F" with homemade playdough

Swimmy....sort of....

I am going to be honest, this week has been sort of a bust. Between my little one having an unexplained fever and having to move everything from the basement to the first floor, things have been hectic. However, I still managed to squeeze a few activities in.

The book of the week was, "Swimmy," by Leo Lionni.



Toward the end of the book, I had Leia predict what she thought the fish would form with their bodies. At first she did not understand. So I rephrased, "they are going to use there bodies to make a puzzle, what puzzle do you think they will make to scare away the fish?' Leia replied, "a square." When we turned the page and saw that they created a big fish, she said, "like in Nemo!!"

Art

I found this idea on pinterest, in fact, I find a lot of my ideas there. I printed out the picture and had Leia use a q-tip to fill in each of the dots.

I also had one of the girls that I watch paint with q-tips. Instead of coloring in the dots, she used the q-tip and made different designs in her paint.













We also did a few art projects based on "Swimmy." The first was a simple handprint project. I don't know about you, but my parents LOVE getting hand print art work. For this project, I simply cut out a piece of paper in the shape of a fish bowl (yes, I know Swimmy lives in the ocean) had the girls color the bowls and then we add there hand print. For some reason, I can't seem to find a picture of there work, but it looks similar to this.

Leia rolling the bubble wrap over the fish. 

The girls also did another art project where they had to follow some basic steps. The first step was to paint the sheet of paper blue. The second step was to place the fish that I had pre-cut out on a dry piece of paper and use the bubble wrap roller to paint the fish.

Next the girls placed the fish onto the wet paint, doing this while the paint is still wet, eliminates the need for glue.












Math

Math this week really had nothing to do with the book of the week, but we did focus on numbers. The first thing Leia did was a number chart. She had to put the correct amount of stickers in each of the squares. Before she started this, I had her count each of the squares. Her friend, who isn't quite 2, listened as she counted.

Counting the squares.

After counting the squares, she placed one sticker in each of the squares. We then talked about the different numbers on the paper. The next day, I had Leia place jelly beans in each of the squares. She noticed that I didn't give her enough to fill in all of the squares and she said, "I need just one more." I had her reach in the bag and grab, "just one."







Late during the week, I created a number sheet for Leia. I wrote the numbers 1, 2, and 3 in random order on the page. I assigned a certain color to each number, and had Leia do a dot on the correct number.


 Science
 We did some baking this week. We made corn muffins and chocolate chip banana muffins. The girls watched as I put the ingredients into the measuring cups and listened as I talked about the different measurements. They also helped put the ingredients in the bowl, mashed the banana, and help stir.
 

Mashing bananas

Mixing

 

 

Adding the mix

"Little Blue and Little Yellow"

This week, I had planned to focus on a different Leo Lionni book each day, but it turned out my child care children LOVED the book "Little Blue and Little Yellow."  So we just stuck with that book for the week. We were pretty much stuck inside all week, and with our basement flooded, we have had pretty tight quarters and just a smidgen of cabin fever, so I wanted to come up with as many activities for the little ladies as possible.

First, let me say a thing or two about the actual book. This is the book that launched Leo Lionni's children's book career. It is the story of  best friends, little blue and little yellow, who one day can not find one another. When they finally do, they give each other such a huge hug that they turn green. The illustrations in the book are simple, yet engaging.



Art

What a week for art. Everything we did, just used the colors yellow and blue.

I am going to work backwards and go from Friday to Tuesday. Today we placed torn yellow and blue tissue paper on contact paper. Leia decided to put her tissue paper on by the handful, while one of the girls I watch placed her tissue paper on one piece at a time.

 

Here you can see the pile of tissue paper Leia put on her paper

We put the finished product on the window. Leia observed that in some spot she could see "little green."

On Thursday, I made yellow and blue sidewalk chalk paint. To make this, you use 1 part corn starch, 1 part water, and food coloring. This is something one would typically do outside on the sidewalk, but since it was storming out, we did it inside :)

Letting the paint drizzle on the paper

Getting ready to put yellow on top of the blue

On, Wednesday, the girls used pipe cleaners to create yellow and blue "fireworks." I found the idea for this project at http://www.jugglingwithkids.com/2012/07/firework-painting.html

On Tuesday, the girls did ball painting. This is like marble painting, where you just place a small ball or two in a box and move the balls allowing them to glide through the paint.






Science
This is something that I found on pinterest, and I've wanted to try it out with the girls. The book, "Little Yellow and Little Blue" of course is the perfect set up for an experiment in the mixing of colors.

I just had three cups of water. In one cup I put yellow food coloring, the middle cup was just water, and the third cup was water and blue food coloring. I then place a paper napkin in the yellow and blue cup and place the other end of the paper towel in the clear water.

She had to climb on the table to get a closer look :)

Food Experience

I simply made the vanilla pudding yellow and blue.

Sensory

Using her eye-hand coordination to scoop the rice into the cup

What a fun week of sensory play. On Tuesday and Wednesday the girls played with the rainbow rice. This had colors other than yellow and blue in it, of course, but it was still a messy good time.

We also made yellow and blue spaghetti for the girls to play with. This is simple to make, you just prepare the noodles as directed on the box, drain, let cool, place noodles in bags or bowls for each color, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and drops of food coloring, and mix.

Ripley is using her sense of touch and taste!!

             

        Leia discovered that she had "little green" on her fingers when she was all done. 

    

Bugging Out!!

The last two weeks, we have been focusing on the theme "bugs." My house backs up to a small wooded area, so we see a lot of different bugs in our backyard.

Literacy

We focused on four different books for this theme. The first, "In the tall, tall grass," by Denise Fleming. This book has vibrant verbs, which makes it easy to engage the children. After doing my first reading, I had the children act out what was happening on the pages of the book.










The next book was, "There was an old lady that swallowed a fly." This book is based off an old folk tale and we read the version by Simms Taback. The illustrations in the book are wonderful and make it easy for children to predict what animal the old lady will swallow next. We also listened to the Pete Seeger rendition of the story in the form of a song. 





The third book was, "10 Little ladybugs," by Melanie Gerth. This is a board book that has plastic ladybugs on it, which is fantastic for infant and toddler exploration. It also has engaging rhyming text and is also a counting book, which you could probably tell by the title, which makes it easy for one to sneak mathematics into literacy. 

The last book was, "the very hungry caterpillar," by Eric Carle. Luckily, we had a toy that worked as a perfect retelling tool for this book. The toys were made of different textures and made different noises, which helped keep the infants engaged during story time. You can find it at toys r us.

                                                                   
                                                                   

Also, as a fun little side note, my daughter, Ripley, celebrated her first birthday last week and her theme was, "The Very Hungry Little Caterpillar."

 

Mathematics

This week in math, we focused on sorting bugs. I made a file folder game called, "bug sort." I found this while doing a google search. Unfortunately, after saving it as a pdf on my computer, I havent been able to find the original source of the file folder game, but if you are interested in the bug pack, please let me know because it included many other activities for preschool aged children. I would be happy to send the pdf to you via email.

Science
Explore, explore, explore, is what I had the girls do this week. They explored the backyard and looked for bugs. They were certainly not afraid to get dirty while they looked under rocks, around the trees, and dug in the dirt.

Art
I tried to get out of my Head Start mindset this week, and come up with projects for the children that had a little more structure to them, yet at the same time allowed them to create there own thing. So instead of simply placing art tools on the table and letting them make whatever (which is a wonderful thing to do), I gave them supplies and gave them a theme or told them, use these materials to make a ____. This isnt something I would do all the time, but it does help when teaching children how to follow directions or steps.

The first art project the children used dot a dot art paint and insect foam stickers. The girls didnt have any instructions while doing this, it was more of my typical open ended art.

 

Leia made, "the sky for all the bugs."

Another project the girls created was butterflies. This had a little more instruction because I wanted the girls to focus on how butterfly wings are symmetrical. I had the girls paint one side of the butterfly and then fold it over so that the wings would look the same on both sides. The girls enjoyed smooching the wings together.

Leia is showing her sister, Ripley, her finished butterfly.

The last art project was the paper plate ladybugs. This project had the most step by step instructions for the girls. The first task was to paint there paper plate. I allowed the girls to chose what color they wanted, they both chose red. The next step was to place a strip of black paper on the plate and finally the spots on the ladybug. Leia also wanted her lady bug to have legs, so I made these for her and had her tape them on the back of the plate.