Hibernation

The kids loved making our hibernating bears.  

We started by "painting" paper bag caves that were glued onto paper plates with a mixture of shaving cream, white glue and white paint.  I put a squirt of each in a small dixie cup and then the children stirred the mixture with a popsicle stick and then used the stick to spread the mixture.  I got the idea from Sally at Fairy Dust Teaching.

I knew that my kids would like a 3D bear so we made bears with model magic.  I colored the model magic with brown food coloring and then did a sort of "directed sculpture lesson."   They are adorable!

We  also pretended to hibernate.  This is ALWAYS one of the kids' favorite activities.

First we brainstormed a list of animals that hibernate.  Then each child decided what animal they wanted to be.  

Bears hibernating under the table.

The kids' favorite part is that I signal spring by calling out a pair of rhyming words.  I start with other pairs of words such as "up-down" or "big-ball."  The kids keep sleeping ... until they hear the rhyming words.  They then slowly stretch and wake up and then crawl (or fly if they are a bat or ladybug) to find a snack.  I have snacks set up on napkins on the floor.  SO MUCH FUN! I can't remember where I first saw this idea, but I have been doing it for years and it is something the kids always remember.

These are hibernating bats!

New Website

It has been driving me crazy that our school did not have a website.  Unfortunately, we are a tiny school staffed mainly by middle-aged women who are not very tech savvy (at all!!)  Last weekend, my son just put together a website.  I am so excited!  Check it out here. I'm also excited that I actually sort of understand how it works and I'm going to try to tinker with it further.

On another note, the first picture in the slide show on my website is one of the photos I took for our handprint calendar we made as Christmas gifts for our family.  On first page of the calendar I put a picture of the child with painted hands and then wrote "Handmade With Love By__________" and the child printed his or her name.  SO CUTE!!!

Colorful Snowman

I love our colorful snowmen that were inspired by this poem that I saw on Mrs. Lee's blog:

We started by coloring coffee filters with drops of liquid water colors. The kids LOVED seeing the colors spread and blend (and it was good fine motor practice using the eye droppers).

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When the filters had dried we glued them together and added details with permanent markers and stickers.  The snowmen look beautiful in the windows (from both the inside and outside!). Make sure you use glue sticks, I used white glue first and it changed the colors and looked really messy even when it dried).

We have other snowmen in our room.  These are our name snowmen.

This is our snowman poem.  The kids are doing such a great job recognizing some words and using clues to figure out others.

These simple Pinterest inspired snowmen are made with egg cartons, yarn, pipe cleaners and buttons.