April Showers bring May flowers...

Our theme for April is Birds in the Spring. We study things that change in the spring and learn all about birds.

 We were lucky enough this year to have a few tadpoles that grew into toads. I encouraged the children to journal changes in the tadpoles at least twice a week.

 What would a bird unit be without a dirt cup full of worms?

 These nests turned out way super cute!! I shredded some brown paper, gave the kids bowls of diluted white glue and a Styrofoam bowl to drape the paper over. Once they were dry we popped them off of the bowl and Viola!!

 We made some amazing Hummingbird Cake and the kids did a great job at copying the recipe while it baked.

 These flowers were soooooo cute I just couldn't resist.

 For those of you that don't know me that well I make sugar cookies into anything!! Sugar cookies can find their way into my lesson plans at least once a month and this month we made super cute flower cookies. The children were given a lump of yellow and a lump of pink. They had to separate the pink into 5 pieces, roll them into balls arrange them and press them into place. They turned out great.

I thought my calendar was particularly cute this month.

Reptiles!!

 During the month of March we always have so much going on. It is one of my favorites and I have to share it with spring break. Here are some of the fun things we did...


What would a month without sugar cookies be like in my classroom? We learned about primary, secondary and treachery colors when we made the dough such a beautiful (or not)  shade of brown. We shaped it into little turtles and gobbled them up as soon as they were cool enough.

Brown Sugar cookie turtles

I also love the idea of kids making books that they can read to their parents. We give the kids little "flash cards" with words and pictures on them for them to copy. It's a hit with children and their parents.

 We did some turtle/tortoise sorting, and we learned some of the differences.

 Added a little matching alphabet game....

Made some cute little turtles to swim in our pond with tissue paper, mod podge and plastic bowls...

 And even had a visit from a local museum which brought a baby alligator for us to see!!

 Of course we couldn't do this unit without talking a little bit about frogs and toads.

We made a frog life cycle wheel...

 And a Venn Diagram stating differences in frogs and toads.

 

Though the unit is over I am still on the hunt for tadpoles. We successfully grew frogs last year and I hoping for the same this year. I'll keep you posted!!!

Our Madness in March is...

Reptiles and Amphibians. In March we transform our dramatic play area into a swamp, we add a pontoon boat (the swamp boat made of cardboard boxes) and take swamp tours. We make different animals and eat them too. Here are a few things we have already done.

 We made alligator nests because alligator moms lay eggs in the muddy banks of rivers. We learned so much about alligators while doing this activity and it was pretty tasty too!

 We also turned a Trapezoid into an alligator (gotta sneak the academics in sometimes lol) and gave him triangle ridges down his back and triangle teeth of course. The legs were cutters choice.

And the Boat of course. I was the tour guide for the "Murky Water Swamp Ride"  first and the kids got a kick out of it. We're going to add life vests (brown grocery bags) next time.

Last but not least our toilet paper tube gators. They are just adorable!!

Let's Seuss it all up here

 Because I have been gone for so long I decided one post with a lot of random unrelated pictures should do the trick.
 We did some of the classics, Green Eggs and Ham, Cat in the Hat, and The Lorax, and one that not as many have heard of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. The latter is on of my favs. It is one, of two books that Seuss wrote, that doesn't rhyme.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed this unit and I can't wait until I get to do it again.

 We made our Green Eggs and Ham of course and a thaumatrope of "Sam I Am" and a plate of green eggs and ham which when twirled come together to create a single image. The kids loved saying optical illusion and I loved hearing them try to say it.




















In "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" the boy ends up with...you guessed it...500 hats. The closer he got to 500 the fancier the hats got so we created our own fancy hats.The kids loved that they got to put their own glitter on :)

We finished our unit with "The Lorax" and here is our edible creation slightly resembling The Lorax. It's a baked potato, sour cream to hold all the ingredients on, shredded cheddar cheese for the mustache and olives for the eyes. Some stick pretzels would have been great for the arms and legs, I know for next time.

And My favorite of the bunch... Our salt dough Loraxes. Because of time issues I hot glued the letters for UNLESS for the children and they were able to paint them and the Lorax they made however they wanted. Its a treasure I hope they all remember!!!

Here are those random things I was talking about...

After Valentine's Day we had plenty of heart candies left. I'm sure I wasn't alone in this predicament, so we graphed them. The kids are starting to get this graphing thing, just in time too because I smell jelly beans in the near future!!



We made some really cute "Love Bug" head bands (that's whats written by the lovely model of course)  and a quick snapshot of our Valentine's Party.

Love is in the Air!!

We like all the other people in the world are getting ready for our Valentines party. We always make something that hte paretns will love and keep forever (with all the other stuff they keep of course) and I ran across this idea. I cannot remember where I saw it and I feel so bad, I want to give credit where due so message me if you know!! We had fun drawing our faces and adding hair like ours, gluing hearts and counting too.

 We decorated large cans for our Valentine Mailboxes and here is our Valentine project in out mailbox.

 In the meantime we had to do something "educational" lol so we did some rhyming wheels to tie in with our Dr. Seuss unit. The kids did better than I could have ever dreamed and they could read the words when they finished. The parents were pretty impressed.

Well now I have to finish preparing for the Valentine's Day Party tomorrow...Pics of the party coming soon!!