Rainbow Fish Sensory Bottle

Can't wait to share this sensory bottle with my school friends when they come back this week!  Inspired by the little fish who shares his sparkles with all his friends, this bottle has plenty of sparkle. Here's how to make it:

1. Fill an empty bottle halfway with water.
2. Add a few drops of dish soap.
3. Use a funnel to drop in a handful of rainbow beads.
4. Add a few pinches of neon colored bands.
5. Dump in opalescent glitter and blue glitter.  
6. Fill the remainder of the bottle with clear glue, eliminating any space for bubbles at the top.
7. Glue lid on bottle with something akin to Gorilla Glue.

Shake up and enjoy!

Keeping Cool!

The heat index brought us up to almost 100 degrees today.  Whew that's hot with all the moisture in the air!  We still get our Outside Time in, and these are the ways we try to stay cool even during these hot days.

Read a book!  Yes, we have a Book Area outside as well as inside.  Pull out a mat, find your book, and cool off in the shade.  Outside Time doesn't have to be all gross motor activities, although they are always a choice for the children.  :)

Squigs in water- these awesome little buggers are so fun to squish together and pop apart.  The suction cups hold the pieces together or stick to smooth surfaces.  Today, we used the squigs to build a bridge all the way across the explore table.

 Splashing is inevitable!  Feeling hot?  Just get wet.

Friends "Sandwich" and "Sheep" love working with these water wheels.  They send off water like sprinklers.  We even used them to sprinkle the other table too and cool it off.

Wear a dino-hat!  No sun getting in our eyes here with these funny hats!  ;)

Music, Meals, and Monsters

The instruments have been a huge hit with the new class.  One starts playing, Ms. Harmony starts singing, and soon everyone is sitting around playing keys, shaking maracas, or tapping a tune!

The "popcorn piano" is especially popular.  When you push the keys, in addition to playing a sound, the "popcorn" pops up inside the instrument!  Friend "Sandwich" patiently waited for his turn at the Alone Table to play it.

For young preschoolers and toddlers, joining/working a collaborative plan is developmentally challenging!  This week we worked more with this objective by:

• asking to join a friend by saying, "Can I play too?"
• inviting a friend to join by saying, "Do you want to play with me?"
• Ms. Harmony modeled both through play via the Duplo Lego people and invited the children to "talk back" with a person

In the plan featured here, we used the log blocks to make a table, chairs, booster seats, etc. and helped all the Lego people sit down.  Friend "Sheep" suggested we serve cupcakes.  We realized we didn't have any cupcakes so we used a bristle block instead.  We helped our Lego people sing "Happy Birthday" and the school friends chimed in.  They helped their person "eat."

This was a great opportunity to practice playing together, and most of our friends contributed to the plan in a productive way by building, "talking" through a Lego person, or helping the Lego person to "eat."  Over the course of the year, Ms. Harmony will facilitate these spontaneous group plans less and less as the children do them independently more and more.

Including the Bristle Blocks into the plan prompted more building.  Friends "Sheep" and "Sandwich" both experimented with using the bristle blocks to make cars, cakes, and especially monsters!  Here's Friend "Sandwich's" Monster Man!

In with the New!

We kicked off the first day of the fall semester 2019 today!  A great time was had by all.  Ms. Harmony is looking forward to seeing the new friendships develop with this little group.  :)  We worked on learning how to open and use glue sticks today by making these shape buses.  Important info was shared, like:

• put the glue on your paper, not the table
• you have to stick the shape on the glue spot before it dries, or it won't be sticky anymore
• the glue stick starts purple and dries clear
• wheels are round like circles
• windows are rectangles

Work Time went really smoothly, and the Art Area continued to be a favorite place to work as you can see!

Friend "Sandwich" is really interested letters.  Ms. Harmony pointed out the "red" sign that she made for the art easel.  He named all the letters in the word and stated that "it says red because the paint is red!"

Toddler "Koala" and Friend "Sheep" used the Explore Table the most out of everyone today.  There is just something fascinating about poking these long fuzzy sticks or dry pasta through the holes and watching it disappear.  Not to mention, we used our ears to hear the clacky sound the noodles made when they moved around.

 I spy a worm poking through Friend "Sandwich"'s apple!

Exploring Desert Life

The desert is near and dear for Ms. Harmony as she grew up in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona!  She shared just a bit of this experience with the school friends in late July this year.

In studying reptiles, we talked about these animals having scaly bodies like fish... but they are different because they don't have any gills!  They don't live in the water.  We painted on the bubble wrap-covered easel and stamped papers shaped like snakes on the wet paint.

Friend "Hammer" has been wanting to do Marble Works all summer!  We made snake-slides for our marbles and it was so neat to send marbles down these twists and turns.  The school friends were given a few pieces of track at a time and asked to connect them and see how the marbles moved through the channels.  They worked through the trial and error process of learning about gravity, obstacles, gaps, slopes, and more.

In the desert, there are animals that can be hot and thirsty because it doesn't rain very much.  Saguaro cacti are plants that are ONLY found in the Sonoran Desert of the southwest.  They are covered in prickly spines to protect them from hungry animals, but there are some animals who build homes in the cacti anyways.  :)  After reading some books with real pictures of saguaros, prickly pear, and organ pipe cacti, we used play-doh and half-toothpicks to make our own cacti.  Together, it made an adorable cactus garden.

Bippidy Boppidy Boo

Friend "Kangaroo" has been begging all summer to make a new "magic wand" because her old one broke.  During the last week of school... we did it!  First we painted bubble wrap, stamped our papers on it, and added glitter.  When we came back to the project later in the day, the school friends decided what shape they wanted their wands to be.  We taped a dowel rod inside and wallah, a new magically fantastical wand!

Next we used these in Circle Time where we read one version of the Cinderella story.  The fairy godmother is depicted as having a wand with a star.  When we got to the point in the story where the fairy godmother uses her wand to transform pumpkins into coaches, mice into horses, a toad into a driver, etc. the children helped too by completing the rhyme!

For example, Ms. Harmony would say: "Bippidy boppidy boach, I turn this pumpkin into a ...." and the children would respond "Coach!"  We all waved our wands while working our magic.  ;)  Soon we helped Cinderella get to the ball, return home safely, try on shoes, and marry a prince.

This art/literacy combo activity was definitely a "happily-ever-after" choice for this group!

Let's Get Cookin'

We recently had a new kitchen addition come to our House Area, thanks to the awesome Tonkinson family!  The kids walked in and immediately said, "Wow!!  A new kitchen!  Thank you!"  They loved it, to put it simply.  ;)

We used our telephones to call in orders for food like pizza, hot chocolate, soup, and tea!  We even ordered for our pets!  We traded roles, added sick beds, served meals, and played restaurant.  The new kitchen was a great springboard for imaginative, cooperative, role play.  :)