Pop-Fizz Witches Brew!

Today we learned a new word: cauldron.  We pretended to be witches and brewed up super fizzy potions in our cauldrons!  We spooned in a bit of "powdered bone" (baking soda), and learned how to use pipettes to drop in "slime" (colored white vinegar).  It was so awesome to see the bubbles, hear the fizz, and watch the colors mix.  The school friends were engaged in this for quite awhile, and some even returned to this activity during Work Time.  Who knew being a witch, and brewing potions, could be so much fun!  ;)

It's a Monster Mash!

There is NO wrong way to make a monster!  Our school friends loved this process art Small Group activity.  We talked about colors to use, how many arms, legs, or eyes our monsters could have, whether the monster would be fuzzy, gooey, slimy, or even dotty...  And then the creative process was unleashed.  Our first objective was to paint a body for the monster in the way of our choosing.

Next we decided if our monsters needed a bit of sparkle, and added either gold or pink glitter, or both!

The final step, once the paint was fairly dry, was to glue on eyeballs... as many different sizes and colors as we wanted to.  Here is our Monster Mash Gallery:

Building of the Brooms

One of the new materials in the Toy and Puzzle Area is Tinker Toys.  Naturally, in the spirit of the Halloween season, the children realized they could connect the Tinker Toys to make witch's brooms!

At first, they connected the sticks with hinge pieces, but asked for something that would allow you to connect sticks and wouldn't bend.  We dug deeper in the basket and found a different kind of connector piece that would hold the sticks out straight.  The final step was to add a fin piece to the end to be the broom bristles.  :)

Next stop, the Moon!  Eee-hee-hee!  

We also added a new rhyme to our class Songbook that we chanted while "flying our brooms:"

"I'm a mean old witch with a hat!

I fly on my broom with my cat!

My hat is pointed and my chin is too.

You better watch out,

I might scare you!

BOO!"

The Spooky Things are Here!

Halloween has been a much anticipated Fall holiday here at Harmony's House!  We started a count down on our Greeting Board and discovered Halloweenie fun in every Area!  Here's some festive work that we did.  Our paintbrushes at the art easel resemble witch's brooms, and we are exploring color mixing between white and black paint.

So much to explore in the Explore Table... we found pumpkins, skeletons, bouncy ball eye balls, bracelets, black beans, bugs, and jack-o-lantern bags!  We pretended to trick-or-treat!

 

This Small Group activity was super "creepy!"  We had to pick out all of these creepy-crawlies from the spider web with tweezers!  Some friends said, "Eww yuck!  This is too creepy!" when the bugs would get tangled in the web with their many many legs!

Stay tuned for more Halloween adventures coming up!

Harvest Shenanigans

Sorry parents for the delay in Blog posts from last week!  We had some internet issues that needed to be resolved over the course of a few days.  But I still got pictures of these cool kiddos working hard at Harmony's House!

On Thursday we did some neat art that was also a sensory experience.  Each child was given a bubble wrap cut out shaped like corn-on-the-cob.  We have been talking about Fall time being a busy time at the farms because farmers are working to harvest all the remaining fruits and vegetables before Winter comes.  The bubble wrap "corn" was super bumpy to paint on and the children remarked how funny it was under their brushes.  They were given red, brown, and yellow paint.  Not every corn cob is yellow you know!  They were encouraged to paint their corn in the way they liked.

After the bubble wrap was printed and declared "done," the children pressed a paper down on top of the bubble wrap to make the print.  These are the results!

Preschool children can learn to make "Concept Maps" or "Idea Webs" that connect ideas.  For Circle Time, we created this web to review all of the concepts we have talked about in the past few weeks related to Fall.  We also used the web to anticipate what we might be learning next about Halloween! The children chimed in with lots of ideas which Ms. Harmony represented with both pictures and words.

Harvest Season

The "Apple" pick up game has been consistently popular here.  The school friends dump, pick up, toss, and sort these "apples" almost every time they come!  We recently found a new way to play with these "apples" though.  Consistent with the harvest season, after farmer pick their apples, some are cooked into applesauce, cider, pies, butter and more.  We used large ladles and spoons to stir up giant cauldrons of applesauce.  :)

This week we spent time under the giant Oak tree "harvesting acorns."  We looked hard to find capsules, nuts, and even intact acorns with stems attached!  While our local farmers don't really harvest acorns, the squirrels certainly do!  Fall time is a busy time for people and animals alike.  Happy Harvest!

Peek Inside!

Today we opened one of our pumpkins!  We smelled it, we touched the slimy strings, and we picked out lots and lots of seeds!!!  It was super fun for some school friends, and super gross for other friends!

Friend "S" asked the next question we will pursue: "What's inside the pumpkin seeds?"  Earlier during Fall explorations she opened an acorn to see what was inside.  This could be what prompted her to ask about the inside of pumpkin seeds.  Once the seeds dry we will try to open them and see what there is to see.

 

In the Explore Table the school friends used artificial pumpkins, blocks, pinecones, and gourds ("pumpkin cousins") to build forest houses for the animals.  Check out these awesome pumpkin structures!  There is a deer family hiding in this house.

Pumpkin Starts with P!

One of our school friends went to the pumpkin patch on her home days.  What a great way to kick off our "Pumpkin" theme at school.  :)

Today in Small Group, we sorted objects by their beginning sounds.  The objects needed to match the /p/ sound like "pumpkin," or the /l/ sound like "leaf."  The school friends were encouraged to listen to the sounds of the words, but also to notice what shape the mouth and tongue made when figuring out where each item went.  They worked carefully and correctly sorted all of the things in the basket.  It was also quite funny to name each object with the "other" letter sound to make the word "pig" sound like "lig," and so on.  :D

The objects for "L" were leaf, lemon, the L acorn, log, and lego.

The objects for "P" were pig, pink, pumpkin, the P acorn, and pom-pom.

During Work Time, anyone who wanted to could work on hammering Pegs into a Pumpkin to promote fine motor skills.  Ms. Harmony had the pegs started so the children could use two hands on the hammer if they needed to.  This really worked out our hand-eye coordination and hand strength!

Additionally during Work Time, the children had the opportunity to work with Play-Doh, or make contact paper art with Pumpkin Parts around a big letter P.  ;)  Friend "K" asked why there was a big P on the sticky paper.  She started sticking on bits of orange, green, and brown things, and then said, "I know!  Pumpkins start with P!  These are pumpkin things!"  It's always super cool to hear children ask and answer their own questions through the process of discovery.  Friends "S" and Baby "K" also worked on this sticky paper pumpkin project.

There were so many times today that we could hear the /p/ sound in our work!