At our school we just got back from winter break. The children were so excited to be back and kept very busy all week. It was hard to break the work cycle for recess. There was so much concentration going on. We are studying Asia in the classroom right now so I went a little crazy at Cost Plus getting Asian items. There is a 50% off sale for some items of which I got various instruments and trinkets. Cost Plus had a beautiful Indian umbrella (not on sale) which was not too expensive that we have put over the snack table - it looks great. I brought from home a Chinese paper lantern which we put near our cultural shelves. I am going to bring in Asian animals and various spices from Asia for matching works. When I was a kid we had a Japanese exchange student who gave us a kimono and geta shoes. A friend recently gave me the socks that can be worn with the geta shoes, so I brought those in for the children to try. So no time to do forest works yet. We do have the lifecycle of the mealworm (our current classroom critters) out right now, so I think the next work will be a parts of the Tenebrio beetle book.This work pictured is one of my forest synthesis works. It is a combination of a diorama and math work. I used a spinner toy one of my children got from a fast food restaurant, removed whatever stickers or pictures were on it and replaced them with stickies with numbers on them. In a basket are objects you would find in a forest - trees, animals, rocks, hikers, etc. - I picked animals and trees that you might find in a North American pine forest. The blue you see is blue felt that acts as a stream. The child starts with an empty tray. They spin the spinner and whatever number appears they then pick that many forest items out of the basket and put on the tray, they are building a forest. For a point of interest I put the number 0 on the spinner. Of course you could do all kinds of variations for this work! Happy Building!
