Apple Time

                                 

The 2011/2012 School Year has started! There is an apple festival next weekend in my area - where there are 100s of varieties of apples to try that you cannot find at the grocery. Over the years I have collected various apple items, trays, apple clips, etc. so we are going to study apples this month. We are going to taste different apples, make apple sauce, do some apple Practical life works, apple math, parts of the apple, etc.. There was also an apple fraction set I couldn't resist buying at a teacher supply store.

Last year I had found some very cute apple clips at a Japanese store. From the forest unit I had a winter wire tree which unfortunately had snow on the branches. So my youngest son and I colored over the snow with a brown marker and we now have to figure out how to add leaves.

Here is the tree in progress:

I have glued the tree base to the tray, and once the leaves get on the tree it will be a clipping apples on the apple tree work. Here is the work pre-leaves:

                                            

I had some felt leaves for collage and ended up using those to hot glue gun on the tree - here is the final apple tree:

At circle this week I am going to demo the Geometric Solids (for now - sphere, cube, and cone). After demoing this work I am going to demo making apples with playdoh. I found this idea on the Internet, will try and find the source so I can give credit where credit is due. First you make a sphere using red, green, or yellow playdoh (or clay) you can then add a stem and a leaf to make your apple. Thought this was a good start to the year, showing the sphere shape, getting into making an easy basic shape for clay/playdoh, and we can point out some apple parts too. Here is an example:

                                             

Happy Apple Picking!

Spring time

Flowers have been a big part of our classroom recently.  There are windows all along the east side of our room and recently all of the Cherry trees were in bloom.  They looked like snow all over the trees.  This was a flower work - I got this idea from online.  You take tissue paper squares and fold them over the end of a pencil and then glue them on paper to make flowers.  It is very cute.    Here are some the children did...

We have many bugs (and other critters) in our room now.  Our Ootheca (praying mantis egg case) just hatched.  We have hundreds of baby praying mantises now.  It hatched during circle when I was walking around showing the Ootheca.  It happened so fast.   We are now feeding them aphids.   We will let most of them go and keep a few to watch grow.   We have bullfrog tadpoles.  One has his hind and forelegs now.  The children are very excited about that.  We have the mealworms, red wrigglers, and just recently let go the ladybugs.  Another latest addition are the silkworms.  They are eating the Mulberry leaves like crazy.  

Another work I put out was Moon sand with a Spring twist.   I added cut up egg cartons, small fake flowers, bugs, etc. to make a garden.  The children would put the moonsand in the carton, like dirt and add the flowers and make a garden in the sand.  It was a popular work.    

It's almost time for conferences so the next few weeks will be busy!