Exploration leads to Discovery

I think a new painting trend may have been inspired yesterday by J. J painted her paper many colors then covered the page with black paint and then used the back of the paintbrush to draw. What she found was a multi-colored paper under the black. This was a cool sight for all to behold. Today another J chose to work at the easel and was replicating the procedure. He even realized he could use his hand as an eraser to crete drawing after drawing...


He also spent time writing...


Soon S, on the other side of the easel, became curious and joined J in his painting. We added another piece of paper and they worked together to paint, draw, and explore.

A horse with Wings, Oh my!

Ever inspired by early childhood educators blogging about their classroom endeavors, I ran across Teacher Tom and his use of storytelling in the classroom. This year, we have a class full of natural storytellers so we gave it a try this morning. During morning arrival activities, I sat with J and S (the first two people to sign up yesterday on our storytelling sign up sheet). I asked them to tell me a story and this is what they had to say...

"One day a horse was flying in the sky and was raining using some books and raining down on people's houses. And people said "what a nice music," so they dance in the sun and run on their houses ceiling. The End." -J

S seemed inspired by J's flying horse as you'll see...

"I'm gonna make a silly one. The horse was jumping off the house and the horse talked. And the horse had wings. And the horse turned into a people. And the horse turned into a shoe. And then the horse turned into a hen. And then the horse turned into a Miss Merril and then turned into a Mrs. Chin. And then it sits and rests. The End." -S

Each child sat beside me while I read their story during our morning meeting. Actually, J is an avid reader already so he took the story right out of my hands and read it to the class. The audience loved the pure silliness of both stories. I asked the class if they thought we should make storytelling a part of our morning routine and we took a vote. We had 16 votes for YES and 2 votes for NO so it looks like it's going to be a part of our morning ritual. I'm curious to see how children respond to writing for an audience. This is something that Teacher Tom talks about in his entry and I'm curious to see how it plays out in our classroom. I'll update with more stories soon!

Homemade Watercolor Paint

Here's a fun project for home, make your own watercolor paints! You can even watch a video here http://www.wholeliving.com/article/homemade-watercolor-paint

Tools and Materials

* Baking soda
* White vinegar
* Light corn syrup
* Cornstarch
* Mixing bowl
* Mixing spoon
* Half-dozen egg carton
* Assorted food coloring 4-pack
* Popsicle sticks or skewers


Watercolor Paint How-To
1. In a mixing bowl, mix 4 tablespoons baking soda with 2 tablespoons vinegar until fizzing stops. Add 1/2 teaspoon corn syrup and 2 tablespoons cornstarch. Mix until a uniform consistency.

2. Pour the mixture into individual egg carton cups, filling each about a third to halfway.

3. Add five to 10 drops of food coloring to each cup, mixing in thoroughly, to reach desired colors. (Experiment, or see color recipes below.)

4. Allow paints to set overnight. Use paints on watercolor paper with a wet paintbrush.

Color Recipes

* Reddish pink: 10 drops red
* Orange: 1 drop red, 6 drops yellow
* Yellow: 5 drops yellow
* Leaf green: 3 drops green, 7 drops yellow
* Sea blue: 5 drops blue
* Violet: 4 drops red, 2 drops blue

inside and outside, the best of both worlds

Thanks to parents and grandparents for walking with us to the Botanical Garden. We touched, smelled, and explored with our senses.



We predicted that we would see worms and puddles. We were right, we found many worms in puddles because of all the rain yesterday!



Some of us were eager to add detail with watercolor paint to our the observational sketches drawn at the Garden.


As we begin our unit on animals we decided (with Mr. Groff's help) to build a reading barn. Children worked with Mr. Groff to create the barn and we finished it in class by adding a roof, decorating our barn, and...



adding rules. J decided the title should be Don't Cross The Rules and if you can see the first rule is "No smoking." My disclaimer here, all rules were created by the children!

Calling all Pennies...Donations for Heifer International

As we move into a new topic..we're still keeping worms in mind (especially in terms of composting). If you haven't already explored our compost bin, feel free to dig in and pick up a worm!

This month we're learning about animals with the help of the nonprofit organization http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.183217/. Heifer works toward ending world hunger by providing sustainable agriculture and food sources to people all over the world. Explore their website to learn more. Today we talked in class about how lucky we are to live in a country with an abundance of food. We also began thinking about people in other parts of the world who don't have reliable food sources. This is a conversation that is great to continue at home, browse the site with your child, there are even some games here http://games.readtofeed.org/for_kids/fun_and_games/. With conversations at home and school taking place - along with some outreach and volunteering as well - we will be raising empathetic and caring global citizens.

We learned today that Heifer not only provides livestock (animals) to people around the world but also worms! Worms are excellent decomposers and help to make soil rich to grow crops. Talk with your child each day about what they're learning in school.