USA, Hooray!

We had a pretty low-key week here at Seedlings summer camp.  Our theme was 4th of July and at the preschool level, when you ask children about Independence Day, they generally associate it with one singular (and totally awesome) thing...FIREWORKS!  So, we spent our week finding creative ways to make fireworks - and a stellar American flag!

Balloon fireworks are quite possibly one of my favorite projects.  I do it every year.  The children love it, I love it and they always come out gorgeous!

If you are brave and not completely glitter-phobic like I am, go ahead and sprinkle some of the shiny stuff on there after your balloon printing, it'll be great!

Ok, so maybe I'm not COMPLETELY glitter-phobic.  My older kiddos made glue and glitter fireworks this week and I must say, they came out so, so pretty.  I might have to change my mind about glitter...maybe.

I had a special request to finger paint this week, so we used some red, white and blue paints for our pictures.  We've got a theme going on here, ya know!?

My toddlers created some paper plate 4th of July wreaths for the occasion.  When doing this project with the little guys, I suggest using a more inner section of the plate, rather than the slanted outer portion which makes gluing difficult for little hands.

I challenged my Pre-K class with a group project, a giant American flag.  I painted the red, white and blue sections on a large piece of cardboard and then they were tasked with filling in each section with the appropriate colors by cutting apart magazines.

 

I loved this project.  We practiced cutting, gluing, teamwork, responsibility with classroom tools, conversation, problem-solving, and so much more and we ended up with a truly amazing flag!

Fabulous!!

And no 4th of July week would be complete without Fireworks in a Bag!  For a complete explanation of how to do this project, visit last year's post here.

I will add that using very high quality bags makes a huge difference in the POP!  So get the good bags!

POP!!

Happy 4th of July!

Our Literary Summer: Week 1 - Mouse's First Summer

This summer, I decided to focus on something that is hugely popular in our family - books!  My husband and I are both avid readers and our children literally have books in every room.  If you sit down in my house, you will very soon find yourself with a child in your lap handing you book after book.

A couple of weeks ago, that child happened to be Monkey and that book happened to be Mouse's First Summer by Lauren Thompson.  As I was reading, activity ideas flooded my mind and I decided to throw out the old lesson plans and start fresh with a book per week and lots of fun to go along with each book!

Of course, we had to start with Mouse's First Summer since it was my original inspiration.  Here is a look at our week:

In the story, Mouse tastes some "drippy, sweet, wet, red watermelon" and enjoys a tasty glass of lemonade, so we started by exploring our very own watermelon.  The book uses excellent descriptive words, so we just talked about the watermelon and the kiddos decided it was smooth, hard, green, striped and round on the outside and pink, red, juicy and yummy on the inside.  We sliced the watermelon and whipped up some tasty dip to accompany it and then got to work juicing lemons.  Nope, we didn't use bottled lemon juice, we didn't even use the fancy-shmancy juicer, we did it by hand, the old fashioned way, and our lemonade was delicious!

We even made our own Watermelon Art with real watermelon seeds.

The children loved all of our watermelon-themed centers used throughout the week:  

Watermelon Play Dough

and with added seeds!

Watermelon Sensory Bag inspired by Teach Preschool

 Watermelon Water Bead Sensory Box

Even more fun on the light table!

We also sang and danced to The Watermelon Song by Billy Jonas.  The kiddos love this one, lots of movement and lots of sillies with some learning stuck in the middle.

Later in the story, Mouse is on a picnic and there are some munching ants happily moving about, so we created our own Fingerprint Ants along with some shredded 'grass' and we enjoyed a tasty snack of Ants on a Log.

We explored the sky right along with Mouse by letting the sun make a project for us using Sunprint paper.  Naturally, I neglected to get photos of this fun project, but you can read all about it HERE!!

We decorated some kites and one of my little guys made his all orange, just like in the story!!

Our last day of activities was all about fireworks!

 We started with Fireworks in a Bag.  We put about a tablespoon of baking soda in a little paper towel packet.  Next, we added some food coloring.  Then we added about 1/2 c. of vinegar and sealed the bag.  The last step is observe!

If you are lucky enough not to get a bag with a hole in it, you should end up with a satisfactory POP! and even some color spilling out of your bag.  We had a few trial runs before success, but hey, that's what science is all about, right?

We finished with Balloon Print Fireworks, which is pretty self-explanatory, they came out great and then I washed the balloons and the kiddos had a blast with them for the rest of the day!

Hooray for SUMMER!