Our Literary Summer: Week 2 - Mama, Is It Summer Yet?

This week we read Mama, Is It Summer Yet? by Nikki McClure.  This story takes us on a journey from Spring into Summer with a Mama and her Little One watching for signs up the upcoming season in nature; from migrating birds and nesting squirrels to trees flowering and berries ripening.

Here is a look at our activities for the week:

Arm Trees - trace or paint the children's hand and arm to create the tree, then decorate.

Pretend to be a squirrel and go on an Acorn Hunt around the classroom.

Bird Seed Sensory Bin

Strawberry Play Dough - made with strawberry Jello and flax seeds

Strawberry Seed Counting Game

Planting Seeds in a Bag (they are sprouting already!!)

DIY Trail Mix Bar

Hoot Owl Hoot Cooperative Game - these games are awesome!!

Windsocks

Memory Game - This one is great, it has 10 different game cards, one of them is fruit matching, so we did that one on our strawberry day!

Strawberry Cream Cheese Sandwiches

Textured Strawberry Painting - use poppy seeds and a touch of glue with the red paint.

This was a great book selection, there is quite a bit of repetition, so by the end of the week, the children were 'reading' the book right along with me!

I can't wait for next week's literary adventure!!!

A Week of Weather: Wind, Clouds and Rain

A Week of Weather: Day 1 - Wind

According to the curriculum I purchase from Little Acorn Learning, one week this month is supposed to be dedicated to rain.  I live in the desert.  We don't have rain - unless it's monsoon season - so it's a bit difficult to fill a week with rain activities and keep the children interested.  I decided to expand upon the theme and cover weather in general.

Day 1 of this Week of Weather was all about WIND!  We have quite a bit of that here in the Phoenix, AZ area, and we've had some very windy days in the past few weeks, so I knew it would be in the recent memories of the kiddos.

I set up the light table with a heavy/light experimentation area.

I also provided a straw for each child.  A note about wind experiments: be prepared for spit.  Blowing through a straw without saliva interfering is very difficult for the little ones, so have your anti-bacterial wipes ready.

The children tried to move everything around on the table and we talked about what moved and what didn't - light things and heavy things.  My son decided that he didn't like the fact that he couldn't knock over that little tower of blocks, so he just leaned in and sneakily bumped it with the bottom of his straw!  We were surprised that we could move the small wooden cars with our ''wind", but not the train cars from our set of Prism Blocks.

Feathers were the favorite!  I plan to have this area open for the remainder of the week, and I think I'll provide a few more feathers and perhaps attempt a 'catch wall' around the perimeter of the light table - there was a lot of bending to pick up on my part, BUT, all in the name of science!



 
Since we were on a roll with those straws, we tried some "Wind Painting".  This is a super-easy project that works best with older kids; however, if you do it with a class of two-year-olds as I did, hilarity will definitely ensue and they will have a blast anyway!

We used finger paint paper (taped down) - to provide a slick surface so the paint wouldn't be immediately absorbed - and liquid watercolors.  If you have older children, you could have them drop the paint on the paper themselves, but since I had all little ones, I wanted them to focus on the "wind" portion, so I dished out the colors as they asked for them - bonus color lesson!  Teal, Fuchsia, Tangerine and Violet!

What an awesome technique!!  The kids loved it and they were so proud once they finally got the hang of it and were able to move that paint across the paper!

Check out that powerful wind action!!





Happy Earth Day!

Next up:  Clouds!