Imagination Station at the Playground

I'm always looking around trying to find new and different things for my class to bring to the playground. We spent a lot of time outside each day and I strive to make it creative, educational, and fresh. 

When I saw a bag of pool noodles, I couldn't resist. 

I had one rule: they couldn't be weapons. Weapons don't belong at school. 

I only post pics of my kid without permission, but here are a few examples of what they were. They were fishing poles, baseball bats, electric giitars, antlers, hockey sticks and horses. They were also trombones, trumpets, drum sticks, tubes, gutters, fire hoses, and blocks to build a raft with. The possibilities are endless! 

Falling into Autumn!

This year, I've added a new time to my class schedule, which I call 'Storytime'.  Each week I pick a theme, not necessarily the same that we are focusing on the rest of the day, and read a different book about the theme each day. This is a time when kids are taking turns for the bathroom and usually just waiting in transition. 

Before we begin reading the book I've selected, the kids jump once for each word in the title as we count how many words there are and we look clues on the cover about what the book might be about. As we read, the kids identify each character they meet, saying "Ahhhh! New character!" We talk about the problem as it arises and then make guesses about how the problem will be solved. I always ask, "How can we find out the solution?" They love to answer, "Turn the page!" 

My favorite part of this time is after I close the book. My students use the materials provided to retell the story. One day they pretended to mail each other zoo animals in shoe boxes and told why each animals wasn't the right pet for them. (!Dear Zoo) Another day they made a multicolor train and a long track for it to go, go, gone on. (Freight Train)

This week's theme was autumn leaves. We read Let it Fall, The Leaves on the Trees, Going on a Leaf Hunt, and a nonfiction book about leaves. Afterwards they used log blocks, fabric and paper leaves, and rakes to retell the stories and share the facts they learned. They counted leaves, compared colors and shapes, and made piles to jump in. 

It was so fun, we are going to stick with this theme next week! 

Beating the Bathtime Blues

Z-man actually loves the bath. He swims, makes up story lines, splashes...he doesn't want to get out!  But he doesn't want to get in either. Changing activities is not his most favorite thing right now. 

The other day, I really needed him to stop playing legos and bathe. Cousins were coming and he was grody and it just needed to happen. Right then. And I didn't want to fight. 

So I gave him a challenge: who could build the better submarine, me and Z or daddy? Next thing I knew he was tip-toeing around the piles of legos on the floor racing for the bathtub to see which sub was best. Even though our crooked boat lost (on the left), this challenge was definitely still a win! 

To-do-ing Together

It's important to me that my guy helps out with our family's to-do list. I want him to grow up with an understanding and an appreciation that things just don't magically happen. Washed clothes in drawers. Clean plates to eat off of. Toys where he can easily find them. Meals ready to eat. These things have to be done, they aren't just done.

So, Z-man has several tasks around the house that he gets to help with. I've explained that I need his help doing these things and he seems pretty eager to do them. Z loads his laundry into the washing machine using a tall IKEA stool. He loves looking in as the water fills and putting his clothes in. This came about after Z wanted to wear the same soccer jersey with a star on it every day. I started asking him to help me wash it. Now, he asks has "can we wash this tonight?" if he wants to wear something again the next day. 

Now that I've relinquished all my control over his outfits, I leave his clothes on his bed and he sorts them into drawers of unfolded clothes (socks, boxers, shirts, shorts). 

When I am ready to start the dishwasher, Z-man puts the soap in the door and closes it up, pressing the button twice to turn it on. 

When I am sweeping and organizing, he often gets his little dustpan to help me sweep up the piles. (Piles that often seem much more difficult to wrangle when my little helper is nearby.) 

I give him little tasks as we go through our days looking for certain things at the grocery store, putting his trash in the trash can, pulling the sheets up on the bed. These tasks are much quicker when I just do them myself, but like most things in my life, they seem much more meaningful when we do them together. 

A Balancing Act

The weather has been so amazing, that I can't justify making my students come inside. Instead, I've taken my lessons outside. 

We brought our small classroom scale to the sand park with us. We added sand to both sides, trying to balance the sides. Shells, shovels, and other random items were weighed as well. 

Then, we super sized it!  Using a broom handle, strong string, two 5-gallon  buckets, and a structure on the playground, we made a giant scale. The kids had so much fun balancing the aides, trying to fill one bucket to be heavier. Until, the broom stick snapped! One of my students suggested we try again with pipes. We just might have to try it! 

Happy Mudder's Day!

What a wonderful "Mudder's" Day I had!  As I've posted about before, Z-man's dad's family has a Mother's Day party each year and this year, I was there to participate!

Z-man helped me prepare my gifts to give the other mothers in the family:
We sawed a mailing tube into inch and a half sections. For a three year old, there is pretty much nothing better than getting to use a saw.  Then, he wrapped colored tape around each section cut from the tube.  Several overlapping layers of tape on each.  We did this a little at a time over several days. I added tape around the middle to clean up the look and mod-podged each one completing the colorful bracelets! 

We added hand sanitizer or lotion, wrapped them in tissue paper, and viola!

Z-man noticed that most of the mothers were wearing them later that day!

Mother's Day to my #1 hero, role model, cheerleader, and friend, my own mama and the other mamas who inspire, support, and love on me and my guy. I am most definitely a mama suerte!

Compost Continued

My mom, also my director, told some other early childhood professionals about my students and their compost bin. Immediately two of them pointed out that the moisture in the bin had no way to drain and the bugs would drown after a big rain. Oh no.

I brought this predicament to my students. After explaining the problem and why this was a problem (drowning= dead),  I encouraged my students to make suggestions a it how to solve this problem. Many of them had suggestions: It's okay, we will just get new worms if these die. (After some consideration, we decided this was unfair to the worms.) Poke holes in the plastic so the water can drain out of the bottom. (Great idea, but we borrowed the container so it wasn't ours to destroy.) Dump out the water after it rains. (But what if we aren't here to do it, like in the evening or on a weekend?) Fill it to the top so that there is no space for water to get in. (Water can get in very small holes and fill it like a sponge.) Cover the holes with tape.  (Then no air can get in.) I just sat back and let my students consider and debate different choices.
Then one student suggested we make a lid for our lid.  A lid that had lots of space for air and bugs, but blocked almost all of the holes from the rain so only some moisture could get in.  They debated this.  What could we use to make this lid? How can we hold it on? Will it be successful? My students selected a large bucket and thought about string, glue, tape, or zip ties (a material we use a lot in my class).  They chose zip ties and worked together to assemble it.

After the next big rain, we hurried to check it.  All of our bugs were still alive (and more that we didn't even put in...EWWWW!!!) The soil was damp, but not soaking wet.  The lid was successful!

Today we found little bright green bead-like objects inside our compost.  They look like worm egg cases, but are not the same color as the ones we have found in our worm farm previously.  We can't wait to see what they become!

One, Two, Three!

My baby turned three yesterday. Here are my three fave things about the bday boy:

1.  His love for soccer. I personally do not have a love for the game (or rather didn't have one) but my guy is just totally crazy about it. He wakes up thinking about it, eager to put on his soccer clothes and asks to practice at least once, usually more often, every day. I love how intensely he loves the sport because I love that he loves this way. I hope that he always loves whatever he does his intensely and this passionately. Unless of course it's drugs, and then I take that back. 

2.  His voice. I love it. I love listening to the things he has to say and how he says them. I love when he shares his thoughts with me. I love that he has so much to say and wants to share it with me.  I hope that he always finds his voice and always shares his thoughts with me. (Again, there are some disclaimers to this one, too.)

3.  His sense of humor. I've got one silly guy. In our family, we always say you know you are funny if you make Papa laugh. Papa is just not a laugh-out-loud type of guy. Z-man gets him cracking up almost every day. I love how he knows things are funny (like wearing pants on your head or pretending to be asleep and I'm even gaining an appreciation for potty humor (Toots! Bahaha!). I hope he always sees the humor in life and brings smiles to people's faces. 

These have been the most challenging, most rewarding, and most joyful three years of my life.

 I can't wait to see what's next for us!

Making Compost Stew

In April, my class learns about the environment and we spend a week talking about each of the three Rs, reducing our use, reusing what we've used in new ways, and recycling everything we can.  Today, it seemed fitting to make a special Earth day snack for us, and for our class pets. 

For snack, my kids made chocolate pudding "MUD!", complete with worms. They ate them out of planters I found at the dollar store.  My kids loved pretending that it was real mud!

For snack for our worms,  the kids cut up banana peels, apple and pear cores, and grape fruit and orange rinds. We added water and pulsed them into tiny pieces in the Magic Bullet.

Layer by layer, we added dried leaves and newspaper, dirt, and our food waste to an old hermit crab container to make our Compost Stew. We put our worms in the container, made sure it was a little damp, and set the container outside for the sun to do its magic.  We plan on watching our compost over the next month or so to see what changes take place inside our compost bin.

We also played a fun composting game with the pretend food from our kitchen.  We went through the bin placing items that can be composted in one pile and items that should not be included in another. It was good practice for starting our compost bin and super fun to say that meat would make it STINKY!

The book that inspired this lesson? Compost Stew: An A to Z Recipe for the Earth by Mark McKenna Siddal and Ashley Wolf.   We repeated the sing-song rhyme from this book as mixed our stew: "Put in all in a pot... and let it rot... into COMPOST STEW!"

Happy Earth Day!

Canvases on the Cheap

This summer, I'm running four weeks of full day elementary camp.  For twenty nine hour days for forty campers, there is a lot of preparation to make a fantastic camp. I've already started prepping. 

One of the activities I have planned is painting inspiration canvases with Dr. Seuss quotes. (Camp has a Book Wars theme.)
When I looked up the prices online, it just felt like a waste of camp resources to spent over a hundred dollars on canvases for this one activity. After some Pinteresting, I found this tutorial for making miniature doll house canvases. So I super-sized it!
Using white poster board, diaper boxes, muslin, a hot glue gun, an iron, and Gesso canvas primer, I made 40 canvases in a hour for a whopping total of $22.  I cut the poster board and diaper box to the size I wanted and then hot glued them together.  After stretching muslin around the cut box, I hot glued the fabric tightly to it.  I ironed the front of the makeshift canvas and then painted on the primer.  TADA!

They aren't quite on par with the ones you buy at the store but summer camp quality? Totally. 

Extending More Than Just the Track

As my kids entered the classroom, I gave them this problem: extend the train track that I had started on our table as much as they could. Several kids were interested when the track easily stayed on the table. As it got longer and longer, they had to work harder, trying to balance it on the edge or placing the track carefully on the backs of chairs. Then, one student saw some uncommon building materials in our classroom and used them to support the track. Challenges like this really stretch their cooperation, creativity, and thinking!

My Adventures with Woolly Bear

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Here's the link!

Gazpacho for My Muchacho

I'm always on the look out for books that use both English and Spanish. As a non-Spanish speaker, books  written in English with sporadic Spanish words  are a great, natural, non-intimidating way to introduce new words into our (Z-man and my) vocabulary. Some of our favorites are Fire! Fuego! Brave Bomberos, Rubia and the Three Osos, and, now, Gazpacho for Nacho.

Gazpacho for Nacho is a  book about a boy who only eats gazpacho. Frustrated by Nacho's limited palate, his Mami takes him shopping to buy the legumbres needed and then teaches Nacho how to make the soup. 

First, Z-man and I read the book several times over a week or so. Actually, first I pre-read the book by myself. I've noticed that if I struggle through pronunciation, Z often looses interest in the book. 

After he knew the book well, we decided to act it out. Z-man picked a costume (but didn't want to wear it) and then pretended to buy the pepino and other veggies. He made food out of play dough and we practiced following the recipe. While doing these activities, I was very intentional about using the Spanish words in the book as a way to reinforce their meaning. 

Then, we headed to the grocery store to buy tomates, one pepino, one pimiento. I called him "Nacho" and he called me "Mami" as we did this. So fun!

At home, we gathered the rest of the ingredients, put on our aprons and chef hats and began el trabajo. He cut and measured and poured and stirred. We put it in the fridge to chill. 

I'm not sure my guy will be demanding "Mas gazpacho!" like Nacho does, but he did ask for pepinos instead of cucumbers and that makes this a success for me and my muchacho!

Tracing as We Travel

As a transition activity in my classroom, I provide maps and markers to my kids, asking them to trace different paths you can take. Metro maps work really well with the different colored lines and clear paths. Fine motor skills and geography all at once!

I can hardly wait for my next train trip and NYC subway journey with Z-man so we can try this together!

Making the Most of Bath Time!

Z-man is loving baths right now. He's discovered bubble baths and loves trying to find the objects that sink under the bubbles. Other ones float back up after we drop them in so they are easy to find.  

Using foam letters, we make boats, hooking the letters together. We try to build the boats strong and stable enough for the sinking objects to now float on the boats. 

With the same foam letters, I put them on different parts of Z's body. For example, I put the M on his mouth, the L on his leg, or the N on his nose and then sing this little song to the tune of If You're Happy And You Know It: There's a M on your mouth, on your mouth. There's a M on your mouth, on your mouth. It's not farther south, it's just on your mouth. There's a M on your mouth, on your mouth. (I change the farther south part for anything goofy that rhymes with the body part. Knee: It gives me so much glee that there's a...You get it.)

Every time he takes the letter off and looks at it. Rhyming, body part identification, AND letter recognition? Win.

To end bathtime, I rinse Z-mandown with water. As I rinse each part of his body, I name it in Spanish. I pour water over his back and say "espalda" and pour it over his legs and say "piernas." I ask him to "voltate" when I want him to turn. 

My Z and I have so much fun that often the water turns cold and his fingers turn into raisins! He doesn't even know we are learning!

Boogyin' with my Woogie

One of my favorite things to do with Z-man is dance. Somehow we started playing this game that we call "Boogie Woogie". I start singing "Boogie Woogie..." in a sing-song voice and then I ask Z-man a question like "what's your favorite animal?" He then answers in a speed- round fashion. "Giraffe." The more dance filled and blues-esque my performance, the more excitement I get back.
I ask another one: "Boogie Woogie, what color are your socks?" "Blue." There are some trivia questions "Boogie Woogie, who are your grandmothers?" He has five, so this is quite a test of memory recall. "Boogie Woogie, what's Mama's real name?" We go on and on. Sometimes, Z-man accompanies us on the piano and often we have microphones, either imaginary or like these fabulous light up ones.

Why is this goofy game share worthy? Well, its super fun. And the more fun times we have together, the more cooperation I gett. Also, boogying with my woogie gets us talking--and learning new things about each other. I love the chance for him to learn important information in a fun way, like my real name or where we live. And lastly, this jingle has saved us those few minutes before dinner is ready when he is hungry and tired and just done. Those minutes are sometimes super rough but when we boogie our way through them, we are both happy. 

My Discoveries of 2014

2014 was an amazing year.  It was a year with so many more ups than downs, so much family time,  and settling down (somewhat) confidently into my job as a teacher and role as a mama! 2014 was a year of trying different things, working on myself, and making new discoveries.
I'll share five of the best things I discovered this year:
1. Coconut oil is for everything. I've used it to remove spray paint from my hands, get permanent marker off the wall, condition my hair, whiten my teeth, and treat Z-man's diaper rash. I credit coconut oil with my clearer skin (I use it as face wash, make-up remover, and moisturizer) and Z's still-baby-soft skin. I'm obsessed!
2. Consciously saving cash changed my spending. I started saving every $5 dollar bill I got as change. No matter what I wanted to spend it on, I refused to and instead put it in an envelope. I did this for about six months of the year and amassed a pretty decent amount. When I stopped intentionally saving cash, my spending in general increased. I'm going back to this in 2015.
3. Running is therapeutic. This has been my greatest self-discovery this year. I've always hated running and said I just couldn't do it. I ran for 13 minutes one day in May to see if I could and struggled through it. The other I day, I ran five miles! I find that when I run, I'm much more relaxed and less irritable (and healthier!). Life changing for sure.
4. I don't need rigid rules.  Z-man has to brush his teeth twice a day, but he doesn't have to do it right after breakfast.. Some mornings he can finish getting ready at school--we get there early to get my room set--or before we go upstairs for breakfast. There are definitely some exceptions to this discovery, but realizing that rules can be much more fluid has led to greater cooperation and given Z more autonomy.
5. Inside jokes are my magic with Z. We have been cultivating all these little jokes and games since he was born. When I want to reconnect with him, zone out for a second, hear his awesome laugh, or get him onboard with something, whipping out one of these jokes is magic! Also, its really fun!

My guy trying to keep his eyes open three hours after bedtime!

Here's to a 2015 filled with soft skin, saving, long runs, flexibility, and laughing--and more discoveries!

Date Night To Go!

Pinterest really helped me out this Christmas (and every other day of my life! What did I do before I discovered Pinterest?!) 

For my couple friends, I found this great date night bag idea on Pinterest and decided to tweak it a little. A trip to the dollar store and some magic marker fun later and viola! Merry Christmas to my favorite couples!

 

Bath salts, candles, playing cards, measuring cups, plastic champagne glasses, and popcorn make for some awesome dates! Enjoy, my friends!