My New Classroom Easel

During a recent trip to NYC, we took Z-man to The Children's Museum of Manhattan. Among their four awesome floors and various rooms to explore is an art area. They have what is basically a light box on the wall with a drip container underneath. Then there are shower squeegees and spray bottles for museum-goers to wipe away their masterpieces after painting. I felt inspired. I found some plexiglass left over from some project my dad started years ago, bought a $17 window planter from Home Depot and a $3 squeegee from IKEA, and created this.

My students love this. They stand in line to take turns. I'm not sure whether they enjoy painting the board or wiping it away more. I love that I don't have dozens of pages with drippy paint drying around the classroom. I love the way they manipulate the spray bottle and test which distance from the plexiglass works best for optimal erasing. I love how the paint slides down like rain once its been sprayed. I just love this.

(I DO NOT love cleaning it. The planter is not as easy to clean as I wish it was. The drain in the planter is not where the watery paint collects when it is hung like I have it. A drill and a new stopper could fix that, I think.)

Snow day. Sick day.

I got so much grief for not taking Z-man out to play in the first snow of his life.  Or the second.  Or the third. It is so much work to put on all that gear. Boots never go on quite right. Sweat is pouring down your face by the time you are all suited up.  And as soon as you get out, you are wet and cold and want to come back in. Uhhh.
I finally took my guy out and minus the wrestle with his boots, he loved it. And I loved it.  We played with dump trucks in the snow, sledded down our front yard, and ate icicles to our hearts` content. (Gross,  I know.)
I was actually quite bummed when the next snow, a perfect,  fluffy snow,  came while Z-man had strep throat. House-bound.  Sick. Grumpy.  That's a long day to stay inside.  Then my sister suggested I bring the snow inside.  Genius.  A tub full of snow, some utencils, Tupperware,  and a pot and we "cook"ed the day away. At the end, we turned on the hot water and tried to melt all the chunks with the shower house. Not as fun as sledding, but it was a pretty good substitute!

Really "nailing" Halloween

Another teacher at my preschool gave me this idea, so I can't take the credit for it. I brought in our pumpkin the day after Halloween and some random nails from our tool box. I let the kids hammer away. They loved poking the nails in, swinging the hammers,  and guessing what the inside looked like with nails poked through it. The pumpkin had an awesome design on it at the end. 

We put in next to the paper bag pumpkins in the hall to display. Once it started to rot, we opened it up and looked at the spikey nails. Some of the nails had pierced seeds, which, with three year old humor, was hilarious!

Pumpkins!

I've been meaning to get started on this blogging thing for a while. I just haven't made it a priority until now. For the past few months, I've been taking pictures of stuff I've done and writing down ideas I've had to eventually write about.
I'm big into Pinterest. I stayed off it for a long time, but now I'm hooked. I love the ideas people share and I love how it inspires me to try new things. 
Anyway, I was looking for an idea of a gift to give my students for Halloween that didn't involve candy since they get enough of that already on that holiday. I found this idea for pumpkin pie playdough. As Halloween approached, I got busy and realized making play dough, especially a new recipe for the first time, was ambitious. Using her idea for inspiration, I bought clementines and made jack-o-latern faces on them. The cutest ones are the ones I drew stem side up. (Obviously I'm no artist, but the kids got a kick out of them and the parents loved them!)

Kandinsky Circles

I teach the oldest three's class at our preschool. At this point in the year, some of them are already four. Most of them will be four by January. In my class, each month has a different theme and each day focuses on a different aspect of this theme. October's theme was Colors. There was a red day, a yellow day, a blue day... etc.
November's theme was Shapes. Each day we explored a new shape, looking at its properties and recreating and finding that shape in art, sports, science, nature, food, and music. On circle day, I had a large poster of Kandinsky's painting Squares with Concentric Circles. We looked at the painting and talked about the colors and shapes we saw. Using bottle caps of different sizes, squares cut out from foam scraps, and tacky glue (spread on with popsicle sticks because squeezing those bottles is really hard), my kids got creative. They received no instructions, just the supplies and the muse (Kandinsky's poster).
Next year, I will give them colored construction paper to create on instead of the white paper. Then I will frame it on a larger paper for a cleaner finish. This project was so fun and leant itself to great math convos (comparing sizes of bottle caps and different shapes, making patterns) which I hadn't really expected. Definitely staying on the lesson plan for next year!