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We have been learning about animals that live in the Arctic. I have taught the children (by showing them on our globe) the difference between the Arctic (North Pole) and Antarctic (South Pole). We are now learning about the different animals that live in the Arctic. In a week or so we'll talk about the animals (mainly penguins) that live in the Antarctic.
I have enjoyed reading this book to the children as it has helped them learn about a few of the animals of the Arctic.
A popular activity in our classroom right now is this iceberg activity. I put a bunch of bowls and cups of water in the freezer to make mini-icebergs. To do this work, the children sit at the two tables shown below. They request an iceberg from a teacher and the iceberg is placed onto the blue tray which represents the ocean. They can then use the small animals and figurines to act out arctic scenes. There is a basket with a towel which they may use to dry their hands if they get too wet or cold. This has been a really fun sensory activity for the children. The arctic figures we are using are from the Arctic TOOB by Safari Toys. You can often find these TOOBS in the hobby section of Hobby Lobby.
This project was inspired by THIS ONE by Kathy Barbro over at Art Projects for Kids. I love that blog. So many really awesome ideas. After doing a trial project, I made some modifications to my original plan for this work. I'll describe those below. I have this project set up on my stationary work table as shown below.
Materials needed include: a damp sponge in holder for wiping the mat after painting, a jar with pencil for writing name on paper BEFORE painting, a little pan with two white crayons, a holder with precut rectangles of gray construction paper.........
(NOTE: I originally planned to use watercolor paper, but when I did my samples, the liquid watercolors seemed to get the paper too wet and I couldn't see the crayon lines very well through the paint. Also, drawing with a white crayon on white paper is virtually impossible to see and for young children I found that the gray paper showed the crayon much better.)
........a basket with a paint jar filled with Colorations Liquid Watercolor paint (watered down some).....
......I made up these little step-by-step drawing cards to post over the work area. From experience, I know that these will help my littlest ones be able to independently do this project and they will experience success which will make them SO PROUD!!
Here is a photo of my 5 year old drawing his snowflake. He was my project tester.
After drawing the snowflake, a watercolor wash is applied to the top of the paper.
Then the snowflake is placed on the drying rack to dry.
I set up this little bracelet-making activity so my students could make some snowflake bracelets. I did something similar last year for Valentine's Day. Sometimes paper punches are pretty hard for young children to use because of the pressure that must be applied to the punch. One of my parents gave me a paper punch holder that she bought at a garage sale and I thought it would be perfect for this work. Here is something similar.
For this work, I set up a basket with a paper punch and punching pad...........
.........a tray with 2 inch strips of white construction paper......
,,,,,,,,a bucket of pipe-cleaners.......
............a snowflake punch.........
.......and the punch holder. As shown below, you can see how the punch is set up in the holder.....
.........and then pressure is applied to the large lever as shown here.
Once the child punches out several snowflakes, the punching tool is used to prick a hole in the center of each snowflake as shown here.
Then the snowflakes can be carefully threaded onto a pipe-cleaner to make a bracelet.
As I mentioned in this post, I decided to make some cut and paste snowflake booklets for the children using the snowflake photos I found. Below you can see how I've set this up. The wooden holder holds the snowflake booklets and the tray holds the matching pictures to be cut apart.
A little bottle holds a pencil for writing names on booklets and a basket holds scissors, glue sticks and gluing mats (these are just vinyl placemats cut into smaller pieces).
Here is the cover of one of the booklets.
And here is an inside page. After the child cuts apart all the snowflake pictures, they glue the matching pictures into the booklets. There are 9 pages in all.
This is one of my favorite winter art projects. I have put it out every year in January. Below you can see how I've set it up on the art shelf. To do this work, the child takes one blue paper (construction paper cut in half) and one white paper (2 inch by 9 inch strip of white construction paper) and places them on the tray. Then they carry the whole tray to their table.
I didn't take any photos of the process, so I'll try to explain it. The first step is to tear the white strip of paper in half lengthwise. One torn piece is then glued to the bottom of the blue paper to represent the "snowy" ground. Then the child uses the crayons to draw a "wintry scene". The final step (if they wish) is to tear small pieces of the remaining white paper. These little pieces are then glued onto the picture to become the falling snowflakes. The two examples shown below were completed by children in my class this week. The top photo shows the "torn" snow and the bottom shows how one child drew their own snowflakes with a white crayon. I love how sweet and unique each of these creations is.
A popular math material in my classroom is this Hanging Bead Stair from Alison's Montessori. My assistant, Miss Michelle, came up with a fun variation of this activity that I wanted to share today. Once a child has mastered the basic activity (hanging the bead stair in ascending order and correctly sequencing the number tiles), she hangs the beads in random order on the hooks and has the child match the number tiles as shown. They LOVE this variation and I am so glad she came up with it because I don't know if I would have thought to do it!! Great job, Miss Michelle!!
I decided to make up a little snowflake matching card activity using some real snowflake photo images I found online. The image I found was in a grid, so I cut and pasted it into a Word document and then copied it and reduced it down so one grid was teeny tiny. I wanted to post a download to this file, but when I posted it a reader informed it that it wouldn't open correctly. I have looked into it but have been unable to correct it. So.......if you are interested in this file please email me at directress@live.com and I'll try to email it to you as an attachment.
I have laminated the big grid and took the little teeny grid pictures and cut them out.......
..........then I glued them onto squares of black construction paper as shown below (sorry for poor photo!).
I placed everything on a tray with a big magnifying glass. Children can use the magnifying glass to look at the tiny snowflake on the card and match it to its "mate" on the big grid. I am thinking of also making this into a cut and paste booklet. I'll post that if I get it done. My kiddos LOVE making little booklets and the cutting and pasting is so great for their fine motor skills.
A new work in the classroom this week was Animal Tracks booklets. To make these I used the free Animal Tracks download from Montessori For Everyone. (It is listed under "Zoology" on the Free Downloads page......THANKS, Lori!)
I introduced this work at group time and showed the children each animal and the track it makes. We talked about which animal tracks we might commonly see here in Iowa and those we would probably NOT see. During the work period, the children can choose to make a booklet if they wish.
Below you can see how I've set this activity up in the classroom. The materials are on top of a shelf with control cards attached to the back of the shelf. To do this work, the children sit at the two white tables right next to shelf.
I made up a set of animal tracks booklets using the free downloads as masters........and also a cutting page with the animal tracks (reduced to 80% on the copier).
Also on the shelf is a basket with 2 pair of scissors, 2 gluesticks and 2 gluing mats. In between the tray with booklets/cutting pages and the basket of materials is a little jar with pencils for the child to write their name on the booklet.
Here's a close-up of the laminated cards (from the download) attached to the back of the shelf.
The next photo shows a page from inside the booklets. The animal photo is on the left with a blank area to the right for the child to cut and paste the corresponding animal track.
I did not get any "action" photos of children making the book. I know some of you will ask for a master copy for the booklets. This is one of those times when I am going to just encourage you to go to Lori's site and download and print the files for yourself. With some simple (yes, also time-consuming) cutting and pasting and copying on your part, you'll be able to replicate what I've done. I hope you understand. :-)
This year for the first time I have set up a snowflake making station. I decided to set this up on my stationary shelf/table so that the children can stand to do each part of the project without having to move materials back and forth from shelf to table. Below you can see the first "stage" of this project.
From top left: a blue bowl to hold the snowflake "clippings", a pan with scissors, a basket of coffee filters (NOTE: I kind of flattened them out as much as possible before placing them in the basket), a jar with a pencil for writing names on the finished snowflake, and a placemat.
I gave a group lesson to the entire class on this project. To do this work, the child first takes a coffee filter and folds it in half "like a taco", then in half again so it looks like "a piece of pizza". Then, they cut pieces from the sides and top, placing the clippings into the blue bowl. When finished cutting, they unfold their paper to see the finished snowflake. At this point, they write their name on the snowflake using the provided pencil. (It wouldn't make sense to write their name before cutting because they might cut it off!! However, if they choose to paint their snowflake, the name needs to be written on first.) Before proceeding to the next "stage", they take the blue bowl to a trash can to empty out their clippings, preparing the work space for the next child.
NOTE: We discovered that it helps some children to have some triangles drawn with pencil for them to cut on. The photo below shows my assistant, Miss Melissa, drawing some guidelines for a student. Some students didn't need this, but this modification allowed more children to be successful. They were so excited to unfold the paper and see their snowflake.
The child can choose to leave their snowflake white OR they may choose to paint it. If they want to paint, the move over to the second "stage" or workspace as shown below.
From left: a dish with a sponge for wiping the placemat after painting, the liquid watercolor paint tray from Discount School Supply (NOTE: I filled the little jars with various hues of blue and violet liquid watercolor paint, made by adding varying amounts of water to the watercolor), a jar of water for rinsing the brush, a butter dish to hold the paintbrush, and a vinyl placemat.
Here are some of our pretty finished snowflakes! I love how they are all unique, just like the little ones who made them.
