Christmas ornaments ready! Our final class.

Happy Holidays for everyone!
Yesterday we finished first semester of our art studio.
We were in rush to finish our winter wreaths. That was amazing team work, which combined different techniques such as sculpturing with play dough, modelling base for wreath and whole design of it.

Happy Holidays!

Wonderful Summer 6.Long trip of the little ant.

Today our curriculum was based on the story about The Little Ant by Valentin Bianki, famous Russian writer. Today we should to review all our previous lessons about Nature: animals, bugs, insects and amphibians. So let's start!
Once upon a time in big dark forest beside old birch was an ant hill. Big family of little ants was living there. that was huge house with entrances and hallways , storages and rooms. Ants were working hard from sunrise to sunset. they were bringing food to food storages, repair and renovate anthill;

 but there was one little, very curious ant Freddy, who always was asking many question. He got closer to the birch and looked up. "What is there, hight above?" He decided to go up along the birch. He climbed and climbed, climbed and climbed and finally reached top of the tree. He stopped on the leaf and looked around:"WOW....There is a lot of different sites around our anthill....Big water, yellow field, green meadow valley.....The leaf was old and had tiny stem. Suddenly wind blows and leaf fly in the air!
"Nooooooooo!" yelled Freddy watching how fast change surroundings - anthill disappeared behind the pond, the  leaf was flying above the yellow field and got a spill exactly on the edge of the forest. Freddy  frozen for a while, looked around and get try to rise. Leg was hurt and he couldn't step on it. At that time sun started to go down..."No!" whispered Freddy -"I am going to be late to my house!What I should do?"
And he started to cry...
"Hey! Why you crying?"  - he herd the vice. Freddy looked around and descried Spider who was swinging on the net.
"Wind blow my leaf away from my Anthill , dropped it here, I hurt my legs, Sun goes down, my house going to be locked, but I cant  reach it in time...." was crying Freddy.
And.... of course different animals helped Freddy to get his house
Spider brought him on the meadow, Lady bug helped him to reach field, Rabbit brought him to the pond, Frog helped arrived on another side of the pond and Dragonfly put him on the birch beside Freddy's Anthill.
And Freddy arrived exactly in time!
During this activity children pretended to be an animals, insects and reptilians, showed how they were moving, sounding; they arranged surrounding for their animals or insects.
I didn't have time to take pictures because we absorbedly were playing Bianky's tale.
I just want to share with my friends this wonderful story about little ant as an opportunity to play with children role play game which included Science, Math, Literature, teach children mutual help and communication.
A little bit of imagination and ....

Wonderful Summer 5. Chinese fan

The weather becomes hot and more people use water park in front of my house. Just reminded - last summer through the activity of "Hot weather" project we were making "Chinese fan". For very young children I used plain paper, grade 3-4 children used tissue paper. Detailed instruction you can find on web site Activity village, it is quick and easy.

Did you hear about "Kapla"?

What do you know about "Kapla"?
Once you tried to play  you certainly fall in love with this toy!
"KAPLA was invented in 1987 by Tom van der Bruggen. Born in the Netherlands, he studied the History of Art."
Kapla is a wooden block construction toy for children and adults. Each block is an identically sized and shaped piece of pine with dimension in the ratio of 1:3:15, i.e. 1 unit high, 3 units wide and 15 units long.
Nothing special, but this toy, made with real wood, takes children and adults in a fantastic land of building. We can play with my children hours and build whatever we have in our mind...do you know what is the most interesting part in building? 
Yeppp! You right - to break it!)) As long as we do not need any glue or other gluing materials, you always have an opportunity to break it.... and build something absolutely NEW!!!
Oh....Why I did not hear about it when my children were growing up?
Just share with you a few pictures and few web sites where you can find information if interested.

that how our Kapla looks like. there are some less pieces completion. You always can find anything About Kapla here

Those plain wooden block can make a magic like this

or like this

or even like this!!!

Watch how much fun people have,  playing with Kapla!

A few helpful links:

http://kapla.org/page/6/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapla

http://www.kapla.com/kapla/galerie_photos.en.htm

https://www.facebook.com/KAPLA.Lovers

http://www.atelierenfant.com/stage/Atelier_Kapla

I hope you will enjoy playing with Kapla!!

Pictures taken from internet collection

Call Spring!

Snow again....We miss that wonderful day with 11*C!
How can we call SPRING? With shakers, gregors, rattles!!!! In different cultures people call it different names, but the idea is the same. So, lets call Spring with sounds!
You will need:
Paper towel rolls(we used carton-board spool)
Construction or wrapping paper(or you can just paint it)
Tissue paper for ribbons
Beans
Glue
Scissors

Decorate paper towel roll in your own design. Cower one side with the paper and glue it. Put inside the paper roll beans(2-3 spoons, not so much, it is not going to sound well)
Cower another side. Decorate shaker with ribbons.

Now we can dance and sing and call Spring!

My children loved them! 

Масленица

This is very important celebration as a gap between Winter and Spring which came from ancient times.
During the Meslenica week people celebrating end of Winter, they play with the snow, build snow forts,  sledding, skating, visiting friend and all week along they are cooking pan cakes! They eat pan cakes with butter, jam, honey, sour cream....why pan cakes? Because pan cake is round and yellow as a sun, which gives warm and life everyone and everything on our Planet!
Finally people are making a Winter scarecrow and burn it on Sunday...This is really end of Winter !

Hurray!

 

 
As a part of our March break we decided to make a Winter scare crow! Thanks Maria, I got that idea from her Web site here . And we as a crazy started to make puppets!

Pipe cleaners flowers

Love it! Today outside is -7*C but in our classroom - SPRING!, bright, beautiful Spring with flowers...after 1 hour of work green pipe cleaners finished... we use brown, beige... any! Spring is bringing all bright colours! Children who were more experienced in work with pipe cleaners helped others... I make a quick guide how to band pipe cleaner for all parts of flowers...Bring Spring in your room!

 

You will need pipe cleaners (a LOT!)

Piece of green paper

Glue gun or white glue

 

This is our quick tutorial.

More Spring activities here

PIPE CLEANER PEOPLE

My friends-teachers many times asked me to make a post about pipe cleaner people. We go back again and again with it and now I download a few pictures with our people.

This is my first ugly skier, but but most lovely))

After that first try we made a hundreds of people in different ways and find the easier way to make that folk!

Jorden's girl

Lana's dreamer

Erika's skater

Abby's snowboarder

After we got an idea that we also can make an animals!

Aeriel made a reindeer with pink scarf 

Jake made a reindeer with white and brown tail

And also some other animals:

Now. on March break I decided to continue with pipe cleaners: so many benefits for children and so much fun!

SO, PIPE CLEANERS! WOO-HOO! I love this material!