Our wickerwork - beading not for girls only.

My children become  obsessed with beading. You will be surprised to see all my 12 boys at the craft table! They are making butterfly and dragonfly for their sisters, mams, dads... and this " beading infection" spreads around whole program and our school looks like huge butterfly and dragonfly conservatory! Sometimes you might see bees and lizards and I feel like we should star something more difficult. For this week we created:

Bee for Jewish New Year

Butterflys

Beading is real boys activity!

In progres 

I

New idea for beading

Next step - Dragon!

About hungry caterpillar.

Everyone knows the book about hungry caterpillar by Eric Carl. Children always ready to listen when teachers are reading this wonderful book! Today we were talking about gardening and I decided to implement a story about hungry caterpillar in our lesson. The idea was taken from the video on YouTube(unfortunately I don't have a reference to it)
So we started with the wonderful bag, look what is in it!


We discussed with children where we can use it, why we need glows,  how garden fork different from regular one, and so many other questions, whose are related to gardening.
Some children told me that they don't have a backyard and we decided that they may have a little garden on the balcony in boxes with the soil.
We looked on the picture and described little house with the beautiful flowers around, discussed how we can grow up plants, what we need for it, and how seeds look like.

While older children were matching seeds with the picture of plant, little guys were shaking packages with seeds and listening how they sound!

I was surprised, that my children could match all seeds with the picture of plant. There were some very tricky seeds! But Daria told:"We have a little garden on our back yard and grow there watermelons, tomato, cucumbers and a lot of herbs.(I just remind that it is very good sensory activity, which I did before during my placements in CCC, but pictures disappeared - it is good point to repeat it)

 And now - Story Time!
You will need:

• Puppets SUN and Moon;
• One small caterpillar & one big(Actually enough one, but I used two);
• Piece of foil - to make a cocoon;
• Variation of plastic food - as much as you can. Make sure that you have enough for 5 days, for example - one strawberry, two cucumbers, three grapes, four oranges, five pears(I had three pears big and two small - so we could make a pattern) Other food doesn't matter - may be anything what you can find in your toy shelf or use natural fruits and veggies.
• Bid paper leaf with the "caterpillar egg";
• Butterfly

This is my actors:

And this is my scenery:

Just for example,

 I had much more, trust me children never tired to look what is coming next!

.You can start with the book by Eric Karl, but just for the beginning. If children familiar with this book they will help you to tell the story. During the story time reciprocate children to name and count day of the week, count fruits, name them, name colours, guess unknown fruits or vegetables, let them guess what inside the boxes(If you can open them and show what is inside), make a pattern with same fruits....

Can you continue my pattern? And finally, Saturday finished....and caterpillar went to sleep.... Wrap the Big caterpillar with the foil, put it on the floor and ask children guess what going to happen next?
If there is anybody who can help you and insensibly change your foil package for another one - with the butterfly that will be fantastic! So, you are opening package and WHAT DO YOU SEE INSIDE?

A BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY!

You done! Now just let them play with the toys and repeat this story again and again!

while children are playing with the toys I set up the table for art and craft. Today we have children 2 - 10 years old, so art class should be age appropriate!

Little children were decorating butterfly wings, bigger also were making a body with the sponge,(couple bodies I prepared before) For Alex who is 10 was different activity - he was making a sock puppet "Caterpillar". Just want to share with you fantastic place with huge diversity of activities for children different ages - Danielle's Place - Puppets found there!

I just love this book!

by Eric Karl "Very hungry caterpillar"

P.S.Recently I found this poster just want to share with you

http://nicholsoncartoons.com.au

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 2 - Grassland (Lesson plan for preschoolers)

Ok, Summer is rainy this year.... If it is rainy day we still can walk to different places!
Today we are going to make a trip to grassland!
Our lessons usually start with reminding what we learn last time. So, we were talking about clothes which we have to wear when we going in very sunny place. I have one child who is allergic to sun screen, so we decided that Don should wear very white and thin parka and hat with  large fields, everyone should remember about bottle with water and sun glasses. Ready? Follow the leader!
At this point we learning walking in line or pairing (older children help younger to walk properly and we usually doing one or two circles around the class room)
Look at this green carpet! What do you think is it? Sure, grass!
We discussed flowers, bugs, insects which we can meet in field.
That is how we started:

Unfortunately, we had very busy time and I did'n have an opportunities to take a picture.
So, just  look at my collection of toys which we use to play "grass country".

In our Journey we  created it step by step with discussion which insects are living in the field, why, how they linked  to each other.( Bee is collecting honey from meadow flowers, grass hopper is green because he has a lot of enemies, flowers are bright and big because there is a lot of sun, lady bug is not green because she has a protection from her enemies) Oh... that was amazing story about field)

Some activities covered Math: comparing sizes of flowers, making pattern,learning colours, counting flowers and lady bug dots.

Also we were listening a sounds of our meadow valley and we also heard COW, SHEEP and GOATS! Why????Because... Discuss it with children! They will be happy to tell you everything they know!!!

Our trip to the grass country happened before Father's day. So we decided to make for our Dads Paper holder "Lady Bug"

Lady Bug has a rock inside , so it is pretty heavy and certainly can protect papers from the wind!

Next time we planned to go to the forest! Hey, you are scared to meet a wolf, aren't you?

So, See you next time!

Some very interesting activities you can find here and here
Join us!