Easy and quick menorah.

Before Hanukkah my children were making menorah with play-dough. Play dough takes time to dry, bake and paint, and dry again, and there was nothing special, everyone making the same before Hanukkah. Children wanted to take it home and light first candle on their own menorah. Just to decorate our menorah we decided to make a fake candles. To make a candles you need :
White or colourful construction paper and tissue paper red, yellow and gold, drinking straws. My children wanted white candles so we took white paper, younger children used drinking straws.
Just roll the paper for a small pipe, cut out 2 rectangle pieces tissue paper approximately 8sm*2sm, yellow or gold take shorter, put them together and twist it. Cut off top as a triangle, glue twisted part into the straw or paper pipe - that will be your candle and looks not bad.

. There was a boy, who did not make a play dough menorah, but he made 9 candles and badly wanted to make a menorah for it. So, I looked around, found a styrol foam container, cut out middle part of it and....

TA-DA!

Happy Hanukkah!

Paper evergreen / Елочка из бумаги

The holidays are here!! That wonderful time of year when the snow starts to fall and the lights go up on all the houses...No matter what your holiday tradition may be, holidays around the world hold one common theme: celebrating a love for family and culture.So be prepared to enjoy this time with your children!

Let's go, go to the forest to get your snow covered pine tree!

С Наступающим Новым Годом! А мы начали украшать наш класс бумажными снежинками! Оказалось, что  вырезать снежинку не так уже и просто...Особенно тем, кто вобщем-то не очень близко знаком со снегом:)) И пока мы разбирались со снежинками, Сабрина вдруг сказала: "А моя порезанная снежинка выглядит как елочка!" А почему нет? И мы сделали вот такую замечательную елочку!

Snow-covered pine tree/Заснеженная елочка

You will need:

Styrofoam ball for base (you can use any base ex. Cup or lid with play-dough or clay inside, but make a hole in centre)

Coffee stick, or wooden stick, or even straw

20-25 beads with big holes

Paper filters or older children may use plain paper (green or white)

Нам понадобилось:
Пенопластовый шар, разрезанный пополам - для основы
Тонкая палочка (мы использовали палочки для кофе из Старбакс)
Белая или Зеленая бумага ( а вообщем, новогодняя елка может быть любого цвета)
Бусины с большим отверстием
Клей ПВА 

Stick the stick into the base.       Воткните палочку в половинку           

That will be a pine tree trunk.     пенопластового шара и закрепите клеем                                                           .                                              ПВА. Это будет ствол елочки. 

Start to cut out paper snow flakes. Cut them out at least in three sizes. 

Cut each snowflake up to the middle and glue one section; so it will look like cone.

Начните вырезать снежинки пока ствол елки подсыхает. Нужно вырезать 5-6 снежинок: 2 больших, 2 средних и поменьше. Каждую снежинку разрежьте к центру и склейте секцию друг на друга; получится конус. Собственно когда мы начали делать деревья для нашего зимнего леса, мы уже не заморачивались, и просто обжимали снежинку руками. 

Put some beads on the stick and adjust the biggest snowflake cone. Continue beading (4-5) and again put one snowflake. They should come one by one from the biggest to the smallest.


Начните нанизывать бусины на палочку. Это самая увлекательная часть работы. Малыши учася считать до 5, Мои первоклассники учат французский, поэтому мы считали по французски - отличный трейнинг! Не забываем о мелкой моторике... После 4-5 бусин оденьте большую снежинку - тут самое время сравнить снежинки! и продолжайте в том же духе!

             

закончите елочку несколькими бусинами - это верхушка, и, не забудьте украсить блестками, блестящими нитями - С Новым Годом!!

TA  -  DA!

You can decorate your tree with small pompoms and ribbons and celebrate Christmas!

This activity is difficult for toddlers, but my toddlers also wanted own little Christmas tree. We used for this activity hard carton board cone, shredded green paper and sparkles to decorate it!

Конечно, такую елку малышам не осилить... Зато наши елки сделанные в младшей группе из картонной шпули для ниток, резанной зеленой бумаги и блесток - ничуть не хуже! Главное - сделали сами!

Paper jelly fish or Thanksgiving turkey!

    This activity is very easy, clean and very exciting!
The following activity created according to sensory learning infants but may be also used for ages from 6 months to 6-7 years.
    For infants we used a styrol foam ball covered with masking tape upside down; so it become sticky and stripes of tissue paper easily attach to the ball. Finally, child gets a jelly fish.... or a little colourful monster, if you help your child place on the ball goggly eyes!

    Activity created for infants but now my older children enjoyed it a lot to make a gift for Thanksgiving day.
We used sterol foam cups for the body and sterol foam ball for the head. Instead of feathers we used dried maple leaves and yellow paper for the beak. The other part activity belongs to my lovely colleagues.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Common activity (art)

This is very common activity, which many teachers use in their curriculum.

Activity is easy to execute, clean and children enjoyed it a lot. As a result, parent may have a wonderful picture which they can frame and put on the wall. Just look on the pictures and if you will have any questions feel free to ask me in comments.

Compare real pictures

I just was reviewing my "Spring project" and reminded that we had very interesting activity.

We could see our playground through our window; so once children realised that the view from our window changes every day. I brought my camera and we took pictures every day during the week. I developed pictures on weekend and on Monday we could compare pictures and notice the changes.

Sweet and sour

During last week my children were exploring kitchen staff. We could not believe how those little people were interested to discover any kitchen staff such as pots,  pans and lids, spoons, bags, also artificial and real food! Activity "Sweet and sour" had a purpose to introduce our children different tastes.

Texture, sensory and art

This activity combined a few purposes:
- art - painting with ketchup - infants have no idea about differences between paint and ketchup or jam, is it? They usually taste everything that they have in their hands. We sometimes are very sorry about eating a lot of pain by our children. Once or twice they tried no so tasty "paint" they will remember that they shouldn't eat the paint.
- sensory - by smashing ketchup with the salt infants can explore different kinds of tactility.

- taste - infants certainly will try this mix (ketchup and salt). My children did not like that taste!(I put a lot of salt). We tried it a few times and now no one of my older infants do not put any kind of paint in their mouths!