Snow day!

We have snow and ice here today and no kiddies came to play! Here is a video from yesterday for you to enjoy!

Be careful little eyes what you see

Today we talked about our eyes. The kids cut out eyes to make a collage. Cutting is still very difficult for some of my kiddos. If you are a mommy and you are reading this... some cutting experiences at home would be great ! Whitlee was excited that she found a HUGE eye !


I had planned a fun day tomorrow with some things as a review for our five senses but since it looks like it will snow.. we did some of them today. Yes. moms, this little horn will be coming home with your child. You too.. can enjoy the sense of hearing.

Since we were doing sight today we couldnt resist pulling " Brown Bear Brown Bear " out again. We have a song that goes with it and it is one of the kids FAVORITES!


We made a graph of eye colors!
We played the game where you try to remember what was on the tray and then the teacher takes something away. Good practice for the eyes and the brain!
We used our eyes to figure out what the picture was as we took away one post it note at a time !
We played BROWN BEAR BINGO using our eyes... and reviewing our colors !
This is a shadow game from brown bear !

Clara enjoying one of the Honduran dresses that Rosanna's mom brought.


Another Brown Bear game... matching the letter tiles to the color words .

We did have a fun day.

Anna's mom called to say that she watched weather.com and it looks like the " ice storm will hit around 1:30". I then told Randy what she had said. When Anna's mom arrived early to pick up Anna Bianca says " when are we gonna get hit by ice." It took me a while to process why she said that... She had over heard my conversation. Children are so literal. :)

Tomorrow, if it ices and schools are closed, please call ahead to see if anyone is here IF you NEED to get out. Playing here is more fun if there are more friends.

Enjoy our favorite version of " The Hokey Pokey ".

Taste test !

( Excuse the late post as I left at 12:00 to take my mom to chemo )

One of the fun things we did today was have a taste test. Four of the kids brought in stuff for us to taste. We had a fruity gum, chocolate hershey bar, fruit salad and a peanut butter sandwich. I added a few things to that like grapefruit, cocoa power, garlic, salt, sugar etc... first we used our eyes to try and decide what our foods were. The kids all thought the salt and sugar were surely sugar. Weren't the surprised when they tasted them We opened our mouths wide and looked at the taste bumps ( buds ) on each others tongues. One interesting thing was with Annas gum. I asked the kids to put it in the middle of their tongue - and then on the side .Where did it feel MORE tangy? We learned a lot of new language like tangy and bitter.

We also played a new game called 5 senses BINGO. That was fun and one that really caused the kids to put on their thinking caps. There was a spinning wheel and it would have the 5 senses. Whoever spun the wheel had to decide if they had something on their card that could best be used by that sense. ( ie.. smell- rose taste- cake )

The morning got even more exciting ( for me ) as Mrs Beth came downstairs with a theme box in her hands that said THE FIVE SENSES! WHo KNEW! She was upstairs working in the resource room . You cant even imagine the wealth of materials that are up there. So much in fact that finding things has become a problem. Hopefully we are getting there--- to the point I can find more of my awesome teaching aids.

Tomorrow is sight. I had planned to call Childers and set up an tour but decided against it since the weather is supposed to be bad.

The Tortilla Factory

Today we had a special visitor . Rosanna's mother came to school to talk to us about Honduras, her home country. She read us a book called " The Tortilla Factory" that explained how tortillas are made . The book talked about the " brown hands " that turned the black earth and made yellow corn into corn flour. As she read the book RosaMaria let the children feel corn flour in a bag and then they really made tortillas. All she did was take corn flour and knead it into a dough , much like playdoh and then flattened it out with a wooden tortilla maker. This was a perfect activity for our 5 senses unit. They got to see the process, touch the corn meal, smell the tortilla and hear Rosanna's mom talk. On Wednesday when we have our tasting party, they will get to taste the tortillas she will make for them.

RosaMaria also brought in traditional dresses from Honduras. They were bright and had beautiful stitching on them. She is leaving the dresses her for a while for us to play with. The girls are so excited. She even showed them a little dance they could do with the dress on.

Our original plan was to do this the week we had an ice storm and were out of school. I am so thankful that RosaMaria was able to come today and share some of her culture with us.

( As you can see from the pictures Rosanna "helped " her mom quite a bit. I didn't filter any of the pictures. I think that is part of the fun and the process. I am sure RosaMaria was exhausted by the time she was through. )

China, friends and hearing!

Today we did friendship paintings. I introduced "Allie" a new puppet with the social and emotional development program I am using right now. We also had a friend with the Al's Pals program come to visit today- Mrs. Angie. The children were paired up and asked to work together to paint a picture. It was interesting to listen to them talking about it. One of the pairs of friends even drew a line down the middle so they would each have their own space.

There were a LOT of things going on today. Another thing we did today was introduce the 5 senses . Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling.. Today we focused on hearing. We played a game with our instruments . We had two trays with " Loud" and " Soft" written on a card. Each child played an instrument and we talked about whether it had a loud sound or a soft sound. Then we discussed what loud noises we might hear outside and what soft noises. We even took it a step further and counted how many were on each tray and which tray had more or less instruments.

For lunch today we had homemade potato soup and ham. The kids loved it after coming inside from playing outside and they were " oh so cold" or thought " my fingers are falling off."

Above you can see our new toys we put out today for the 5 senses. There is a texture board with different surfaces for the children to try out. This also gives us time to expand out language as we talk about them being " rough, smoothe, hard or scratchy! "

Another fun thing we did today was turn our dramatic play into CHINA! The chinese New Years is February 14th. More about this later...