Book Review: Penguin In Love by Salina Yoon

Penguin in love is a cute little story about a pair of penguins who knit themselves into friendship. I think we may have used as much string as those penguins who knitted clothing for whales, seals and other arctic animals. The girls wrapped and wrapped their tiny little cardboard hearts with yards of string. Little scissor cuts along the edges helped to keep the string in place. If we ever do this type of art project again, I will definitely pick up some thicker weighted yarn!

Fall Crafts

We used food coloring and water with cut straw pipettes to make our own apples. "Where do apples come from?" I asked. My favorite answer, "The apple store!"

We talked about acorns this fall. The children see tons of them falling near our park. They are always tempted to take pocketfuls home but I encourage them to leave them there for the squirrels. I cut out tops and bottoms and they matched upper and lower case. 

Then, after hiding some paper

acorns around the playroom, the children glued them into the tree-hide-out for their squirrel to save for the winter.

We talked about pumpkins growing on vines. The kids drew their own crazy vine and glued pumpkins to it. We practiced upper and lower case Pps.

We made these fingerprint turkey prints (thanks for the inspiration, pinterest). And the sort of token thanksgiving gratitude paper turkey.

Wet Chalk Art

We dipped chalk in water and made vibrant pictures on black construction paper. Watching the water evaporate and set the chalk was fun. Making dusty powedery chalk fingerprints on the table was even more fun!

Pointillism Weather Art

Our fickle valley weather went from gloomy winter to beautiful bloom-filled spring. The rain came back for a few days and then the sun again.  We mixed colors and used q-tips and tried to be thankful for the weather no matter what it was doing.

Valentine's Week

Chocolate covered strawberries and heart shaped watermelon from our favorite Mr. C.

Heart "blooms" on our spring trees.

Practicing letter Vv with hearts and crayons.

Christmas Art: Catching-Up

Fingerprint candy canes and elf-shoe countdowns. Some day I will be able to find the rest of what we did for the holidays.

Olympics: Week 1

I love the Olympics! I am always amazed by the determination, skill and humbling stories from the athletes all over the world. So naturally we will spend the next few weeks celebrating physical fitness, games, and the olympic values (friendship, unity, respect, courage, excellence, determination).

We had to paint some olympic rings!

We watched a youtube video about the olympic torch and about some of the torch bearers. Then we made our own.

Color by letter flag printable.

We watched a few minutes of the cross country equestrian race at the Greenwich Park stadium, and a few clips of riders who couldn't stay on their horses. Then we set up our own obstacle course.

Medal stand!