Sounds....

I can't remember what these bells are called....I got them at this amazing store in spokane when I was there for conference....the have a deep cow bell sound and the kids love to bang them....we also love dancing around with these little shakers I found at conference.....I sent you some Paula!!

What Chaos!!! not really.......

I am posting this to show how crazy our room can look when the children are in the middle of playing. Sometimes we walk through and pick up so they don't fall on things...but mostly this is what it looks like during the day. So here is what is going on. If you look at the posts that follow this one, you will see what they are doing up close. The children are usually in thier own little worlds doing their own little things. For the sole reason of blocks...they were all migrating to this part of the room. So, the two in boxes are 'floating' around in boats, and watching along with the one in the jacket. The rest are busy building a large block creation that they started. There are a few behind me in the other room....but I am always amazed, every day, that there can be 9 (there is one on the other side of the blocks) in this one small space and everyone is getting along brilliantly!! This is my testiment to the fact if given time...lots of time...kids will be more patient and more willing to sit and watch and wait and get along with each other. Their imagination will sprout much larger if given the time to do so. We play....all day. The children choose what they want to do....I love my job....I love, love, love it!

Blocks.....

We are sooooo into blocks right now. All the kiddos love to build and create their own little fortresses....I added bristle blocks and they were building ships and trucks for the little people (they fit perfectly inside the little squares) and this week I added the race track...or ramps....and some soft blocks. Sometimes I laugh at the fact that we spend a good deal of time on this blue rug building, and sometimes it gets soooo crowded, but they all adjust and are learning everyday how to get along and deal with disapointments (as in someone knocking down your tower!!)

Learning: spacial awareness....eye hand coordination...cooperation....patience....how to use our words....different ways of getting what we want....how high our body can build and figuring out what to do if we want to make it way taller than we are....

Trains and ramps.....and walls....and hills....and gravity.... Hey!!! Yours is almost as tall as mine!.....mine is taller than yours.....yours is all squiggly....I have been to classes where they say the girls play with dolls and the boys play with blocks...not here...we all play with everything. The girls love to build and the boys love to cook and play with baby dolls. It's very well rounded!I love little people!!......Even the babies are trying to figure out what fits and what doesn't.....AND...they are playing togethere, sort of :)))

Paint and Glue.....

We paint everyday. Almost.....We try to use different things to paint on. We paint on bubble wrap, tiles, newspaper, plastic animals, cars, rocks, wood, egg cartons...etc...and tin foil. It looks cool, sounds cool, and is shiney. Kids (and me) love shiney. Q-tips are perfect for this painting activity....

Nope...we don't wear smocks....too hard, and the parents know to wear 'daycare' clothes. this helps the kids with spontaneos painting!!

Lee Lee has just started walking and found the easle. She now loves to be here....and loves to paint!!!! The paper...the easel....the chair...the wall....the floor....silly Lee.C.C. loves to paint too!!Glue...I buy big containers of glue...glue is sooooo much fun! We just get out paper and let them glue. After they do this many, many times...it is much easier to teach them how to do projects with a little bit of glue. This activity is important on so many levels! Gravity....fine motor strength (squeezing is hard work!)....eye hand coordination....spacial awareness....what happens if you squeeze harder?.....and just plain ol curiosity and fun!!!! They need strong fingers to do all that writing and drawing and this is a perfect way to get there!

cooool.....

Have any of you been to www.stevespanglerscience.com ?? I love his stuff and got a bunch at conference this year. These are polymer crystals that mysteriously grow into large gel-like material when added to water. We added water to the colored crystals then took pictures to document the growing process.....

Some of the comments this morning were

"It looks like ice"

"It's red ice!"

"But it's not cold like ice is cold"

"It feels like Jello"

"is it jello?"

So we talked and confered and discovered....then we blended. Each child will come home with a little vile of different colored crystals. Talk together about what happens to the colors....eventually it will become one color....

We are also watching what happens in class....coooool!!!

bunnies, string, and fire.....

Awww....I know, cute!

The other day I was putting some string away and Quinn said in the cutest little boy voice he could find; "Annie, can I have a piece of that string?" Sure Quinn, I said...and the imagination began.

Of course they asked Quinn where he got the string and the ripple effect had begun....Everyone 'needed' string...even the 15 month old.

Bryan and Quinn were working hard and pretty soon they were 'fishing'. They 'built' fishing poles and fished. I am not sure what the chairs had to do with it all...but they were catching some cool stuff!

Here, they are casting their hooks! Later...they needed a fire. To cook the fish of course...so I headed to the closet of odds and ends and got some red tissue paper. "Great!" Bryan said..."This is just what we needed!" Bryan started building his fire.It's a hot one and more wood was needed!Sooo...where there is fire, there is the need for people to put the fire out and who better than the local firefighters.

I love when play is an all day thing. We started out with string and ended with firetrucks....with a whole lot of learning (via, language and risk taking) in between!!Over in the science area I added some big circle mirrors and plastic 'fall' items including leaves, pumpkins, and nuts. They are great sorting items. Loralei especially loves it over here and has a fascination with the sparkely things...the mirrors especially. She uses the mirrors alot...and yes, they do break. One actually broke today, but we just picked it up carefully and threw it away. She now knows you can not kneel on the mirror....we do not let the babies in this part of the room :)

Around the room....

This is the area of our room we call the 'Messy' room. This is where we paint. We have painting, a sensory bin, the light table/craft table, the big blue table, the writing table, the playdough table, and the science area. We just addded snails...I will post that in a bit. On the big blue table we are painting with baby calf nipples. I got the idea at conference and purchased them at the Grange...which is our local farm store.

In the sensory bin we have flax seed. I also got this at the Grange. If you haven't used this before it is very cool to the touch. Later you can try adding oil or water for a totally different experience. We added silver tins and cups and a bunch of plastic Spiders. And yes....I use food. Kids do not get confused about playing with food and eating it. I remember playing with Oatmeal as a kid and I never associated it with the Oatmeal that I ate. I certainly never ate dry Oatmeal....or uncooked rice, or uncooked colored rice or noodles or flax seed. ewww. So yes, we play with food...it's cool.

My kiddos LOVE magnets. We keep them out or have them easily accessable at all times. These are big black magnet sheets with little containers, colored block magnets, clear colored magnet rim pieces, and chain. The chain is especially versitile and they love it!

The days following a Costco run are always good for some seriouse box play. I had 3 large produce boxes and these guys are surfing!! Yup surfing. Bryan has the stance down good.....

and then they needed to lay down and paddle. Loralie is doing the full crawl stroke!Our little ones LOVE to read! Yes, it is upside down, but she is chatting away about apples. The kids love to build and lately we have been asking them if they want to draw what they build. YES! They do, and Bryan is very careful to make sure that all his blocks are represented. The kids are practicing and learning good pencil control and this is also helping with eye hand coordination. Here is Addy using some of the materials that were on the Magnet boards. She liked to do this on the blue table. She is patterning and creating shapes.....Korina and I cleaned out one of my 'sheet' closets. Oh boy did the kids have a good time with all the unwanted sheets. We used clothes pins to pin everything together to make a fort. Here we have corn painting...This is the decorative corn that you can buy at the grocery store. Sometimes they get their hands painty just so they can wash them! :)These two were up here for a good amount of time. They are standing on one of the benches. I am not sure why they didn't just pull down the containers...but it was a great place for them to play with their horses/animals. We made this building 'blocks' using old baby formula containers. I added colored paper and pictures of the kids or animals and then put contact paper over them. They can build these up taller than themselves...and they make a LOUD noise when they fall...that is the most important part.