Monday, April 25, 2011

April Showers Bring May Flowers

These next two weeks will be with that thought in mind..."April showers bring may flowers".  We've already done "weather" but we'll focus more on rain and finish up our rainbow projects we didn't get done previously.  And then next week we'll start into flowers.  I love "flowers" theme.  There is SO much that can be done! 

Going through the tubs and here's a few past projects/activities we've done.

Five Umbrellas.  I went ahead and popped them on the fridge since the children love magnets at the fridge.  In the picture, Trent is pointing to the words in the song (posted for my benefit) and saying "e, e, e!"  :-P  Reminder that little fingerplays and songs like these are great for beginning subtraction, counting and, in this case, color recognition and naming.
Five Umbrellas
Five umbrellas stood by the door,
The red one went outside, then there were four.
Four umbrellas, pretty as could be,
The blue one went outside, then there were three.
Three umbrellas with nothing to do,
The green one went outside, then there were two.
Two umbrellas, not having much fun,
The yellow one went outside, then there was one.
Just one umbrella alone in the hall.
The purple one went outside and that was all!

Side note:  It really doesn't matter what order the colors are said in.  And we don't really want to teach it in a specific order, so mix it up when you are saying it with them.  That way they will be much more comfortable "retelling" the story on their own and that is the goal, at least for my older ones! When I see them working with this type of display on their own, I can see exactly what they have learned.  These umbrellas were made out of craft foam and pipe cleaners with self-adhesive magnet strip on the back.

If All The Raindrops...
Remember that song?  If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops...oh what a rain it would be.  I'd stand outside with my mouth opened wide, singing "ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah".  The year we did this the kids were so into that 'ah-ah-ah' so I decided to incorporate a little literacy lesson. I only suggest this if you are doing it for your own children or for a small group.  It was simple but a little time consuming on my part.  The children did color mixing in an ice cube tray and the dropped the colored water onto a coffee filter semicircle.  Then they chose their pipe cleaner color for the handle.  The bottom part was a little book and I used each letter of their name with corresponding beginning sound food items.  So Aaron's first page stated,
"If all the raindrops were apples and apricots, oh what a rain it would be..." and instead of "ah-ah-ah..." we changed it to the upper and lower case letter (Aa) we focused on that page and said the sound of that letter.  Caleb's first page was
"If all the raindrops were candy and cantaloupe, oh what a rain it would be..." and then "Cc, Cc, Cc, Cc..."  Then I went through each letter in their name.

Tall Tulips
This was probably a Mailbox idea.  Simple activity, great for fine motor.  The children chose their colors of precut triangles, as many as they wanted, to fold into tulips and glue at the top of the paper.  Then they drew tall stems and wrote Ws at the bottom for leaves. 

Violets in a Vase
Again, most likely an idea from The Mailbox.  The one on the left is obviously an adult made one.  Do I show examples to children? Not usually-especially not with art projects, but in this regard, they needed an idea of what I meant.  So I did and then I put it away.  This is a fine motor/scissors activity.  First they ripped lavender and violet paper, done in a previous session.  Then they cut out the vase and decorated it with Vs.  They showed me where they wanted their violets and how many and I traced a circle for them to help them to keep the paper in one area (in order to actually make a violet).  Then they glued their vase and ripped paper on.  Finally, to complete the project, they took a green crayon and made a stem from the flower to the vase, hard to see that in the right picture.


Here the child sorted the foam circles onto their flower pots.  For a younger child, have only one pot and provide only the colors they need.  For an older child, sort with more colors and then we compare the two pots. 
We talked about
*  similarities/differences
*  how many of each color. 
*  If the colors are in two sections (like the 2 pink centers and 4 pink circles on the flower pot) then we added them together. 
*  They also use prediction.  For example, if the blue flower pot had 5 blue foamies across the top.  How many orange foamies do you think there are on the orange flower pot?  Then, of course, we use the term "equal". 
*  We also talked about odd and even and set the foamies out in a line and counted by twos to see if there was an "odd one out".  There's a lot to do with something that looks so simple! 

Note: I'm not sure where I printed these from.  It's unusual for the website not to be on the pages somewhere!  If anyone knows what site these came from, please let me know so I can provide the link and give it proper ownership.  Thanks!

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