art and soul preschool: Silly Week

This past week was Silly Week at school. The children enjoyed

getting to wear their pajamas to school, stripes and polka dot days, and mixed matched silly days. In addition we celebrated the work of Dr. Seuss , for he defiantly embraced the silliness with his unique and playful characters, and still managed to bring meaning to his stories. It was also Dr. Seuss' birthday on March 2nd, and although we were a couple weeks late, it was fun to talk about the fact that he would have been 110! I loved when I asked the children how old they thought he would have been, I received many interesting numbers from 2-202, but one child did guess 110!

A group of polka dotted and striped friend on Friday. Forgive the blurriness, it is difficult to get 13 little ones to stand still.

Look at all those stripes and polka dot!

Monday and Tuesday were Pajama Days and we enjoyed reading Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book

Friends showing off their PJ's; Spider Man and Duck, Duck, Moose!

This tired little guy, decided to make a bed with the mats and go to sleep.

What a comfy day at school!

Ms. Tricia, came up with the idea of studying Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night as night relates to sleep. The children loved this painting.

Before we opened up the book we talked a little bit about what we see in the night sky, and about sleep.

When I showed the children the picture of Starry Night, they began pointing out the different aspects of the sky that they liked the best.

The children then were given black paper and cray-pas to work with to create their own starry nights. Each child had a very different approach to the medium and mostly just enjoyed the unique qualities of cray-pas.

Wednesday was Wacky Wednesday, and also one of our Stripes and Polkas Dot Days.

Wacky Wednesday is one of those Dr. Seuss books that is not as well known, but I love it. It is about waking up one morning and discovering all these different things going on in the world. The house is different, the child's school is different, and outside is different. The children have to point out all the Wacky and different things going on in the pictures.

Funny enough, and without intending it for this day, Tuesday night I had changed a lot of the furniture around in the room. So, we had our own experience of going around the classroom and pointing out all the new changes and things that were "wacky" that day.

For Art/Science time that day we also read the book Oobleck and had our own Oobleck experience.

Oobleck is the story of a King in the Kingdom of Dinn, who is bored of the rain, snow, fog and sunshine that comes down from the sky, and calls upon the royal magicians to create a new something that will come from the sky. Thus Oobleck is created, and everyone starts to get stuck in the Oobleck until the proud King admits his mistake and says sorry.

After I read the book to the children, they became the royal magicians making Oobleck. I started them off with individual trays of cornstarch and then a cup of yellow water and blue water. They were set free to explore color mixing and watching and feeling how the two materials react with each other.

Some went right to pouring the cups of water in the trays, and diving in with both hands.

Others had more of a methodical approach and added small amounts of water to the cornstarch with pipettes.

In the end, they all began to pour the cups of water in the trays and explore with their hands.

Our exploration didn't stop there, we then had to spread the Oobleck to another part of the kingdom, so the children emptied their trays into the sensory bin so they could all be Ooblecked together.

When you mix water and cornstarch it has this really neat reaction. You can squeeze it in your hand and it becomes hard and dry, then open up your hand and it liquefies itself again. The children would pat it down and make it hard, and then scrap at it with their hands to make it runny again. It is a ton of fun for them.