Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day and as we talked about honoring the Earth and taking care of the Earth,

we also talked about how the Earth is part of a large universe and it is one of our planets in the solar system.   

I like combining the importance of taking care of the Earth coupled with discussions of

of the Solar System because I think it gives greater importance to the idea of the Earth being our home and how essential it is that we do our part to keep it a nice home to live on.

We talked about what litter is, what recyclables are, and how it is "doing our part" to make sure garbage and recyclables are placed in the right place.  

Our project for the day was making our own versions of the planet Earth as seen from pictures in outer space.

One of our favorite process art experiments is to make our colors "melt" into each other.

The children were set up with trays, a thick homemade paper (paper towel and coffee filters also work well, but the kids LOVE using water and eye droppers, so this thicker paper choice holds the ink and water better so that all the colors do not get washed out,) and washable markers in blue, green and brown.

They colored in their circles and then used eye-droppers and pipettes to make the colors melt.

I love how they came out!

As I said we also talked about the solar system and I was surprised by how many of

the planets the children already knew.  When we looked at this picture the children where shouting

out "Where is Mars?"  "Which one is Pluto?"  Which I had to tell them was not in the picture.  One of our friends also informed us that, "There are Aliens in outer space."  When another child asked, "what are aliens?"  He responded: "They have five eyes and they live in their spaceship."

I asked the children if they wanted to paint stars, planets, or the moon on their paper while their Earth's dried.  We used Q-tips dipped into a mixture of white paint and glue.  Many then had glitter added to their marks for a little extra shine.

A completed picture with moon and stars

Another Earth with shooting stars.

I really love the finished project, but mostly I loved talking with the children about the Earth and doing things to take care of her.

One of the songs we regularly sing at Circle Time, and sang on this day is:

The Earth is Our Mother, We Must Take Care of Her

It is a lovely little song, and singing it on this day I hope held a little more meaning for the children.

All Natural Lip Balm Valentine's Gifts

Well, Valentine's Day is approaching fast, and one of our activities this week was making Lip Balm to give as a gift, although many of the kids informed me that they are going to keep their lip balm.  I guess that is a good sign...they loved them!  A little while ago I read what was in lip balm and was shocked that even "natural" companies loaded up their products with harmful chemicals, so I began looking for natural recipes and I found this recipe on Wellness Mama.  She has a ton of great recipes for natural remedies, you should check out her link:

Wellness Mama

It is a simple recipe:

1 tsp Coconut Oil

1 tsp Cocoa Butter or Shea Butter

1 tsp Bees Wax Pellets

Optional: 20 drops of essential oil (we used grapefruit oil)

I was able to purchase these materials at the health food store and Trader Joe's, however I purchased the chap stick container from Mountain Rose Herbs.  You can also purchase all the ingredients from Mountain Rose Herbs as well if you cannot find them at you local health food store, here is their link:

http://mountainroseherbs.com/

Here is our experience with it, I was surprised by how simple the process was, and we only had one little hiccup, which we remedied the next day when we made them.

Before we started we went around and smelled all the ingredients and tried to guess what they were.

The children added the bees wax pellets first, then we added the Cocoa Butter and Coconut Oil to our mason jar.

We tripled the recipe to make 7 lip balm containers.

I placed the jar in a pot and heated it on low, then switched it to simmer as the ingredients start to melt.

Add the essential oils after the ingredients have melted down, we forgot the second day, so the lip balm smelt more like chocolate from the cocoa butter which was still nice, but the grapefruit essential oils have a lovely refreshing smell, in fact grapefruit is suppose to energize!

 While the ingredients slowly melted, the children worked on their tags for their lip balm.

Last year for Valentine's day we made beautiful hearts using homemade paper, washable markers, and eyedroppers of water to make the colors "melt" into each other.  This year I cut smaller hearts that we could use as tags for their lip balm.  Here they are filling in their hearts and then "melting" them with water.
If you would like to see more of what we did last year, click below:

 Valentine's Day 2012

 I love how these come out, when we do this technique on handmade paper the colors stay rich and the paper holds up a lot better then coffee filters, which are often used for this process.

Back to our Lip Balm

You will need a glass eye dropper for this next part, and here is where we had our only problem the first day.  Because I would call the children up one at a time, and they took their time with the process, the lip balm started to solidify in the eye dropper.  So the second day we did it, I kept a cup of hot water near by, and as each child finished with the eye dropper, I soaked it in the cup to avoid this problem.

the children opened up their chap stick containers, writing their initials on the bottom with a sharpie helps.

I moved the melted lip balm to a trivet, but kept the water on simmer near by so it didn't harden.

The children then proceeded to fill their containers with the balm.  It is not hot like melted wax, so do not worry if it drips a little.

Have the children try to hold their containers as straight as possible, and fill till it is above the stick inside.

They take about 15 minutes to harden, but a couple hours to be ready to move up and down in their containers.

On sticker labels they made their own lip balm labels, and then I tied on their tags.

Puckering up to put on her lip balm!

Too Cute!

salt painting

Salt painting is a neat process for the kids.  They learn about how salt absorbs moisture, but they do it in such a fun way, it is like magic to them.

We started this project off by having the kids make their own colors.  They love the process of adding food coloring to water and to tell you the truth I love watching it as well.

Once they mixed their colors, they then shared them with each other in small cups.

After they have their colors, they take glue and draw with it on their paper.  We used card stock.

Place the paper on top of a baking sheet and sprinkle salt all over their glue

Shake the excess salt off into a cookie sheet.

The children took their eyedroppers and placed them into the color cups and began to squeeze the water on the salt and glue trails.  I told them it works best when you place the dropper close the the glue and salt, because then it spreads along the line like magic.



It's a great project for exploring the properties of different materials, and the concept of absorption.

It is also great for fine motor skills, because the eyedroppers really help the children learn dexterity.



Valentine's Day

I think the best way to celebrate Valentine's Day is to celebrate it with children.

They exude love daily, and most of the time without judgement, it is just there and it bubbles out of them.

Today we ate heart shaped pancakes, made Valentine's, sang songs, read stories, explored on the light table, made a second batch of crayons, danced, built forts, had a circus, played cars, built bird houses out of blocks, and rested...phew....it was an exciting and fun filled day.

Here are some pictures of our projects from the day.  Some of these are from the days before Valentine's as well.

 Apple and Spelt Pancakes in  heart shapes.  For some reason I can't get

this picture to rotate, perhaps it would make us too hungry to see them

right side up!

An invitation to play with heart shaped gems on the light table.

Crayon Making

I saw this project posted on Pinterest and had to try it with the kids!

This is one of the crayons that did not melt all the way, but I love how it came out.

We started this project off by gathering our broken crayons as well as using some cheap crayons I purchased at the store.

I have never met a child who does not love to peel the paper off of crayons and break them,

An adult for that matter as well,  for if you saw my assistant and myself sitting with the kids, you would wonder who was more into this process.

With that said, have the children choose the colors they would like, and then peel the paper and break the crayons.  They should fill a small Dixie sized cup.

Using these rubber muffin tins, fill each slot with crayons.  I labeled the trays so we could keep track of each child's rainbow crayon.

Bake the crayons at 230 degrees for 15 minutes

Here are some of the finished projects.  Next time I would take out the dark crayons such as black and really dark blue because they over powered the other colors.

Yarn Hearts

This is a nice simple project, but it requires a couple days to dry.  I found this one in Family Fun.

You will need a heart cookie cutter, wax paper (I taped it down on card board), yarn cut into 10-12 inch strips, liquid starch and a pan to pour it in.

Have the children dip the yarn in the liquid starch and then squeeze some of it off between their fingers.  Then simply press the yarn into the cookie cutter shape.  Press down a couple times after all the yarn is in the cookie cutter so that the starch spreads over all the pieces.  Let dry a couple days, and then add a string to hang.

Valentine's Hearts

We love using eyedroppers at school, in particular when we color with washable markers and the let it bleed the colors into each other, today was no exception.

The results are beautiful

A heart after it has been colored with washable markers

It really is a fun and beautiful process watching the colors bleed together

After the heart dried, the children glued their pictures onto their hearts and then taking the glue bottle,

they drew a design with glue and sprinkled glitter all over the glue.  Again, this is a school favorite, because there seems to be magic in glitter.

I would say it was a very lovely Valentine's Day