So for the month of March I started with the theme of Farm, then will be moving on to Easters, eggs and bunnies. Some of my activities though have nothing to do with farm, I just had a few ideas i wanted to try. Also, I recently attended the Early Childhood Education conference at the Lethbridge College, and got some new ideas from there I wanted to try out!
So here is a little of what we did....
First non farm, I attended a session about recycled materials, the 2 women who lead it had some awesome ideas HOWEVER! They do work at a center, have access to many families recycling and have places to store all their finds that they can one day retreasure. So anyway, i got this idea from that session, CD's made into spin tops. I cut out white paper and glued it on to CDs, Nic and I bought the wrong kind so have a stack of useless (to us) CDs...so, tops and clocks were made!
So on the bottom I glued a marble and on the top a milk cap to make them spin. Blake decided to glue pipecleaners to make a spinning top clock.
Lucky ducks!! Everyone knows this carnival game, I bought a pile of rubber duckies and after many attempts hot glued colored shapes onto the bottom, the ducks were floating in the water table and the children could find the matches.
Jillian Jiggs!!! This is a really fun book, with instructions on how to make your own pigs out of stockings. I have done this before with dayhome children using stockings, this time I decided to cut up a perfectly good (but never worn) polar fleece top and use that to make the pigs. The children stuffed their pigs then glued on pom pom's for legs, a button nose, felt ears. Kayla wanted a princess pig so I made hers a tu-tu. Blake and my dayhome child wanted ninja pigs, so we used felt to make ninja masks and then Blake glued green buttons to the back of his pig to make a shell. This is only 2 of the pigs, there were 5 made in total, Blake and Kayla asked for baby pigs. The next morning Blake asked for more pigs (he needs all 4 ninja pigs!) i have yet to make those ones though...Anyway, Blake and Kayla brought their pigs to the pool the next morning to play with while the other had swim lessons (their lessons are back to back, not at the same time). The pigs have also been brought to the grocery store and they were SO excited to show their babysitter!! So anyway, the pigs were a huge hit!!
Felt bean bags.
The children glued their animals together then i sewed them and they filled them with rice. I made a ton thinking that they would want to make more then 1 each, but they didn't, so I made a few as well. We played farm bean bag toss with these on another day for a different activity.
Aww!! Blake and Kayla cuddling watching the I pad after a VERY busy day with the day home kids!
Again, not farm related. I just decided to put out beads, an ice cube tray and pip cleaners and see what they would do. Blake made a bracelet and ring, my day home children made a ring, and Kayla made a ring, bracelet, necklace and tiara. No one sorted them or paid any attention to the ice cube tray.
Fish! Grandpas farm has a pond with fish in it. So I got a fish ice cube tray from Ikea and froze colored water then put the fish in the water table. Of course they are quite small fish so they melted quickly, but we just kept re-freezing fish and putting more in the water table.
Sheep! paper plates, foam legs, pom pom's, eyes and cotton balls. I gave the children no instructions just put the materials out and let them figure out their sheep.
Sewing, I have a Melissa and Doug set of laces and farm animals, the children did some sewing. Kayla made hers with a long strap then wore the pig around calling it her purse. I also had out farm puzzles, many many farm toys, and tractors galore! We had tractor races, did farm animal track painting, sang old McDonald, read lots of farm books. Did a puppet play with 5 little ducks.
Here is our failed experiment! Making slushies, I got the experiment from a kids science book. I thought each child would like to make their own, put I did not have enough ice, so...anyway, did not work. But the children enjoyed stirring apple juice and then drinking it!
The books!
buttons! again, nothing to do with farm, just something else to do!
Hmmm!! what else did we do! Oh we played the frog hop game, you have to jump the frogs onto little lily pads. We had foam ducks to decorate, well, that is all I can remember! oh some farm animal dress up...
