Painting Explorations
This week we did a lot of exciting paint projects. One that really captured our attention was using shaving cream to create marbled paper. We first applied a layer of shaving cream to a baking pan, and then dribbled a few drops of food coloring on top. Each child then mixed and swirled the colors around in the pan before we applied a piece of paper and pressed down gently for ten seconds. Once lifted, we had to use a popsicle stick to act like a squeegee and remove the excess shaving cream. Thus we revealed the amazing, brightly colored marbling! Everyone was so excited and impressed with their work! This is definitely a project we are going to have to repeat soon. You’ll get to see how they turned out next week, as they are part of a very special surprise we are creating for Valentines Day.
A second project that each child enjoyed this week was using coffee filters and droppers with liquid watercolor paints. These came out so lovely, and we transformed them into hearts to decorate our classroom for our party next week!
We also began decorating paper bags that will become our “mailboxes” for our Valentine exchange next week.
And to celebrate the Lunar year, we painted with red and gold at the beginning of the week.
Good Choices, Bad Choices
This week we had a circle time meeting about what kinds of choices we can make in the classroom, with a lot of specific examples. We mostly focused on the good choices we can make, but it was important for us to remember what bad choices we should avoid (like grabbing a toy from a friend). This time during the school year always presents some behavioral upheavals as we are getting less outdoors time and feel cooped up together. Big milestones like potty training and switching to beds also change the temperament in the classroom. Eudenis and I will also be working on adding new building materials and rearranging the classroom once again to help keep everyone focused and engaged all day long.
Specialists
We made avocado, banana and coconut milk smoothies this week- thank you Barak and family
We had soccer with Coach Jojo and used the soccer equipment to pretend we were making smoothies! The pinneys were mixed fruits, the small soccer balls were ice cubes, and the cones were cups and straws. Using our feet, we did a variety of exercises to make our “smoothies.”
Diane came in on Monday and had a taste test inspired by the Lunar New Year. We had: raspberry, red grapes, red apples and oranges to celebrate a sweet start to the new year. We really loved the raspberries!