Story - Had an Old Coat

This is another fun story or rather a story in a song.
I first heard it years ago on a Bev Bos recording.
The storyline is similar to Something From Nothing by Phoebe Gilman
Last year I told a similar story, The Blue Coat but did it as a cut and tell story.

I like this song because it encourages the audience to be involved with singing back a couple of lines.

Here are the words to "Had an Old Coat"

Had an old coat but my coat got torn
what did I do?    (audience - what did you do?)
Had an old coat but my coat got torn
what do I do?   (audience - what did you do?)
Had an old coat but my coat got torn
So I cut it off and a jacket was born.
And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

As the years went by that jacket wore thin
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
As the years went by that jacket wore thin
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
As the years went by that jacket wore thin
So I called it a shirt and I tucked it in.
And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

When the sleeves wore off from the east to the west
What did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
When the sleeves wore off from the east to the west
What did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
When the sleeves wore off from the east to the west
so I cut them off and I made a vest.
And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)


When I stained that vest with cherry pie
what did I do?   (audience - what did you do?)
When I stained that vest with cherry pie
what did I do?   (audience - what did you do?)
When I stained that vest with cherry pie
so I cut and snip and made a tie
And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

When that tie was looking lean
what did I do? (audience - what did you do?)
When that tie was looking lean
what did I do? (audience - what did you do?)
When that tie was looking lean
I made a patch for my old blue jeans.And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

When that patch was next to nothin'
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
When that patch was next to nothin'
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)

When that patch was next to nothin'
I rolled it up into a button. And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

When that button was almost gone
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
When that button was almost gone
what did I do?  (audience - what did you do?)
When that button was almost gone
with what was left, I made this song. And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

And I sing everyday of my life (sing with audience)

Here's the video
http://vimeo.com/32971329

Busy Packing

Our elementary school is permanently closing in a couple of weeks.

It comes with many positive and negative feelings.

The school community has been separated for almost four years:(

But starting in January we will be all together again in our new location:)

The process of packing has been underway by many and I closed today to get started.

Managed, with parents helping, to pack over 60 boxes.

I'll have two more days before the moving day to finish the job.

 The rooms are looking bare

but there is still a lot to pack.

My mind is busy planning the set up for the new room at the new school.

This is what it looks like at the moment.

A storage room.

It's a really nice big room.

With windows that let the sun in

and a door to the outside.

I'm not sure which is more exhausting...

the packing

or

the planning.

Who wants an end product?

It's always interesting, at the art/craft table, to watch adult and child interact with the materials provided.
The adult wants to know what we're making.
The child just wants to do.
Today was an example of that.

At the table there were available pipe cleaners, beads and coloured pasta.
When a child sat down they picked up a pipe cleaner and started threading the pasta and beads.
When an adult joined them there was talk of necklaces and bracelets.

When the children were left to their own they continued to thread, often taking off what they had and doing it all over.

Experimenting with how the beads fit beside or over top of other beads.

They figured out how to get the pasta to stay on the pipe cleaner.

And they talked about what colours they liked.

It was possibly my fault because in my weekly newsletter I suggested jewelry making.  Emphasizing that this activity is great for fine motor development and eye hand coordination.  Also mentioning the possibility of talking about patterning.

What did I learned at school today?
Don't put my thoughts and ideas of an outcome onto others.

Gym Play

We are fortunate to have the gym for a half hour every day.

We always start by having a good run

then we gather in a circle to sing Ring Around the Rosie.

Then we bring out equipment.

I enjoy watching the children and families use the equipment in very fun ways.

 Build it up and knock it down is a classic but here I liked how they stacked them on top of each other so it was a double knock down.

 A slide is very popular even when you don't have a traditional one.

 Mini pylons to be stacked and unstacked.

 Making music with what is at hand.

Establishing the rules of the play.

Core work?

Crowns for Us and Them

These are our newest toys.

I made little wooden kings and queens and princes and princesses.

 I just learned how to 'wet' felt and made these little pouches to colour match and tuck them into bed.

They were great to go in our wooden block castle.

The children made their own crowns at the art table.

 Cutting on the line, zig zag.

Or right across the paper if that works well.

 Or into tiny little pieces = great practice.

 Jewels were added, by size and shape

and patterns.

Castles

We have been exploring castles for the last few weeks.
Remember we are building a gingerbread castle with our big buddies?
Today we started to put it together.

The towers are together but we need to give them a bit of time to become firm and not fall apart.  We'll continue on Friday.
In our class room we made a much bigger castle, one that we can play in.

A parent brought in 2 very large boxes and we built the castle around our climber/slide.
We spent a day painting the castle well it took us all morning.

As our queen was going down the slide she announced that we needed a throne.

 

We didn't have a throne handy but we did have a free table and chairs.

Added a royal blue tablecloth and a couple of silver goblets and jewels.

As the days passed we added wall paper (to cover up the print on the boxes).

Some drapery for a whimsical feel and picture frames on the walls.

What is a castle without a magic mirror?

A dragon visited but that is for another day.

Skeletons - Dinosaurs and Ours

This morning was about bones.

Not real bones though.

We had pasta bones to build dinosaurs at the art table.

There were paper bones to build a 'people' skeleton.

And there were bones buried that we had to dig.

When we walked to the forest we saw a large snowball and thought maybe a dinosaur was frozen in it.

Next we spotted a hole in the tree with ice in it.

Maybe dino bones were in there.

But no we didn't find any.

We noticed our big buddies were over by the sand pit.

They called us over and we started to dig there.

It didn't take long before someone unearthed a bone.

We used brushes to carefully move the dirt off.

And it was finally pulled free.

Look at the impression that was left in the sand.

It would have been cool to have used plaster of paris to make our own bone.

Maybe next time.

We went back to digging and it took us quite awhile to find them all.

We had to bring in the big shovel to speed things along.

After laying the bones out, we tried to figure out 

what kind of dinosaur it might be.

In the end we decided to call it "Headlessasaurus"

While the little buddies were digging our big buddies became interested in this little one crawling on the grass.  They were curious about what he was eating and how he moved about.

A spontaneous "Roots of Empathy" lesson.