What's in the Tub Tuesday?

Week 2 of our sticky wall and I added feathers to the tub.

The girls are becoming quite familiar with tub and are always eager to explore.

How do these things move if I pick them up and drop them.

That is Cs favourite thing to do with every tub.

They do eventually get around to sticking them to the wall.

Sometimes putting them and sometimes peeling them off.

That is one reason a sticky wall is great as it is always changing.

The girls started to explore the feathers a little closer.

Discovering how they feel.

That they tickle when rubbed on their nose or face.

They discovered that a feather is very light and they may not feel it on their head.

 To finish our feather play off for the day we sang Two Little Dickie Birds.

What could we add to the sticky wall next week?

Any ideas?

Singing and Signing, What Fun!

Here's a video of my grand daughter and I signing the song

On Top of Spaghetti.

She is 19 months old and communicates through voice and signs.

You may notice that some of her signs do not match mine and that is because her fine motor skills are still developing.

One example is the sign for 'spaghetti'.  It is made using both baby fingers but she uses her thumbs.

As your baby begins to use sign you will recognize how they sign each word.

Itsy Bitsy Spider Fun

Bugs!

There are so many different bugs.

Can you guess which one we are playing with here?

Right, it's the Itsy Bitsy Spider.

 

I taped a large cardboard cylinder to the wall and made a cloud with rain drops from a paper plate and a sun from yellow paper.

The spider is tied to a string, on one end, and a pencil on the other.

She loves putting it back in the water spout.

 Dad came in to watch and noticed that the tape was already starting to rip away from the wall.

He had an idea to attach the tube to this wooden stand.

It works perfect!

We will be able to use this "tube tree" for other activities in the future.

We Need to Move

It's Friday and we don't have access to the gym

but we can use the multi-purpose room.

 

It's important that we have an active break everyday so we

take advantage of the multi-purpose room

even when we have a big crowd.

We sing songs like Tony Chestnut and do some yoga moves.

We use scarves to help sing If You're Happy and You Know It

which always leads us to Sleeping Bunnies.

The scarves are great for playing with the poem

Popcorn Kernels

and "I Have a Rocket".

We also enjoyed a new to us book called

"Old MacDonald Has a Truck".

It introduces lots of big machines like bulldozers and steam rollers

which prompted us to make movements as we read/sang.

And finally at the end all the children lay down to take a breath.

I walk around with my tickle stick.

After they are tickled they stand up and put their mat away then

head back to our classroom

In An Apple Tree

Our families have been sharing their harvest with us,

which is great for our snack table.

To build on the harvest concept I set up a small apple orchard.

 I placed two of our fake trees in a big box, that I covered with a green blanket.

I put them in the box in hopes that it will corral the apples and they will

not be rolling around the room.

So far so good.

 Over the years I've collected a variety of fake apples

and I placed most of them under the trees.

But some I hid in the trees.

To encourage the children to look up in the trees I sang this fingerplay

"Way up high in the apple tree,

two little apples smiled at me.

I shook that tree as hard as I could.

Down came the apples

Mmmm, mmmm good!

They enjoyed shaking the trees to see the apples fall.

They also enjoyed hiding the apples back in the trees.

 Once they picked their apples they could wash them.

An amazingly simple idea of water, apples and toothbrushes

can keep children busy for some time.

Knife, Fork, Spoon, Spatula–Cha Cha Cha

I learned several new songs to start this school year off.  This one was recommended by another facilitator through our Facebook page for facilitators.  She found it at Jbrary.  Knife, Fork, Spoon, Spatula is easy and catchy.

I’m so grateful for our Facebook page as it gives us a chance to share ideas, concerns and celebrate what we do.

A Math Song

            
                      One Leprechaun went out to play
                   Over the rainbow on St. Patrick’s Day
                    Golden coins fell, clink, clink, clink
                     How many coins fell, do you think?
        
This is a number guessing game.  We took turns dropping the coins and guessing how many fell.  The lower number groups were easier to guess but as the amount of coins grew the children still guessed either small numbers or really big numbers.

Here’s a video after we did the song a few times.

 Sometimes I feel like I'm alone with the children at circle time.  I have a few parents that will always sing and I thank them for being wonderful role models for their children.  This video shows one example of how I encouraged the grown ups to take part.

Jenny Jenkins

This is a song that I use to sing with my children when they were little.  It has a catchy tune, silly words and focuses on colours.
      
I found these images while searching Google.  Perfect for the song.  We have sung it several times now so will need to make more dresses to include other colours.
     
I like this song because of the rhyming component.  As I introduced a colour we brainstormed, as a group, words that rhyme or sound the same as it.  Here’s an example;  blue – shoe, do, new, few, glue, and the list went on.
           
I would pick the rhyming word from our list then we would start the song.
Jenny Jenkins
Oh will you wear blue, oh my dear, oh my dear?
Oh will you wear blue, Jenny Jenkins?
No I won’t wear blue, it just won’t do!
           
Buy me a roly-poly, fildy-foldy, seek a double, use a cozza, roll to find me.
Roll Jenny Jenkins roll.

We repeated this with each colour.

To listen to the song you could check out Jerry Garcia and David Grisman's version on Youtube

Rainbow Rings

                This is the beginning of a week full of rainbows.
To start I made Rainbow Rings using old wooden curtain rings and ribbons.
               
I found ribbon on sale at Michaels but I wish I would have bought a wider size.  It would have made the rings look a lot fuller and the colours more dynamic.
   
A couple of songs that we will sing are “I See Rainbows” by Jean Warren
    
                             and “I Can Sing a Rainbow”.
Red and yellow and pink and green,
purple and orange and blue.
I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow,
sing a rainbow too.