Sticky Bright Holiday Lights

     
This morning I mixed clear corn syrup and food colouring to
                     make paint for dipping.
              
The children dipped the back of the spoon into the sticky
         paint and then pressed it on to the paper.

     The paint is very sticky so it took two hands to make the
     prints.  One to press the spoon down then lift it up while
               the other hand held the paper down.

      
      This child made her lights into a colour pattern.
 
    This child started by drawing shapes and then filling them in. 
              It makes the lights pop off the page.

     
     
      
        A few samples of what the children created.

      
With the lights that were left at school I used to decorate our
                gingerbread play house.

Aliens Love Underpants

                          
This is such a fun and silly book.  Aliens don’t come down to earth to see us.  No they come to see our underpants.  There were giggles from young and old when I read this story.
                 
“Their spaceship’s radar bleeps and blinks the moment that it sees, a washing line of underpants all flapping in the breeze.”  With that line in mind I set up an invite for the children to design a pair of underpants and add to our clothesline.
           
                        
   The children became interested after we read the book a couple of times.
      
        I wonder if they were designed after their own underpants?
            
        And like the aliens some wanted to take some home.

I just learned that there are more book in this series by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort.  I can't wait to read "Pirates Love Underpants".

Racing to Christmas

That is what we called our gingerbread creation that we made for the
                Boys and Girls Club fundraiser.

      
After making gingerbread people with the little buddies, the big buddies
pieced the race track, bleachers, trees, flags and podium together.

         Then we put it altogether together.

         
 
      The big buddies finished it by covering it with candy.

      
This project was a great way of working together, learning and
   understanding what each age is capable of doing.

Gingerbread Dough Cut Outs

                             
Cruising around Pinterest one night I saw a felt gingerbread play set and
                                   was instantly inspired.
          I decided to make a family of gingerbread people with 3 sizes.

                                   
I sewed two sheets of brown felt together, traced my cookie cutters, sewed around them twice and cut out the shapes between the two lines of stitching. 

 
                    It’s part of our bakery dramatic play area. 
      The children can cut it out and bake it as often as they want.

A Tooty Ta

We’ve learned a new song this year, “A Tooty Ta”.  It’s a silly song that includes echoing and dance.  Today we did the song together in gym.  There were 40 children present plus their parent, grandparent or caregiver.

It goes like this….

 
Chorus:
A tooty ta, a tooty ta, a tooty ta, ta!
Verses: Repeat after me
(start with the first action then continue to add an action and the song continues to get longer.  The chorus separates each verse.)
Thumbs Up!
Elbows back!
Feet apart!
Bottoms up!
Tongue out!
Eyes closed!
Turn Around!

The Vet Clinic Tour

 
    Today we visited a vet clinic and saw some amazing things.
 
It started in their waiting area when we met Carrot the Parrot fish.  It likes to
follow the children from one side of the tank to the other and if you were lucky
he would give you a fish kiss.
 
We met Sarah and Nipper and they gave us a scavenger hunt of things to
look for while we walked around the clinic.
        
  
Behind the scenes we saw a technician getting a dog ready for surgery.  Sarah pointed to the tube in the dog’s mouth and explained it helped the dog go to sleep and breathe while it was in surgery.

Next we visited the xray room and Nipper pretended to get an xray.  We saw an xray of a cat’s ribs.  Sarah talked to us about keeping our small toys away from our pets because they might try to eat them.

There were a lot of dogs and cats, in separate rooms, that were recovering from surgeries.  We quietly walked past them so they wouldn’t be scared.

We also saw a cat that had just been neutered and now they were tattooing it’s ear.  In case it gets lost and someone finds him they can call the vet to try to find the owner.
     
Before we went back to the examination room we were able to
peek into the surgery to see the veterinarian operating on the dog.
    
One last thing Sarah showed us was some of the problems that cats
and dogs have, like worms.
       
We got a good look at a tape worm and some fleas, in containers of course. 
Sarah reminded us how important it is to wash our hands after playing with a cat or dog or when you come inside from playing in a sandbox. 
We were impressed by all that we saw at the vet clinic this morning. 
It would be a fun job to work with all the animals.