Biking at the Playground

It's Bike to Work week and we took part by organizing fun events at our school playground.

The families started by decorating their bikes with balloons, ribbons, and license plates.

Or they washed their bikes.  I noticed most of the children washed only the wheels.

Then they were ready to ride the figure 8 course.

Some of the children recognized and knew what to do at a STOP sign.  

Not everyone though.

The video shows some near misses so we started to give a bit of direction and instruction to keep traffic moving safely.

The most popular part was riding through the bike 'wash'.

Around and around they went.

Make-a-Snack Rice Pudding

This week we made an easy recipe of rice pudding that I found at 

B-inspired Mama.

It uses Minute Rice and Vanilla Pudding.  All premade so little prep work.

I added raisins and cinnamon sugar (the pudding was sugar free).

The children were encouraged to read each step and follow the directions.

It was one spoon of rice, one spoon of pudding, one spoon of raisins and a sprinkle of cinnamon.

Everyone tried it and only a couple didn't like it.

The majority really did.

Even a child who doesn't like rice ate it.

Expressing Observations through Art

It’s that time of year that we raise butterflies.  Our caterpillars arrived almost two weeks ago and we’ve been watching them grow.
 

                    At the art table we tried to replicate what we saw.

We painted egg carton caterpillars. Sorry I didn’t get any pictures of the process.

                      We also made leaves for our caterpillars to crawl on.

Yesterday we noticed a few of the caterpillars forming their chrysalis.

 

   

At the art table we made chrysalis for our egg carton caterpillars.

 

 We used paper bags and oil pastels to decorate our chrysalis.

After decorating the paper bag chrysalis we took them out to the bulletin board and picked a caterpillar to go in the bag.

Next week our butterflies should start emerging.  Stay tuned for more art work. 

What is your favourite way to make a butterfly with children?

How To Build a Boat - Our Latest Project

A few of the children have been interested in boats.  One boy really wanted to build a boat from a cardboard box.  So we did some research and planning.
                    
We asked our school librarian for books on boats and we also used the internet. 
          The above picture was the beginning of our work.

         
To inspire other children I found some samples of boats and set them out
                                              for play.

 
Day 1 we started with the box and thought about what kind of boat it could be.
  
   I had a couple of paddles so they sat in it to get a feel of a boat. 
             To start seeing the box, not as a box, but as a boat.
  
     We added a blue sheet underneath for water and kept on playing.
               
          We played the rest of the morning as it was.

Day 2 the child that was really interested in building the boat arrived and was excited to see what we had done.  But he remembered the ideas that he sketched and went to work.
  
He first wanted to add a motor so we went into my storage room and he found a 2 litre bottle and taped it onto one end of the boat.  In the second picture he is cutting a hole for the water to go in and out.
      
     He checked out the sample boats and decided ours needed a sail. 
                 We used some PVC pipe to make the mast.

He used an old sheet to make the sail.  After he drew a triangle and cut it out
       we realized we needed something to hold the bottom of the sail.
          
We used packing tape to hold it together.  The same with sticking the pipe to
               the bottom of the box because it was falling over.
  
The children continued to play in the boat and the boy continued to create more. 
 
           He made an anchor and we added a life jacket and preserver.

But as the day ended we had problems with keeping the mast standing up so we checked the boat samples and saw that they used rope (rigging) to keep it up.
   
I was worried about the children getting tied up in the strings but so far
                          there has been no issues with it.

Day 3 and a dingy was added because sailboats have dingys.

         
A smaller box was tied to the sailboat with a long enough string for it to float behind.  When he wanted it he pulled the string in and carefully climb from one boat to the other.

              
              Anyone know a song about sailboats we could sing? 
               We’ve been singing Row Row Row Your Boat a lot. 
                                     The children love it.