More Trains with Opa

Opa brought some of his trains for the little ones to play with at their house.

 They were eager to help although I don't think Opa found them very helpful.

They loved watching the train.

 And playing with it.  Trying to put it back on the tracks when it derails.

Or just playing with the individual cars.

 Being a tunnel.

 Taking the cars off and on the track.

 When it became a little too hands on we set their chairs up in the middle as a viewing platform.

We started singing a song that we learned at Carolina's StrongStart.

"The Goodbye Train"

  

In the afternoon our bubble blowing fish was loaded onto one of the cars which added more excitement.

 Following the bubble train.

 

We all love trains!

Bubble Blow Painting

This week I invited the families to paint with coloured bubbles.

The bubble juice was coloured with food colouring and placed

in old muffin tins.

The children were encouraged to blow bubbles pointing at the easels.

The first challenge was to get enough bubble juice on the wand.

The parents were wonderful models on how to make it work.

 I enjoyed watching this father and son begin.

The father guided the wand into the bubble juice then up for his son to blow.

After trying it he handed the wand to his son to try it on his own.

A fun experience that they shared together.

By the end of each day we had lots of bubble prints on paper and

the table top was wonderfully coloured too.

But since it is soap it washes off.

We have been playing with bubble outside

so the children loved doing this activity

inside.

Bubbles – so simple and so fun

One of the easiest ways to play with your children this summer
is to bring out the bubbles.
   
There are the traditional wands to use and with a good bubble solution
you can create a lot of bubbles and keep the kids busy for a long time.
        
At our Teddy Bear Picnic, last month, I brought a few new bubble blowers.
             
Nemo blows his own bubbles.  Although my policy is to avoid toys
that require batteries when I saw this little fish blowing bubbles
independently I couldn’t resist.
   
The children were fascinated with how it works.  Watching the
wand dip into the pool of bubble solution then raise to his mouth.
  
Then trying to catch and burst his bubbles.
 
Another bubble blower I brought was a bubble gun but I preferred to
call it a ‘bubble storm maker’.
       
It makes so many bubbles at once that they were floating around the whole garden.


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Parachute Lessons

Today we got together with our big buddies in the gym to play with the parachute.
We haven’t used the parachute very often but when we have I learned that it is
very exciting for the children and to be able to give directions we needed
to start with small steps
and that meant at first sitting down to use it.

This allowed more control both for me to give the directions and for the children
to manipulate the parachute with just their arms.

We started by moving the parachute side to side then up and down. 
Those were the two movements we would focus on today. 
Having the big buddies as role models for each child allowed me to stand apart
and observe how it was working.


Now we were ready to make popcorn. 
We pretended the parachute was a big pot. 
First it needed to get hot so we turned on the stove, poured in the oil
and threw in the popcorn kernels (soft yellow balls). 

The oil needed to be spread around so we moved the parachute side to side
and listened for the oil to get hot.  Once we were all making sizzling sounds
the kernels were ready to pop.

But I learned that using a bigger parachute made it much more difficult
to pop the balls off the parachute especially when we were sitting
so we stood up.

Although it was alot more fun it didn’t help much
in fact I could hear some students say they were getting tired. 
So we brainstormed and decided to make a wave,
one side would lift the parachute up really high while
the other side went down low.

It didn’t work either so next we sent the little buddies underneath
to knock them off.


They loved it.  I could hear the laughter from both young and old.


Lastly we gave the little buddies a ride –
it was wonderful to watch their expressions of glee as we walked
around twisting the parachute so it moved.


The final lesson I learned was to make plans with the big buddies
before we get together. 
After the parachute play several came up to me and suggested
other ways we could use the parachute. 
Ugh!  I have to remember that I’m not in this alone, that many minds make great plans.

Thanks grade 7s for another wonderful experience.

Bubble Painting

Lovely bubbles.  

We tried two different ways to make bubble art today. 

The first is shown in the picture above. 

Bubble juice in a cup and with a straw blow and blow and blow.

I posted a warning for the parents to check that their child knows how to blow through the straw because sucking in will not taste good.

Some were cautious at first and would blow a little at a time.

Others stopped to watch how the bubbles flowed over the top.

Bubbles make beautiful sculptures.

And are fun to burst.

Then the way to blow changed.  This little one found a bubble blower from the easel and decided to use it at the table.

Who needs to blow it on paper, the important part is just to blow.

You can blow bubbles too hard and it will splatter on you.

A little paper towel takes care of that stickiness.

The second way we blew bubbles was at the easel.  Bubble blowers were available with cups of coloured bubble juice.

But the bubble juice that I bought wasn't very good so this wasn't a popular method.  That changed when we added paint brushes.

This boy hasn't painted at school before but he stayed at the easel for about 20 minutes covering the paper with his beautiful strokes.

Others added to the painting and watched the juice run down the paper.

A parent brought in some bubble juice that she found a Liquidation World in the pet department.  It was very thick and the bubbles lasted for a long time, even landing on the children.  I'll have to get some of it.