Last Day of Shadows

This was our question of the week.

Well not a question but a statement.

When each child arrives at our StrongStart centre they find their own photo.

There are probably over 200 photos on this cabinet

so it can take a while to find your picture.

But we work on scanning with our finger from left to right.

Today I encouraged families to bring in flashlights and look what I saw this little guy using his for.

Great idea!

It helped him focus on each photo.

After they find their photo they take it to the Question of the Week

but remember it was a 'statement' this week.

I encourage parents to use this opportunity to expand on vocabulary

and concepts.

At the end of the morning the children put their photo back on the cabinet

so it's ready for the next visit.

This morning we also did some sponge shadow painting at the art table.

Painting outside and around a template, 

or inside a template.

 We used a little piece of tape to hold the template in place.

 I think his painting looks like snowballs.

The groundhog must be hiding behind them.

There he is out of his hole and he doesn't see his shadow.

Yay, spring is coming

The sun is shining and he's seen his shadow,

oh no more winter is coming.

 A few children tried both methods of painting.

And added their own backgrounds.

Shadows on the Big Screen

A benefit of moving to a new room is finding new ways to present activities.

That's what happen today with the overhead projector.

This is our nature exploration area.

Above and around it is an old canopy frame.

I hung a white sheet from the frame.

Then set up the overhead projector on a riser.

You can see the shadows from both sides.

 Awesome effect!

With the overhead projector I set a basket of animals 

and this book "Who Will See Their Shadow This Year?"

A few children instantly made the connection between placing an object 

on the overhead projector and what happened on the big screen.

A few others experimented.

 Does it work if I hold the toy up here?

Then we moved our photos from the light table (see earlier post)

to the overhead projector.

They became supersized.

 I took more pictures of the children present today and quickly

copied them on to transparencies.

Storytelling time.

"Giraffe went for a walk and met..."

 And the fun of identifying the shadows.

And getting physically involved.

He's jumping to reach the owl shadow.

Can't wait to see how it changes tomorrow.

Black on White Tracks

Going along with our Shadow talk this week, I placed on the art table white paper, black paint and toy animals that were also white or white with some black on them.  (Well they started out that way.)

Let's make tracks.

Or another idea came up - why not paint the toy animals.

One of the parents commented to this little girl that when she's finished the dog would need to go to the groomer (in regards to our pet store dramatic play area).

But I quickly added a sign at our wash tub.

And that's all it took.

 For the animals to be washed

 over and over again.

It meant we had to change the water often.

 

But back to the tracks.

I showed them how to make a foot print without using your foot.

And that's all it took.

 For this child to start painting her hands.

 So now she has toy animal prints and

her own fingerprints.

It was a popular spot this morning judging by our drying rack.

This is an amazing drying rack.

Huge!

Unfortunately it is only temporarily ours.

The school will be using it again

once we move to our permanent room at the end

of this school year.

We'll be back to our little wall mounted rack.

Shadows

We're leading up to Groundhog Day and it's a great time 

to play with light and shadows.

 I took a few of our toy animals and made silhouettes on a transparency sheet.

Cut them out and placed both toy and silhouette on the light table.

Over the weekend I was browsing Pinterest and saw this 

Shadow Book and inspiration hit.

This morning I asked children to pose or caught them in

unique poses and made silhouettes of them.

I copied the original picture on transparency sheet too so they could match them.

We talked about how a shadow would lay if a light was shining on the person.

Wouldn't it be neat if there was a material to make the silhouettes that would stretch

like a shadow does, depending on where the sun is in the sky.

Hmmm, any ideas?

Pete the Cat Literacy Event

Friday was Family Literacy Day 

but all week our school district and local community 

have been offering literacy events.

Our school offered an afternoon event for families

to join in the StrongStart and Kindergarten classes

to have fun with Pete the Cat.  

This book is very popular in our school.  

If you've read previous posts then you know we have been 

having adventures with Pete.

But this event brought in a real live Pete to act out his 

"I Love My White Shoes" story.

Thanks to Beyond the Book Storytimes for the idea.

Here's little Pete and big Pete.

One of the teachers read the story while big Pete acted it out.

 Ready to start the story.

 Boxes represented the coloured piles,

example; red strawberries, blue blueberries, brown mud

 and in the boxes were slippers to match the colour.

 Started with white slippers, then red, then blue, brown

and back to white shoes.

Big Pete didn't cry once.

Because no matter what you step in, it's all good.

If you want to watch the video visit

Untitled from Maureen Wagner on Vimeo.

Here are the activities we did after the story.

Some of them were found at MakingLearningFun.

 Build a word. A coloured card has the word written on it.

Coloured snap blocks have letters written on each.

The children sort and build the word to match the card.

 Roll and colour page.

Roll the die, count the dots or recognize the numeral then colour that spot on the page.

An emergent reader for Pete the Cat that can be coloured according 

to what is happening on each page.

Listening centre.

 Making patterns using potato stamps.

Explaining which pattern he chose - ababab.

We think Pete is great!