Hermit Crabs

Spirals have been a reoccurring theme for the past couple of months.

Today we used them again to make a hermit crab at the art table.

A friend of mine recommended Eric Carle's book

"A House for Hermit Crab"

to read before we go to the beach next week.

Eric Carle's illustrations are very child friendly.

Colourful and inviting.

We started by cutting a paper plate into a spiral for the shell.

 

Then we glued the spiral on to a sheet of paper.

Red squares of paper were provided to make the crab.

 Some children used the squares as is to make 

their crab.

 While others cut the squares into different shapes 

and sizes to build their crab.

 Conversation began about how many legs a hermit crab has.

We looked at the book and counted 6.

Then I googled the question and learned that in total

they have 10 legs.

Six legs on the outside and four more 

that are inside the shell.

The crabs were finished with eyes, antennae

and decorations.

Which led us to our story time and reading the book together.

I printed off images for the story and handed them out to the children.

The children became part of the storytelling process not just

the listener.

As I read they brought their picture up and added it to the 

crab.

Our plan is to search the beach next week for Hermit crabs.

Cinnamon Snail Swirls

Mmmm making bread is so much fun.

And smells so good.

This week we used our regular pretzel dough recipe 

to make Cinnamon Snail Swirls.

The children love using rolling pins.

This recipe is nice for letting children roll to their hearts content.

After rolling the dough flat and thin,

the next step is to brush melted butter on the dough.

Then sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top.

 There was enough dough for the grown ups to make their own.

Some children respond better to seeing what to do rather than being told.

What a great opportunity to model how to roll the dough.

Yum!

Dough Recipe

1 pkg yeast
1 1/2 cup hot water
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp oil
4 cups flour

Mix in a large bowl in the order shown.

You can use right away - no need to let rise.

Story - Billy Goat in the Garden

On a visit to the library I saw this book

"There's a Billy Goat in the Garden"

 

I was first attracted to the illustrations,

they were made from fabric.

Then reading the story, loving it's repetitive nature and I knew it would be a great one to tell

at school.

So I found fabric for a garden, made some clothes to hang on a line

and printed out animals.

Ready to go.

Spud Harvest

Harvest Time

I didn't have high hopes of great success since the last time we did this, two years ago, we didn't grow more than a dozen potatoes.

But the plants looked big and healthy so it showed promise.

We started by sharing the book Tops & Bottoms 

by Janet Stevens

I like this book for a couple of reasons.

One, it focuses on parts of the plants that are edible and not.

Two, it talks about consequences that may happen when you rely on someone else to do all the hard work.

Before we started pulling at the leaves I asked the question

"Which part of the potato plant do we eat, the tops or the bottoms?"

Interesting that half of the children said the tops.

Time to pull and dig and find out.

The expression on the little boy's face shows how hard it was

for them to pull the potatoes out of the soil.

Some stems broke but we managed to get potatoes out.

It was exciting.

Then we used our hands and shovels to dig for the rest.

When all the leaves and stems (the tops) were gone 

we thought we had found all the potatoes (the bottoms).

But then two little boys, brothers, arrived and wanted to play in the soil.

Sure.

And we found a lot more potatoes deep in the tub.

They had the privilege of washing the spuds too.

But how many spuds did we grow?

We sorted by size - 

small, medium, large.

 We estimated how many potatoes there were altogether.

 

Then counted each group and added them together.

For a grand total of 47.

YAY!

Next week is our Spud Celebration with our big buddy class.

Frog Faces

 

We took our tadpoles to the pond to let them go.

But before we did we made frog faces.

Very simple frog face cut outs that the children could colour, glue on wiggly

eyes then stick a red party blower in the hole for it's mouth.

It was hard for some to wait to put it altogether before blowing out the tongue.

But most finished theirs.

Me too!

Then at story time we sang Little Green Frog.

We managed to record our little performance.

Then off we went to the pond.

Raising Tadpoles and Release

We've been studying frogs for a little while in our room.

 Our frog play area include real tadpoles plus a mirrored pond with foam lily pads, pieces of wood and lots of different coloured, textured and sized frogs.

Then there was the wet frog play area right beside it that included frogs in the different stages of development from tadpole to full grown frog.  I also included water beads, a few blue and a lot of clear beads. 

You couldn't see the clear ones in the water so it was always a surprise when they put their hands in and felt something jelly-like.

I thought the water beads felt like what frog spawn might feel like.
They enjoyed playing with and squishing the beads.

We talked about what frogs like to eat so toy flies arrived, as well as dragon flies.

 Then the snakes because they like to eat frogs.

 

Today we took the tadpoles to the pond to let them free.

 

 

We scooped them out of their travel pail and into the pond they went.

I had made pond viewers for the children by cutting off the bottom of cans and yogurt tubs then covering the one end with plastic wrap.  These make it easy to look under the water.

We saw lots of lily pads so hope that they find other frogs to live with.