X x xylophone (and xray)

Today's plans were pretty simple. I wanted to get outside! The weather has been crazy nice! Plus, the wooden xylophone could only hang outside.

Xx xylophone day:

I showed the kids these x-ray cards which I found through Pinterst.  The blog they are from though has made themselves private recently, so that doesn't help.   Too bad, because they are really nice.  I did google image 'xray pictures' and there are a lot of nice options there too.

Then we talked about what a xylophone was and I showed them these two pictures (also from a google image).  I played the kids a little of these two songs, Rhythm Song by Virtuoso Music for Solo Marimba and Triplets by Masters of the Xylophone, both featuring the xylophones.  The songs are different and show the diversity of the xylophone.  The kids enjoyed listening and they pretended to play along.  

Then we did some addition work.

I had lots of paper cut in strips for the kids to solve the addition problems with.  I slowly told the kids how many strips to lay down on their black strip of paper, and then how many to add to it.  The kids counted them all up and wrote their answers on the plastic plate dry erase boards we have been using.   Letting the kids record their answers on the plates has reduced their yelling out of the answers.  I love it.

The craft was an X xylophone.  Here's Lou's.

I had another activity ready that we didn't get to.  I had several number sets with missing numbers.  

I had thought we'd write the numbers on the plates. 

Then we just went outside.  It was the first time we had gotten to go outside in some time.  The kids were thrilled. 

I found a nice place to hang the xylophone and the kids played with the wooden spoons.

We have a nice basic playground, but the tire mulch is my nemesis.  It's so dirty.  It ruins shoes and light colored pants.  It dirties knees, faces and hands and is pretty gross.  The best is when the kids hands are dirty with tire dirt and then wipe sweat off their face and leave black streaks.  Blach!