caterpillars

We hatched butterflies at preschool again this spring.  I've talked about hatching butterflies before (here, here, and here) but I wanted to share a new craft.  (Here are my plans from butterfly day.)

The kids so enjoy this activity.

 
This year we got to write about them in our preschool journals.

Here's the craft.  We painted the kid's first hand green with blue fingers for legs and stamped that a few times on a large paper.  The on the other hand, we painted the hand red and the pointer and ring finger a purplish brown color.  The eyes and nose were added later.  I think they turned our super cute.

Giant Jam Sandwich- preschool style

One of my all time favorite favorite books is The Giant Jam Sandwich.  It's one of those books I've probably read 300 times.  I have found newer copies at yard sales, but I like my copy.  It's mine from when I was little and it's not in great shape. 

Anyway.  I love it and I read it to my preschoolers. Then we made butter. 

Last year, I asked the parent helper to bring homemade bread in because I knew she'd love to.  This year I asked the parent helper to bring bread and let her decide what I meant.  We ended up with store bought bread and it worked all the same.  I brought the jam.  I have a large batch of two years ago low sugar (blah) strawberry jam to use up.

The kids made butter in baby food jars.  This is the third year I've done it this way and it works well.   The glass jars are becoming harder to find, but I have a large hoard in my basement. I used them for applesauce in the fall at preschool too.  I really have to clean them well, my grandpa used to store nails in them.

About 2T heavy whipping cream and a dash of salt are placed in a baby food jar along with a marble.  The lid is attached securely and I wrap a paper towel around the whole thing and the kids shake the jar.  And shake and shake and shake.  I played some shaking and jumping songs to help keep them moving.  There's always someone who pops the top up and it leaks, but otherwise it's pretty easy.

They shake until they can't hear the marble.  They brought it to me and many had to be sent back for more shaking.  They get a little tired.  It takes about 5 minutes of kid shaking.  Some of the kids end up with a whipped butter, but if they shake through that, it really does resemble a traditional butter.   This year we did have one jar break.  That marble popped right on out.  I've never had that happen before but I assume there was an issue with the jar prior to our shaking.

Bee and the teacher

Bee's teacher retired this year.    Everyone should get the pleasure of spending the year with a teacher like her! 

She loves Bee and I think Bee was her favorite, but I suspect every child in her class felt the same thing.

I pretty much want to be her when I grow up!

Perhaps some of her kindness and gentleness rubbed off on Bee...

I'm saving this note for a long day!

This came in return.

(I love you because you are special)

dog popsicles and other things the dog eats

Caution, the dog eats books.  That spider man book was a library book!  Do you know the markup on purchasing a damaged library book!  GEESH.

And the metal off the dog crate we thought we were going to use.

But he also eats popsicles.  Seriously spoiled dog. 

So after he eats a bone (the butcher shop gives me the best dog bones!) I put the bone in a silicone cupcake liner and add in some leftover chicken broth or juice from a roast or something doggy delicious. 

After I freeze them in a flat pan I can take them out and put them in a baggie to store in the freezer until it's a nice hot day and he hasn't eaten a book in awhile and deserves a treat. 

This picture of Bee and Tippy makes me giggle.  It looks like he's in a mug shot.

On a side note, we were excited to see if Tippy would swim with us when we
opened the pool for the summer.  He apparently does not like to swim.  DOES. NOT. LIKE. IT.  Good to know.

hats and scarves with the girl scouts

Oh goodness these pictures are old. I'm just cleaning up some old draft posts, so sorry you're poolside and I'm talking about fleece.

 

Back some time ago when the weather was cold and there was snow on the ground, I was asked by a local girl scout troop to come and teach a lesson about sewing.  I had met the troop leader several years ago when I taught sewing classes at a local shop.  The girls needed to earn the sewing badge and really any project could work, but the troop leader thought it would be neat if the girls could use a sewing machine.  I worked up a few ideas, but this was the chosen idea... fleece scarves and hats.

 

These are super simple and were a hit with the girls.  The girls were 3-4 grade and had little if any sewing experience.  They were great listeners and were so eager to make their items.  These orange and blue were my samples.  Their leader had purchased cute matching girly fleece. 

I gave a quick little chat about sewing and why I like it and how I use it myself, then we got down to business.  We only had 3 machines set up for the girls to work with and an adult who at least mostly knew what they were doing sat at each to assist. 

We had an area set up for cutting with directions on how to cut the pieces.  I ran from this area to a machine and back.  The girls worked on one project and then swapped areas and worked up the other piece.  Lou hid in a room off of where we were working and played on my phone.  Bee was my photographer.  I took them out for ice-cream afterward, I felt bad they had to hang out so long.

The scarf is easy, it's two pieces of fleece cut about 6 inches wide as long as you want the scarf.  They are pinned on top of each other and sewn down the middle.  You then cut in from the long edges almost to the sewn line every inch or so for the full length.  It then spins and twirls and sort of makes it look fluffy as it lays.

The hats are easy too.  The girls cut out a rectangle piece of fabric and wrapped it around their head to  measure and then sewed the fabric in to a tube.  We turned it right side out and flipped the bottom cuff/edge up and sewed it in place again.  Then they put the tube on their heads and tied the open top off.  They then trimmed and fringed the top.  Easy Peasy.
 

I had originally thought the girls would donate the items they made but no one wanted to part with their scarves and hats.   They decided they would come up with a different service project.  Who can blame them?

preschool journals- again

preschool journals again... and finally. I was sharing them sort of along the way and then I'd get behind and have to group them.  Now here's the last chunk of preschool journals.   You can see the others here.

N-  We traced our phone numbers.

O:  My O became __________

P:  Me in my pajamas.   There was a lightly traced body outline and the kids completed this on pajama party day.

Q:  We had like two snow days and or something and missed the Q days.  We didn't have a Q journal page.  Oops.

R:  Our robot-  from robot day.

S-  Spots on S

T:  tracing letters

U- They signed their name under the table, upside down.

V:  My favorite vegetable

and then there was this one....

W:  Worm observation  from W for worm day

X:  X marks the spot.

Y:  What is yellow?

Z:  My favorite Zoo animal.

this was not the only zoo dinosaur....

At Easter, we did an Easter Egg:

Many of the kids liked to do extra work in their journals:

This funny girl drew lots of similar pictures and always had her brother wearing a dress... I asked about it and she just laughed and laughed....

 

another poor brother in a dress.

When we hatched our caterpillars, the kids made observations in their journals.

 

 

 

 

And on silly sock day they drew their socks:

The last week of school, the wonderful complete journals were sent home.  Hopefully they'll be a treasured item that's saved for years and years.