Fairy See-Saws

I saw a really cute fairy see-saw on Etsy last weekend and thought how cute it would be next to the fairy tire swing. Then looking at it closely I thought, "Hey, I actually have all the things I need to make those!"  So wah-la!!!  Fairy see-saw ala large Popsicle sticks and double-sided tacks.  Cute and really easy to make.

I just cut the Popsicle stick with kitchen scissors, put tacks in (I actually put a piece of a smaller Popsicle stick underneath, so that the tack would be more stable), painted them, and found a piece of wood to nail them into.

And look how cute they are next to the tire swing!

Hot Air Balloons

The last couple of weeks I have been teaching about hot air ballons and how they work.  The children also made their own hot air ballons out of paper mache and berry baskets.  I couldn't get any pictures of the process, because it was so messy, but here are some of the finished balloons.

In retrospect, I wouldn't do this project again with such a young group of children.  The attention span of paper macheing a whole ballon per kid, was hard for 3 to 4 year olds.  But this would be a fun project for over 5!

Sensory Bins

Just a few pictures of different senory bins in our classroom.  I'm hoping to keep this updated and post more pictures as the year goes by.  Let's start with something simple.

Shaving Cream!

Desert habitat.

Painting rocks with water.

Water marbles.

Sea Animals in water.  This smelled horrible!  Never try real starfish in water. Bleh.

Ice Castles: ice, salt, and watercolor!

Studying precipitation and clouds with shaving cream and drops of food color.

Magnets

Felt Food

Pictures of felt food I made for our classroom:

Pictures my colleague, Ms. Shyleigh, made to go with the book Build a Burrito:

And our classroom pizza making kit:

Penstemon Water Coloring

These are a collection of penstamon watercolor paintings that our classroom made for our school's silent auction.  Penstemons are a native wildflower that grows around Tucson.  This would work well with any type of flower. 

In my opinion, it's the similarity and the contrast between the pictures that make them so striking!  We were very fortunate to have a parent that was a wood worker and was happy to make us two wood walls hangings that we glued the individual watercolors onto. The pictures were glued onto the wood blocks within the frame and the individual blocks are all different widths.

To keep all the colors from blending together, we made these in steps.  The first step was to draw a picture of the wildflower with a sharpie.  I asked the children what they noticed about the flowers and its parts while they were drawing. Then in stages I gave them the colors, which is how they ended up not all becoming brown! 

First I gave them pinks in a few different shades and introduced the words hues, and shades, and had them notice the differences and similarities in the colors.  I asked them what part of their flower was pink and let them paint until the were ready for the green shades.  Then they were given about three different shades of green, when they where done, they have three shades of blues/teals for the background.

When making an item for an auction, as a teacher, I am always conflicted with the process vs. product dilemma.  I normally strongly believe in process rather than the product or outcome.  However, for pieces like this that you sell to parents you really do want a product, right?  I tried to make it more open ended by giving them a variety of shades and not telling them where to put the colors, but encouring them to notice it on their own. 

I even made color copies and laminated a poster for my classroom to keep.

Paper Bowl Jellyfish

Toilet Paper Roll Owls

Owls made from paper toel rolls and scrap fabric samples.