Imagine

This past week at Imagine we made paper.  We ripped up old newspaper and soaked it in water overnight. The screen you use to make the paper is called a "deckle". The children scooped up the soggy newspaper and put it in the blender. We added food coloring to the "pulp" in the the blender. We used wisteria and azaleas to make our paper beautiful., and rosemary and lavender to make it smell good. We poured the pulp onto the deckle. We used a piece of felt to squeeze the excess liquid out of the pulp mixture. We will  be using our handmade paper for a very special project in the future.

All you need is chalk and leaves to make pretty sunflowers. If you want the real kind you need seeds and dirt. Don't forget the water and sun! Look they grew! We painted yellow, and green for the "stems". Brown came next. Sunflowers have "petals". The children learned that flowers make "seeds" so more flowers can grow. We glued 20 sunflower seeds in the middle of each flower. We wanted the "stems" of the sunflowers to be the "height" of  each child .The children worked together with a partner to "measure" each other. "This is how tall I am"! Tall beautiful sunflowers!

This was an outdoor project the children really seemed to enjoy. It involved collecting leaves,using a hole puncher and stringing the "number" leaves on twine. We made 4 strands with 10 leaves per strand. The kids had a great time learning to count to 40! We counted sunflower seeds, and colored beads, We sorted and counted cubes. We counted wooden tiles, and swimming fish. The VPK kids practiced writing their numbers.  The first sound in the word number is the sound the letter N makes. .

We filled different sized glass jars with varying amounts of colored water. We arranged the jars from high to low. We let the children "play" the jars with a wooden spoon.We explained to the children  that we were going to write a song. We had the children draw circles that represent "notes" along a line.We provided paint that corresponded with the colored water in the jars. The children painted in the circles making a "pattern" of sounds. We asked the children to name their songs.  We were so fortunate to have wonderful musical guests. They played "wind","string" and "percussion" instruments. John played the Bagpipes.Mick played the Bouzouki. Here's a link to learn more about this beautiful instrument. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouzouki I love music week because the children are always inspired to make music of their own. Some of the children wrote thank you notes to our guests. ...