Marble Spider Web Painting
In the last couple of days, we have been feeling the cool Autumn breeze and seeing the leaves changing colors. In Buds, as we are aligning with our theme of HANDS and the things we can do with our hands, we are gradually talking about the change of season. Today, we started working on an art in preparation for the upcoming event (!) while we were also busy hammering, making patterns, cooking, playing music, doing Kung Fu movements and more! Luckily, the weather was kind and we also had a fabulous time at the green area playing with balls!
Marble Painting
At this table, there were some sensory tubs with a piece of black construction paper placed inside. On a tray there were two bowls - one filled with gooey white paint resembling cottage cheese and the other filled with smooth watery white together with some…MARBLES! N who was first to arrive dipped her hands inside the paint and grabbed the marbles and dropped them inside the tub. She loved the sensation of her hands getting wet and mushy with paint. Then arrived J who came straight to the table and he was interested in the patterns that the marbles made on the black sheet of paper. He repeatedly dipped the marbles in the paint, dropped them back in the tub and moved the tub to let the marbles roll up and down and to the sides. K soon joined and as always, she dunked her hands into the paint without an ounce of hesitation and enjoyed “painting” with her hands more than with the marbles. Seeing this, J saw the fun in it and did the same. He noticed that the black sheet of paper was now turning white and using a plastic fork, he started to make multiple thin strokes! How incredible our experiments can turn from one thing to another!
Styrofoams and Match Sticks + Lines and Marbles
At this table, there were trays each set with a block of styrofoam, a wooden hammer, one cup filled with matchsticks and another cup filled with styrofoam balls. L took the challenge in hammering the matchsticks into the block of styrofoam and soon his interest transfered from hammering to pouring the different materials from one bowl to another. The teachers may have their intentions when setting up the activities and just in this case, the beauty lies in that children can alter and develop the play into something else, into something better! W, who has been into patterns lately, spotted the lines and the marbles on the table. Together with Erika, he experimented on how to place the marbles over the lines and tried to move the row of marbles like a train!
Free Play
The floor area was busy and bustling with children and their marvelous ideas; it was filled with giggles, clattering sounds, excitable thumping noise going back and forth. You might say that it was like a weekend market place! Our kitchen set was out again in the middle of the floor - J, K and K were ever so busy cooking and selling food incorporating diggers and trucks in the process. N took out the musical instruments, getting ready to gather his band together for some funky music!? Just then a visitor flew in….a brown moth! L, K and N were particularly eager to catch it but it went flitter-fluttering and it landed on our moon on the wall! We all looked at it in amazement!
Circle Time
As we all gathered in a circle, we remembered the game we played last week. We held our hands together and stretched our arms as wide as we could to make a big circle-shaped “taiko” and stepped inside the circle to make a small “taiko” except when we heard the rumbling sound, we all let go of our hands and ran in every direction! Once we were all seated on the floor, we each got an IKEA bowl and a pair of bamboo sticks. What do you think we did next? Yes, we had our own drum and sticks and we made lots and lots of sounds! We came up with many funny ways of using the sticks. K suggested to “connect” the two sticks together and when we placed the two sticks to form a shape of a letter T, he said it looked like an “airplane”; J placed the two sticks in front of his mouth and said, “like mommy” which looked like slurping ice-coffee from a straw! After saying bye-bye to our magical sticks and bowls, we sang our Good Morning song to greet each other and talked about one of the activities from today: the marble painting art. The marbles had made beautiful white streaks in every direction onto a black sheet of paper. Some friends guessed that the streaks looked like “airplanes” but once we spotted a spider figurine climbing up, we recognized that the streaks were her webs! Think of spider webs and other creepy crawlies…Maybe it is a bit too early for our little minds to think ahead of the upcoming event but slowly and slowly, we will be decorating our classroom ready for our Halloween party! Hearing words like “monsters,” Jun was reminded of the scary thoughts. Seeing this, N pointed out saying, “J is crying.” It is touching to catch moments when friends are sympathetic to their peers at such a young age. To help J feel better, we decided to “fight” the scaries away by dancing and doing some Kung Fu movements using a scarf along with the famous song, Kung Fu Fighting by CeeLo Green. After kicking away all the monsters, J’s big smile was back :) For storytime we read Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton, a cute story about a baby owl who fell off a tree branch and goes searching for its mommy in the forest with the help of a friendly squirrel.
Thank you for another lovely day!
Love from all the children in Buds xoxo