going green!

The Heart Room has been going green lately. We started by planting some grass seeds in some flats in our atrium. This is the time of year I am desperate to grow things, and anything will do. It gets me through till spring. Or at least till daylight savings time.

Today I noticed the grass had gotten so long it was starting to droop.

 I offered the children some scissors, and they got to work giving the grass a "hair cut." They put the trimmings in our new compost bucket.

The children informed me that the compost didn't smell yet (so far it has oranges and banana peels in it) because it was full of fresh grass.

I'd say they did a pretty thorough job of it!

The end!

a series of buildings and roads

Recently I notices a rash of buildings being created out of all kinds of materials. So I gathered up the images to show you:

A tower:

A museum (with parking garage on the bottom):



Roads:

A flower shop:

Skyscraper:

Skyscraper:

The end!

'Beautiful Stuff' Collage

We're blessed to have tons of 'beautiful stuff' thanks to parent donations. Our shelves were overflowing with  materials so I decided it was time to make a collage. I set out the jars of 'stuff', glue, and paint rollers. After we covered the foam board, my instructions to the children was to 'put things where they made sense.' Colors by colors or objects by similar objects. This is what they created:

I love working with these kinds of materials because it's like unearthing treasures every time.

Close up of the left side:

Center:

Right side:

If you look really close you can see treasures inside treasures-a marble in an egg:

-beads inside a measuring cup:

-beads inside a coffee creamer lid (you have to flip the top to see):

Some of their thoughts:

-Greens go with greens and reds go with reds.
-This isn't junk, it's awesome!
-Can I take this home? I'm trying to make a hat for my friend.
-This looks like the other thing we made, but it's prettier.

the coat hanger sculpture- part 1

As a provocation, I bought in a few coat hangers, pulled out the ladder and hung them from the I-beams in our classroom. I offered a few to the children and it began to grow like a weed! 

I had to scour the building for "more, more, more, teacher!" We quickly ran out so I sent out a request to parents to bring in more. This is what it looks like now:

Later we did black line drawings of the sculpture:

Here are some of their thoughts:

-They're attached together and they hang from each other.
-It's a triangle.
-It hooks.
-It looks like candy canes. Lots of candy canes.
-I like it.
-It swings a little.

The end!