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!

A jungle gym for Hermie

We have three classroom hermit crabs. The children love them.

One day while we were fiddling around with a good place to put them for observation, a crab climbed over a piece of plastic packaging and slid down the side. Two of the children thought this was great fun for Hermie (they call all the crabs Hermie) so they decided to make him a jungle gym. We thought about what kinds of equipment the jungle gym should have. we created plans, and then we trekked into the Recycle Room (they beg to go there whenever they can) and they picked out some materials. 

A lot of critical thinking and trial and error (and many trips to the recycle room) went into creating the equipment and I'm skimming over these details for the sake of time management. I understand this is the 'meat' of Reggio, but I only have so many hours (minutes is more like it) in my busy day to blog. The children originally started out with a one compartment jungle gym, but that turned into two compartments as they added more equipment. I helped with cutting the hole that served as a doorway in between the boxes in the location they designated as it required a box cutter. Here is what they chose to build:

A see-saw:

A slide with ladder:

A climbing wall:

Tunnels, a green zip-line, a (white) swing, and a blue and yellow 'landing pad':

This is a fraction of the project. Some children participated by drawing pictures and taping them to the outside of the box as well. They worked on this over a few weeks and we let the crabs loose inside. They were a little disappointed that the crabs didn't actually play much but I reminded them that crabs are more active at night. 

The end!

paint roller art

This was a fun activity. We 'rollered' a mixture of glue and paint onto foam board and sprinkled on left over pasta we dyed a few months ago.

Here is the final product:

The children LOVE paint rollers. Previously we used the rollers on some indoor/outdoor carpeting that my dad gave me.The carpet worked beautifully as it soaked up layers and layers of paint and allowed for all the children to have a turn on one carpet. 

It's so moody, I love it!

The end!

Juicing Oranges

We juiced oranges! It was a great way to work on fine motor and develop a sense of healthy eating habits. First we rolled the oranges around on the table to loosen up the juice.

Then the children put the pre-cut wedges into the bird shaped lemon squeezer and squeezed. We also measured how much juice we squeeze (about ¼ cup per orange).

  

Nearby I also set up a little tray with stamper and pad, a. 'o' puncher and a word card with orange written on it to tie into literacy as well (the letter O is on the other side of the M stamp, lol).

The children had this to say:

-This one's hard to squeeze

-Those are peanuts

No they are seeds

I'm pretending they are peanuts then

-Orange juice is good for you!

-I'm squeezing all the juice out.

-This one had a lot of juice

 The end!