Did someone say Christmas Celebration!

The Busy Bee’s had a slight sugar rush as we celebrated the holidays in the classroom.  After a lesson of learning about Hanukkah, Christmas, Las Posadas, Kwanzaa and Diwali (Celebration of lights), we ended our lesson with a holiday celebration and gift exchange.

Learning about letters

The paper had all lower case letters, the clothes pins had upper case letters, the children were encouraged to match the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter..

Learning with puzzles

The Busy Bee’s explored a variety of holiday puzzles, as we talked about menorahs and dreidels.  These puzzles were quite interesting for the children as it added a much needed challenge to many of them!

 

The Busy Bee’s had a blast making their very own edible Christmas tree. We used sugar ice cream cones, a variety of candy, vanilla icing, sprinkles, and green food coloring. I added a few drops of green food coloring to our vanilla frosting, then after each child had their own ice cream cone, they were giving a spoon full of icing and encouraged to pain their trees green. After their icing was added no tree is complete with lights (sprinkles) and decorations (candy) some of the Busy Bee’s got creative and added presents under their trees (cookies).

What a tasty snack……Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Ms. McLean and the Busy Bee’s!

 

 

 

 

 



There's still a Buzzz in the Hive!

 

 

There's still a buzz in the Busy Bee hive as the holiday season's approaches... The Busy Bee's finished the month of November discussing Thankfulness and came back from Thanksgiving break learning all about the Gingerbread man....We talked about the Gingerbread man, the gingerbread girl and boy and created our own book "The Gingerbread Bee,"  we used a great recipe to make our own gingerbread cookie and you wouldn't believe it...but he got lose in the school and The Busy Bee's had to go on a school search to find him in order to enjoy that tasty snack.....

The Busy Bee's have been quite busy so here's a little of what took place....

 

Creating Letters with wood blocks....This was a great learning activities that the children created on their own!  ((Way to go Busy Bees))

1 to 20 sequence...the children worked to put the Christmas trees in numeric order.  They are working hard on recognizing their numbers, counting one to one and putting the numbers into order!! 

Creating Patterns...it's awesome to see these awesome big girls and boys create their own patterns using a variety of tools around the classsroom.

  ((kiss your brain))

Predictions are being made....how can we slide the dominos from the shelf to the table?  Teamwork always makes the dream work!!

One to one counting in our small groups...The children had to tell me what number they had then count out the bears...

 

The developmentally appropriate classroom, may get LOUD, may not be organized...But I would call this Organized Chaos

where each and every child is getting what they need in order to be successful throughout their life!



More in the wonderful world of pumpkins the learning never ends in the Classroom.....
The students made Pumpkin Measurement predictions.....made graphs for how high and put pumpkins into sequence using large, medium and small....We did songs the children followed art....

Signing in to create his master piece...the children where encouraged to create the photo you see on the counter....they counted the pumpkins and made their very on masterpieces.  This was amazing to see to the children recreate.

The children used counting mats and pumpkin seeds.  To work on number recognition and one to one counting....The children found the number on the mat and counting that many pumpkin seeds to place on that number.....AMAZING work these Busy Bees did!

Art on Display...The Busy Bees made paper bag pumpkins and to work on that fine motor development....the Busy Bee's cut circles and pinch and tore paper to glue into the circle to make pumpkins!

We made size predictions....Each Busy Bee was asked to bring in a pumpkin from home and we made predictions about how much string we would need to fit around our pumpkins....The children then came to cut the string..... and measure their pumpkin.

After our measurements we discussed, enough, too much or not enough....The Busy bees them put their string where it belonged....Congratulations to the one student who made the correct predicition that was truly amazing....I picked too much.

We discussed similarities and differences, which was also our new vocabulary words. 

Five Little Pumpkins poem...the dots you see helps the children follow the words as they read the poem.

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sitting on a gate.

The first one said, "Oh my it's getting late."

The second one says, "There's witches in the air."

The third one says, "But we don't care"

The fourth one says, " Lets run and run and run.

The fifth one says, "I'm ready for some fun!"

Then ooooo went the wind...and out (hand clap) went the lights

and the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.

Our bubble map, what we knew and what we learned.  Great growth Busy Bees

We also talked about the similiarites and differences of their favorite fruit...apples and pumpkins.

We wanted to know how tall our pumpkins are so we used blocks to measure the height of our pumpkins and then drew and looked at similiarites on our chart paper. 

Pumpkin Pie Play Dough

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 cup water

Food coloring ((Optional)) 

Combine the dry ingredients in a nonstick saucepan. Add the oil, water, and food coloring and whisk until smooth. Stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, cook the mixture over medium heat until it forms a ball, about 3 to 4 minutes.Turn the dough onto a counter, let it cool slightly, then knead the dough until it has a smooth texture, about 1 minute.

Busy Bee Pumpkin Patch

The Busy Bee's has been busy learning all about Pumpkins...as we left our project of interest about apples we begin to make comparisons about the differences and similarities of pumpkins and apples.  We made many predictions and added new vocabulary.  We learned about where pumpkins come from and to the surprise of the Busy Bee’s they don’t only come from WalMart…but WalMart actually gets them from the pumpkin patch and not a pumpkin factor.  The Busy Bee’s did tear and past pumpkins and we created and is busy observing our Pumpkin Circle.

 

Cleaning out our pumpkin, we cut open a apple and reviewed our lesson about the sections of the apples.  We then talked about our pumpkin and to their surprise the pumpkin and the apple has similiarities such as a skin, seeds, and a stem but there is no core inside the apple, and pumpkins don't grow on a tree....Now the fun begins lets get our hands in there! 

 

 

The Pumpkin Circle...one of my favorite pumpkin books the pictures are amazing and it allows us to discuss decomposing...The children read the book in our circle meeting and we discussed the cycle of pumpkins.  We then decided to create our very own Pumpkin Circle. We took one small pumpkin and cut it in half.  After placing our soil and pushing a few seeds into the soil to speed up the process a little more...the children had their own pumpkin circle. I encouraged the children observe the process and to draw or write about their observation.

Another favorite of mine....The Biggest Pumpkin Ever!!  We read the book and again decided to create our own BIGGEST PUMPKIN EVER...we took a class vote and believe it our not the children voted on a Pink Pumpkin....(yep)

We used a large excercise ball and covered it with newspaper strips that was dipped to make paper mache...once it dried the Busy Bees started painting...They also used the Biggest Pumpkin Ever to create Jack o Latern faces (kinda like Mr. Potato Head) (((We used liquid starch as a paper mache mix...easier and less mess)))





Much to do about Apples

As the Busy Bee’s finish up three weeks of apples, we focused on apple recipes and yummy these little bees can cook.
We brought out our apple pie play dough (see below for recipe)
We made applesauce, tasted apple butter, made apple pie and ate mini caramel apples ((all recipes below))
The Busy Bees enjoyed apples and we are moving towards comparing pumpkins to apples…so roll up your sleeves and prepare to get messy!!!

Sorting apples…The children used plastic tweezers and sorted red, yellow and green pom poms.

 

Painting apples….using red, yellow and green

Tissue paper apples…the children cut their frames, then they tore tissue paper into small pieces (working on fine motor) using was paper and lots of glue , lay the frames onto wax paper and over lap the pieces of tissues paper to cover all glue and all openings.  After it dries gently pull away from the wax paper.  The children added stems and a leaf and we hung in our window sill.  Beautiful work Busy Bees!!

 

Apple predictions….The Busy bees cut one apple in half and one we poured Sprite on top and the other is left plain….The Busy Bee’s made predictions of what they think will happen and now we are observing to see whose prediction was correct…..

Creating with play dough is always fun…The children were given appleand shape cookie cutters and the creating is unlimited….

Apple Pie Play dough

 1 cup flour

¼ cup salt

½ Tsp. vegetable oil

1 tsp. cream of tartar

½ tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup water

((((I normally double this to make enough for at least three students to have plenty of dough to create)))

In large pot combine all dry ingredients and mix well.

Add in your vegetable oil and (optional) food color), water  and stir.

Cook over medium heat until dough pulls away from the pot and starts to become dry.

Turn off heat, cool and kneed…sprinkle a little more flour if too sticky.

Enjoy!!

 

 

Crock Pot Applesauce

4 lbs Tart Apples sliced thinly
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Mix apples with cinnamon and sugar and put into crockpot.
Pour water and lemon juice over apples.  Cook on low for 6 hours or high for 3 hours.
Enjoy!!
((In the classroom I used the apple slicer to remove the core, then I removed the skin and allowed each student to come and count one to one six apples as they added them to the crockpot….)

 

Unfortunately it took way too long to make apple butter in the classroom so we had to purchase Apple Butter from our local grocery store.  I toasted bread for the students and we all tried apple butter with our toast….most of the children loved it!!!

Nothing says I love you more than Apple Pie….The Busy Bee’s worked hard on their apple pie and then we all had a GREAT afternoon snack!

 

The apple learning has been fun and endless…