Cabbage Science

Today we experimented with purple cabbage. What a cool vegetable! That's right, I just called cabbage "cool", and soon you will too!

I plopped this bugger into the middle of the table surrounded by eager to learn 2-4 year olds. I asked them to tell me about it. Some of their observations were:
- Its purple
-It smells like broccoli
-It is white
- It has a pattern! Purple, white, purple, white...
- Its a circle! Its a sphere!
- It comes apart. Its made of leaves!

So many amazing topics to cover! We could have spent a lot longer talking about it, they had so much to contribute. I gave one child a piece of the cabbage and asked her how to get the colour out. She tried drawing with it like a crayon, breaking it apart, and swishing it around in cold water. No luck.

 I pulled out the water that I had boiled the other half of the cabbage in:

The first jar contains water that was taken out after one minute of boiling, the second after 5 minutes and the third after 10 minutes. 

The kids loved holding the jars up to the window to see the colours light up. We talked about the differences between the colours. And which one everyone liked the most. 

Next I took some water from the first jar and put it in a glass dish:

And added vinegar!

What happens? It turns PINK!

Next we added a scoop of baking soda:

It fizzed up and then it turned purple... then when they mixed it...

We got dark blue!

We found that the darker colours changed just the same. We got all sorts of beautiful colours! 

After the demo, the kids were each given their own cabbage water, vinegar, and baking soda to experiment with. The little scientists had a great time experimenting with the effects. 

Their conclusion: Cabbage is pretty cool! They even asked for some for lunch!

Frugal Waldorf

I have been researching Waldorf learning a lot lately. I love the simplicity of the playthings. I love the openess of each item and the infinite purposes it could serve. I love the natural element, limiting carcinogens and toxins from my children's environment. But can I say, the pricetag makes me a little nauseous. This thing that bothers me most about that, is the home-made simplicity is lost through the commercial market. I have been searching through pages of ebay and amazon to find some block crayons made from beeswax but cannot fathom spending $40 on a set of 8 crayons. It's a little absurd..

so, Im going to the root of the philosophies, and becoming a little more hippy with each ingredient I collect in the process. My goal is to make the following:

-Full set of food colouring made with fruits, veggies, and spices
-Full set of water colour paints made from all natural ingredients
- A set of beeswax crayons for each child
- Several colours of beeswax modelling clay
- A waldorf doll for each child (Christmas presents?)
- Set of play siks
- A paint board for each child

I have a pinterest board of things to make: http://pinterest.com/ssmadella/kids-to-make-or-buy/

I'll be posting updates on our creations in upcoming posts. Today's project: food colouring. I will attempt to make red, blue, and yellow :)

Sensory Play

We love sensory play! Here are some of our adventures:
Disclaimer: I always give the kids undivided attention during sensory play and use only materials that I feel I can control the safety of. Do at your own risk, and expect a mess.

Cooked Pasta

Dried Rice (Dinosaur excavation)

Coloured salt or sugar

Jello

Snow

Paint with salt

Cooked Pasta with water

Glow paint and highlighters under black light

chocolate pudding (muddy) pigs

 Paint splatters on canvas

Cloud dough (flour and cooking oil)

 Canvas tempera paint and salt

 Paint slide- Rolling balls down or, hey, sliding

Cooked oatmeal

Lets start at the very beginning

This week was the first day of school for all of the big kids! How excited we were to see big yellow school buses drive by all day! My current group is made up of 1, 2, and 3 year olds, so nobody is going off to school this year, though I have started to homeschool my 3 year old daughter in a relaxed child-led way for JK. She is devouring everything I give her ask asking for "More! More learning, please, Mommy!" I hope her passion for learning never dies.

Our theme this week was fairly simple: Lets start at the very beginning
We didn't do much "seat work" because the weather still allowed us to be outside all day, and so we learned in nature, as usual.

Our week at a glance:

- I introduced the letter A
- We practiced writing A's
- We learned a song- "Do you know the Apple Man"
- We found 'A's and 1's in nature
- We counted ants and made them houses in the sand
- We learned the A note in music
- We learned the song "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound Of Music
- We did an alligator craft and read "Alligator Pie"
- We sang "The Wheels On The Bus" every time we saw a bus (they started it, as you can guess)
- We learned about the number 1
- We learned about the beginnings of plants- the seed

Tuesday was our first day back at playgroup. We brought along some friends. The kids didn't remember it at all and had a blast with all the new toys!

On Wednesday we received our fruits and veggies from Ottawa Organics. We got peaches, pears, kale, heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, beets, carrots, green onions, zucchini squash (Sera described it as a long yellow sunburst squash!), strawberries, and turnips. Every week, we bring the box to the kitchen table and all sit around taking turns pulling out an item. The child who's turn it is tells us about it: what it's called what it looks like, whether they like it or not, what colours it is. If we dont know, we write down a description and look it up online or in a book.

We did music time loosly while some children played and others participated. This week we sang songs, I showed them the guitar, and how the strings are put on (I was in the middle of changing them, so it was a good opportunity), and I showed them an Amp. They sang into the mic to hear it work. Next week we will hook up the Bass (B for Bass!) to see what it sounds like plugged in and unplugged. We learned "Do Re Mi" while we sat under the gazebo in the park.

We practised cutting with safety scissors and then glued them onto alligators for teeth. We read "Alligator Pie" by Dennis Lee, practised writing A's and found objects outside that started with the A sound or looked like A's.

We learned about seeds: What they are, what they can become, where they come from. We found seeds in our food and outside. We will continue this theme next week when we try panting beans again.

Food for thought

When you buy organic or local produce, you end up with a lot of scraps from the parts that aren't eaten. Here is a working post on activities to do with these "extras". I like that it adds a new element to the kids' activities, while exposing them to nature while indoors.

1. Cut up the stems from broccoli to count, build towers, make shapes and stamp with paint. 

 2. Use the tops of carrots of parsnips to paint with like paint brushes, or to make prints with.

3. Leftover pasta for sensory play and painting

Bugz Week

This week was Bugz week at my house. I love bug week!

I picked up some crickets from the pet shop since it's too cold for an outdoor bug hunt. We searched the house for spiders to no avail. I guess that's a good thing, but I was a little disappointed.

 

The crickets were a hit! They were closely observed and joined us during story time, to bathroom breaks and even ate with us (lovely..)

 

 

Each day included circle time with songs about bugs including:

The itsy Bitsy Spider, Little Miss Muffet, Lady Bug Lady Bug (edited by me to Ladybug Ladybug fly away home. It's suppertime and your children are hungry.)

Poor little fly on the wall, the corner store (with verses about bugs), There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, and I'm bringing home my baby bumblebee.

 

Our story time included books such as:

 

These books are all available on Tumblebooks.com which is accessible for free through the Ottawa library's website.

 

 

We had fun doing buggy crafts too. My group is made up of 1-2 year olds but these crafts could be expanded on to match different ages and levels.

 

The Spiderweb threading craft

 

Needed: Paper plate, black paint or paper and glue, white yarn, hole punch, yarn needle or toothpick and tape

 

Have the kids paint the plate black or cut out a circle of black paper and glue it on.

Once dry, punch holes around the edges. Make sure they are not too close to the edge or they will rip (like ours did)

Cut pieces of yarn and loop them through the needles or tape them to toothpicks. I cover the ends of the toothpicks with tape to make them less pointy.

Tie one end to a hole and show the kids how to lace it through the holes.

 

Bumblebee Craft

 

We talked about colours and patterns, antennae and stingers. I cut out the pieces and the kids glued them on.

 

Lady Bug Craft

 

For us it was very basic. We painted paper plates red and glued on black dots. I let the kids try cutting out the dots but they weren't quite there yet (but still had fun cutting slits in the paper).

 

 

Another method for older kids is to paint a paper plate totally black and one totally red. Once dry, cut the red plate in half and paint dots on each side (Add a lesson in symmetry if you'd like!). Next add a splitting pin to the top between both top corners overlapped. Cut out a head from black paper and attach it to the top.

 

(PHOTO TO COME)

 

Firefly Craft

 

This one is very cute! Have the kids decorate coffee filters using washable markers. Then spritz them with some water and let them dry. Next take a plastic Easter egg and put a small glow stick inside. I glued them shut with a glue gun. Fold the filter in half and glue it on. add googly eyes with a glue gun. These are too cute and the kids loved playing with them. We played hide and go seek with them in the dark after making them.

 

 

 

Aren't they adorable?

 

 

 

Our sensory activity this week was pretty simple. I made green pasta (add food colouring to the water before boiling the pasta in it) and added little plastic flowers from a broken necklace of my daughter's. I wanted to put little plastic bugs in, but I couldn't find any so I made some out of shrinky dinks. When they found them, they got to put them on a tray to shrink them down to bug size. It was an extra little bit of excitement in the game. I used this mini sensory box as an early riser activity for the kids who woke up from nap earlier than the others.

 

 

We had a fun time searching for bugs and we altered the song "We're going on a bear hunt" to "We're going on a bug hunt". We just made up the verses as we went along and played a sort of follow the leader around the playroom during our bug hunt.

 

Another game we played this week was a game of tag where I was the spider and the kids were bugs (my dinner). I put little wings on all of them and turned around,counted to 10 and went and found them all. As you might imagine, 1-2 year olds aren't great at hiding but they had lots of fun being caught in my web! I used a dollar store fuzz spiderweb Halloween decoration and threw it onto them to catch them. In the past, with older kids, I actually used a can of silly string and chased them around trying to spray them with it. If it clung to them, they had to sit down until someone freed them from my webs. It was a lot of fun and we went through many cans of silly string. I wish I had a picture.. I will have to re-create this some time.

A bug! A bug! I see a bug!

Caught ya!

Fun and Learning with Fruit Loops

I love using Fruit Loops in kids activities! The kids love it even more.

 

This week we are focusing on colours. The littlest ones are learning to match colours and learn their names, while the more advanced toddlers will learn about mixing colours, pattern making, and using colours in art.

 

Today we played match the colours. I cut out circles of different colours and glued them on the paper. Then I poured some glue on each dot and put out a bowl of the cereal.

 

I placed a fruit loop on one circle and asked: Are these two the same colour? How about these?

 

They took it from there:)

 

 

When they grew  bored of that activity, I brought out some pipe cleaners and we worked on some fine motor skills. It took a while to get the bracelets full because the kids kept eating them!