Book Review: Up, Down, and Around by Katherine Ayres

Title: Up, Down, and Around


Author: Katherine Ayres


Illustrator: Nadine Bernard Westcott


Publisher: Candlewick; March 13, 2007


Age: 2 and up (But my one year olds love it!)


Topic: Vegetables, Opoposites, Healthy Foods, Gardening


Opening:
In the dirt we'll dig a row, drop some seeds and watch them grow.


Summary:
From seeds dropped into soil to corn bursting from its stalks, everything in this garden is on the move! Join in this rollicking good-time celebration of gardening.


Resources:
Teacher guide for the book. One Book has a very extensive activity guide for a variety of age levels.
Kid's Wings has some fun activities and web extensions to go with the book.

Why I like this book:
A cute book that shows a garden come to life as children learn about a variety of vegetables, some of which grow above the ground, some underground and others still that grow around and around! Children are taken from the very beginning of planting seeds then watching as the plants grown to the finale, a fun picnic in the garden featuring the vegetables in the book. My toddler classroom really enjoys the book. It helps that I have the BIG book edition where they can see the wonderful details of the plants and bugs :)

Science: Observing Craisins in Water

Results after half an hour

Young toddlers are natural little scientist. They love to observe and watch how different things act and react. Today we watched how craisins behaved in water. We filled three bottles with water. In one bottle we added salt. In another we added sugar and the last one we added baking soda. The children observed what the craisins did in each bottle.

After about an hour or more, the baking soda caused the craisins to darken and rise to the top of the bottles.

The sugar did not do much after an hour, but at the end of the day, the water had turned reddish in color and the craisins looked redder also.

At the end of the day, many of the craisins had floated to the top of the bottle with salt. Not much color change.

The next day, all the craisins had expanded and floated to the top of the bottles except for the bottle with baking soda, they all sank back down to the bottom of the bottle.

Make your own water colors!!

This was a really fun science/art project we did in my class. (Sorry I don't have any class photos to go with it :( ) But here is what we did. My kids love to paint but like all things, it somehow always ends up in their mouths. So I decided we'd make our own water colors and they would get to help!

Here is what you need:

A variety of berries: Blackberries, raspberries, etc
wide bowl
large metal strainer
small cup (for smashing the berries)
paint smock


Note* room temperature berries are a lot easier to mash and produce more juice.

1. place the large metal strainer over a cup

2. put a berry in the strainer and smash it.

3. Continue until you have enough juice to paint with.

4. Have fun painting!! (and tasting)

My little ones really enjoyed the making of the berry water colors. I had a about seven children doing the activity. As you know, at one, patience is hardly one of their stronger characteristics! But they managed. One activity I added to the process was letting them play with some of the berries as they waited their turn. ;) which worked out really well. When it came to the painting part, we used construction paper and paint brushes like normal and the kids went to town on their paintings. A few preferred sucking on the paint brushes! Even though we used a totally edible material, I still reminded them to "paint on the paper" as I want them to get used to not putting art materials in their mouths.

Color week!!

So we are learning the colors this week. Each day we focus on a color. Today was dedicated to blue. We had a lot of fun. Most of the parents sent their kids in blue clothing!! :D Even my co-teacher wore a blue shirt in honor of Blue Day. Wouldn't you know it I forgot to do laundry so did not have anything blue to wear :( But we still had lots of fun. We put out all blue toys (well a good number of the toys were blue.) We filled our sensory table with water and slowly dropped in blue water color into the sensory table letting them mix and splash until the water was blue. (We added soap in the water so that hopefully the color washes out easier later on.) We also did art with blue construction paper and blue glitter and foam paint. Half the class can say the color blue now :D We will see tomorrow if they remember it :D

This for that - Redirection

I confess, saying "no thank you," "don't touch," "get down," does not always work on the very young. For some, they need something in place of of what is being taken away, they need a permissible action/behavior in exchange for the action/behavior you are trying to correct. In my class, I have a very lively bunch who love to climb on their tables. I can't tell you how many times I have told the to get down, feet on the ground, you are going to hurt yourself......! Only to turn around a minute later and they are at it again. I also have a little one who is fascinated by all the contraptions on teacher's desk. She is finally just tall enough to touch the key board and mouse or other item that are to close to the edge. Grrrrrr! She is constantly pulling things down! Well, about a week ago i got my aha! moment. I don't know why it took me this long, but I'm really excited. For the climbers, I not only tell the to get down, but I tell them where they CAN climb. They not only get down but they stay down (for a lot longer than before.) for the reachers, I found a high cabinet that I pit a bunch of books and fun item on, now, when they/she reaches up on my desk, I tell her/them to go to their "desk" to reach up on. So fr so good. They all immediately respond to the redirection when given an equally fun alternative.

Cool art project for toddlers....

If you don't mind a messy clean up, this was a really fun and cool (or should I say 'cold!'" art project for one year olds. We froze water colors into small cubes of ice. We used a thick canvas type paper for them to draw on. It was really cute how they had to figure out how to use the cubes to color with. One of the little ones looked up at me and said "cold" as she held her cube. They had a good time playing with their cubes both on the paper and on themselves! It was not only a great creative expression experience, but also a wonderful science and sensory experience for them.

*Pics coming soon*

At the Post Office

This week, we learned all about the post office. We looked at pictures of mail rooms, postal clerks, mailboxes, mail truck and more. The children made mailbox collages, colored letters and envelopes, and colored a picture of a postman. =) I even made a cardboard box covered with blue construction paper to look like a mail box. We stuffed their "letters" in the envelopes and pretended to mail their letters in the mailbox. The children really enjoyed stuffing the mailbox and then emptying it again so they could do it all over again! :D

Bug WeeK

This week is all about bugs! We have set out a variety of bug books with colorful illustrations. We have so far made paper plate ladybugs and pom pom caterpillars. We will also make a bumble bee collage and play with a variety of bugs (toys of course) in our sensory table filled with sand. Naturally, with spring here, there should be live bugs outdoors that we can find and study up close.

Spring!

Our grasslings at week one.

I love spring. It is a constant reminder that after hardship, comes ease. It is also a wonderful learning experience for young children to experience and explore changes in the world around them. Last week, we planted catnip and they have now sprouted. It was really fun. They filled their starter planters with soil. Then added seeds. Then covered the seeds with a little more potting soil. Every day, they watered their pots and watched for growth. As the season progress, I want to do more planting and gardening projects with them. :)

*Pictures coming soon*

Olympic Week Activities

The last week of February was a blast! We topic was toddler versions of "Olympic" winter sports and games. Our events included:

Hockey on our playground, one of our parents shared a hockey set with the class for the week.

Mountain Climbing, we stacked our classroom pillows under our futon couch mattress to make a mountain. We then covered it with a white cloth. They enjoyed climbing up, running/rolling and jumping on it. It was great for large motor skills development and expending a lot of energy!!!

"Ice" Skating around our classroom, we rolled up the large area rub in our classroom, took off our shoes and "skated" around the classroom. It helped that our floor had just recently been shined :D After watching a real ice skater on our classroom computer, the children joined me on our own "ice" floor.

Box sledding, we attached ropes to a medium sized box and took turns pulling and riding in the box. It was a great workout for the children pushing and pulling the box! :D It was also a great way to teach teamwork to the children, especially when one tried to go one way and another the other way.

Animals on Ice, I froze a large sheet of ice then placed it in our sensory table. I added a few animals into the table and let the children slide the animals across the ice.

As with all topics of interest, I love to incorporate art in our learning experiences. Some of our art projects included:

Team t-shirt, each child painted olympic colors onto their shirts. They then decorated it with glitter.

Ice cube painting, I froze different colored water color in an ice tray. Once frozen, the children used the cubes to paint white construction paper. The colors first looked really dark when wet, but as they dried, the colors were vibrant!

Gold medal art, instead of just giving them pre-made medals, we thought it would be more fun if the children participated in the making of their medals. They painted a precut card stock with yellow paint and gold shimmering water color. Once dried, we added the ribbon.

Olympic Rings coloring, was a fun activity for the children and a great way to develop fine motor skills.

On the last day of the week, we held a medal ceremony for the children. They each received their medal and took an olympic style picture next to our classroom banner. It was a lot of fun and the parents loved the photo documentation we kept of the week's events!

Fun Activity: Chinese Lion

*Photos coming soon*

With the coming of the Chinese New Year, Year of the Tiger, our class had a little fun learning all about Chinese traditions and festivities for the new year. I bought a really cute book, "Lucky New Year," by Mary Man-Hon. The book had flaps, pop-ups and other sensory activities they could explore. They enjoyed the book as well as some different chinese outfits we borrowed from other classrooms. But the REALLY fun project was making a lion for our lion dance parade. I found a cute video on Youtube of a lion dance. They loved the video and it gave them an idea of what to do with their own lion. For our lion, we:

1. scrunched and rolled a long sheet of yellow paper (2 yards). (teacher assisted)

2. stuffed the paper with plastic bags to make it thick. (teacher assisted)

3. glued colorful feathers onto the body of the lion.

4. attached three handles onto the body (teacher)

5. glued orange strips streamer onto a paper plate (Lion head) and tail of body.

6. glued picture of traditional chinese lion head on paper plate.

After our lion was complete and dry, we went for a parade around our center! It was fun!

*Note, the lion body was a bit heavy for my students (one year olds). They ended up dragging the lion instead of holding it up. So, if you have young students, I suggest you don't add plastic bags to the body. *

Apple Week!!

Today is Friday and ohh a happy day it is now that it is over. Looking back at this week, it was fantastic, therefore it is no wonder that I was totally exhausted today with little energy to keep up with the little ones. But I managed.

This week, we studied the ever so tasty fruit, the apple. We opened up a whole new experience for them. They saw pictures of where apples come from (trees), we read stories about apples and apple harvesting, I cut open 3 different apples (yellow, red and green which they got to taste!) and they saw the insides as well as the seeds, we made apple seed shakers (they loved shaking the shakers,) they made paper mache apples, and they made an apple tree collage. From the apples we used to see the apple seeds, we did an art project of apple printing! We even had an apple party of dried apples, applesauce, apple chips, apple wedges, and apple juice.

Apple Printing

Paper mache apples

We had quite a week in our classroom! It was a lot of fun, worth the exhaustion.

Hats and Headdress Around the World!

This week, Hats and Headdresses!!! We started this week with some really cool hats! It is fun when parents participate by contributing to class props. Today, the children got to play with some pictures of different cultural hats and headdresses, I also hung pictures around the room close for them to see but just out of reach of their demolition hands :D We read books with hats in them, we dressed up in hats during circle time and had a hat-masquerade around the room to "Barney and Friends" (yeah, you read me correctly!). I even made a book with cultural hats for the children to thumb through. :) We had quite a bit of fun today......I wonder what is in store for us tomorrow? :D :D :D

Camping Week 07.27-31.09

This week went by really quick despite the horrific weather we had! I mean triple digit weather! But we had lots of fun and made a neat little project! The children brought tents, flashlights, camping dishes, a sleeping bag and one even brought a snake! LOL Due to the heat, we did lots of water play outside. We also strapped a huge colorful parachute over our kiddy slide to make one large outdoor tent. For our project, we made pine cone bird feeders :D Jen brought in some pine cones from her yard and brought out all the ingredients. The children were hooked! We usually let them take turns mixing, pouring and getting their little hands dirty :p However, because of one of the ingredients, we thought it better to not get their hands dirty by using spoons to fill the pine cones with the bird feed mixture they helped to make. The feeders turned out cute. Next week, we will see if they attract any birds!

Next week, DINOSAURS!!!!! :D

A box city success!

So our box city and maze was a total success! We used recycled boxes from our center's kitchen and from boxes donated by parents. We chose this theme and project because we noticed a high interest in boxes from our toddlers. Every time we got a new box in the classroom or on the playground, they would come up with creative ways to play with it. there is almost always never enough boxes to go around. Not this week; this week is nothing but boxes, in the classroom and on the playground. After watching them the first day, I along with the other toddler teachers, decided to do something creative and fun. Our kids love to build (and destroy) things and they love tunnels. So we thought, why not build a city out of all the boxes with lots of tunnels?

It took us a while to get it together, it was really hot but with the help and excitement of the toddlers, our city grew. We had two tunnels, a pavillion, a sky light, and a couple of "escape" exits if the tunnels got a little too congested! We could barley get it finished before the little ones started making their tour of "Box City." I must say, this was an excellent project to do with the little ones.

Art project / Father's Day Gifts

We combined this sensory/art activity with father's day gifts. We started with art clay that the children pressed down into bowls to shape it. Then, they pushed in colorful shapes into the clay to make colorful mosaics. After the mosaics dried, we turned them over to let the children decorate it with water colors. For wrapping paper (Jen had every angle covered!) we let them paint large sheets of white paper. It was a lot of fun!