preschool – Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs..

This week our theme was plants and gardens! We needed a break from our insect friends, although we start again with them soon. We apparently like bugs in our family.

This was a fun week, and so seasonal to what we are doing around our house as well. Our seeds that we planted a few weeks ago are sprouting so this was good timing – hmm, almost like I planned it..

We learned about the parts of a plant, the life cycle of a plant, and then talked about what sorts of plants we can eat. We worked on numbers and math and the letter F, on sequencing and matching, and on writing and fine motor skills as well.

I really dig our Kandinsky Circles Flower art project! I have stumbled into finding different projects for our weeks that are based on famous artists. We have done a Matisse snail, now these.

Then today I decided to do a special mini-unit day about strawberries! It is the new moon for this lunar cycle, the Strawberry Moon, so I thought it fit very nicely! It dovetailed nicely into our lessons about plants, and strawberries are just sort of fun and cheery, which we needed on this gloomy rainy day.

I am in love with this art project too. We used his little hands and he dabbed on the yellow paint with his fingers. We also read Audrey Wood’s book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. Such a fun book! I also appreciate the fact that our strawberry plant cooperated and produced flowers for us today.

It was a fun week, but I have to say I liked our strawberry day the best.

Resource Round-Up:

Growing Plants by Mrs. Jones Creation Station

Strawberry Patch Printable Pack by Simple Living Creative Learning

Books:

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The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear || In the Vegetable Garden Sticker Book || The Tiny Seed || If You Plant a Seed || The Case of the Growing Bird Feeder

Art Projects:

Kandinsky Circle Flowers

Handprint Strawberry Craft

Extras:

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Garden Building Set (Wyatt loves this way more than I expected!)

Overall this was a fun week! Next week we move on to Ponds and Frogs!

Our theme for the next few weeks revolves around caterpillars and butterflies, and I try to incorporate art and crafts in as much as I can in the afternoons. We made the cutest little caterpillar the other day, and it was so simple. Too simple honestly, to make a blog post about it, but I wanted to share because it is so simple, if that makes sense. Plus, Wyatt absolutely loved it!

Last week we made a rainbow out of Fruit Loops cereal and I had a bunch that we had on the table that didn’t get used. We couldn’t eat them and I didn’t want to waste them so I bagged them up for future crafting days. Well, yesterday was rainy and dreary, the perfect day to make a cheery little craft. I pulled the Fruit Loops out and we got to crafting!

All you need to make these are pipe cleaners, Fruit Loops (or any cereal that is similar), glue, and scissors. That’s it! I cut the pipe cleaners in half, and then folded over one end to make the head. Then I gave it to Wyatt to string the cereal on. When he got to the end, I folded over the other end, cut little pipe cleaners for legs and antenna, folded them into V shapes, and voila, we were done! It was that simple. But the beauty of this whole project was that Wyatt wanted to keep making them. He must have spent an hour making them, adding Fruit Loops, taking them off, adding new ones. And it was was such good occupational therapy for him too, with the fine motor skills involved and it forced him to use both of his hands together.

So while these are not correct in any way shape or form, they are cute and cheery, simple to make, and my kiddo loved making them! A win all the way around in my book!

And we now have an army of colorful caterpillars!