Rainbow Spaghetti

Rainbow spaghetti sensory play was an amazing idea. One of the best ideas I have had yet. The kids absolutely loved it and it went perfect with our rainbow study (following along with The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister) However, keeping said spaghetti in the sensory table for two days was an awful idea. Luckily I checked the spaghetti on Friday before leaving for the weekend and avoided returning to some crazy science experiment on Monday. At least the kids enjoyed having the door propped open so I could stick the table outside while I cleaned out that awful disaster.

Back to the good news of the experiment. My rainbow spaghetti process:

• Boil spaghetti - I used two large boxes and one regular size box of spaghetti. This was definitely enough for 8 kids. I probably could have gotten away with a little less.

• Let spaghetti cool then separate into containers for coloring

• Add food coloring and vegetable oil as desired. I used quite a bit of food coloring  (10-20 drops) to make the color as dark as possible. Which is why I had to run to the grocery store at 10:45 pm to get more food coloring. The vegetable oil was to keep the spaghetti slimy. You honestly don't need to use too much of this. Just enough to keep it from sticking together. I also had a friend suggest using coconut oil next time. The vegetable oil flared up some dry skin problems on my hands. I must not have mixed my red and blue very well because my purple looks awful in the picture below. However, in the table it looked really good.

 The kids absolutely loved digging into the spaghetti. Surprisingly they weren't at all hesitant. I poured each color in separately and they had them all mixed within about 30 seconds. I threw in plates, bowls, and spatulas/spoons we had in our kitchen play area. I also had 3 tongs at home I bought for the husband's graduate percussion recital for about $2 at one of those party stores. They loved using the tongs so I would highly recommend investing in those.

  

 

With how cheap this project was I would definitely consider doing it again. Tips for next time though:

• Use the biggest pot possible to boil all the spaghetti in so I don't have to do two rounds. Only reason I had to do this was because I decided I wanted more spaghetti after boiling the first batch.
• Make sure to have enough food coloring to avoid late night trips to the store.
• Try coconut oil and hopefully my hands won't be in pain for the next three days.
• Clean spaghetti out of sensory table the same day as put in the table. If I had cleaned out the spaghetti and refrigerated it, there is a chance I could have gotten another go out of it.

Sensory table activities are probably some of my favorite even though they are the messiest. Most activities in the table will keep the kids attention for at least half an hour. Any ideas of what to try next in the table are definitely appreciated!

Green

My interaction with the aforementioned child and the color green. My interaction with him in class today approximately three weeks after the conversation from the previous post.

Me: (As I'm painting his hand red) What color is this?
Child: Green
Me: Say red
Child: Red
Me: (As I'm painting his other hand yellow) What color is this?
Child: Green
Me: Say yellow
Child: Yellow

 Well, I got what I asked for. He said the color green. And he at least said multiple color names! Yay! I putting that in the win column.

In other news, I went on a cleaning frenzy this afternoon. A half hour before the end of my shift. As the eleven kids are all over the place. With toys strewn every where. Good choice, me. Apparently though I need to cut back on the art projects. I can't even count how many stacks of artwork I had lying around the room to be sent home. And please don't ask how many art-projects-in-the-works-Ms.-Kali-needs-to-put-the-finishing-touches-on-them-but-doesn't-have-the-time-or-energy-to-do-so I found. I bet you can guess where they all went. Yup, straight into the trash. Teacher of the year, right here! Oh boy....

On a final note, I may have accidentally taught a two and a half year old the term "doody head." Whoops.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

So this was meant to be posted last night (Monday). But I ran out of energy and was then drowning in fish. No, really. I was tracing, cutting out, and laminating fish. Anyways....

Last Friday wrapped up our month long unit on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. This started out as just wanting to read the book in class because I found a movie version on Netflix that I wanted to show in class. Once I read the book though I came up with some ideas of activities and crafts to go along with the book. And each week when it came around to writing my lesson plan I found more and more ideas that I wanted to try. So a month later I think we are finally ready to move on to something else. Although, I continued to get requests for the caterpillar today. Nothing makes a teacher feel better than when the kids actually want to do an educational activity.

Our focus in the past few months has been colors. It started out as just matching pretty much anything I could think of (for example: here is a pig, where is another pig?). Honestly, I don't even know how we got sucked into matching color. Probably all the great color matching activities on pinterest. So we started focusing on colors. We seem to be pretty accomplished at matching colors. Color naming is a different story. I'm pretty sure when I ask what color something is, each child picks their favorite color word to say and goes with it. Then there is the child that just says, "mine." This is the interaction I continuously have with him.

Me: (After already holding up the same color marker 8 other times and all of us saying green) What color is this?

Child: Mine?

Me: It's green!

Child: Mine?

Me: Say green.

Child: Mine

Me: Say green

Child: Mine

Me: Grrrreeeennnn

Child: Mine

Me: Grrrr....eeeeennnn

Child: Mine

Me: Say green first.

Child: Mine

Me: Green

Child: Mine

Me: Say green

Child: Mine

Me: Here's your marker......

Needless to say, we have been extremely focused on naming colors. Glory be to God, we are making some progress! Well, most of us are....

The Very Hungry Caterpillar was not only a great opportunity to talk about colors but also healthy foods. Our center recently received a grant to teach Healthy Habits so we are supposed to be talking about sometimes and anytime foods and encouraging healthy activities. The Very Hungry Caterpillar ate a diversity of food which was great to start a discussion on sometimes and anytime foods. I found some amazing activities to correlate these two focuses and of course started another pinterest board dedicated solely to The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

We kicked off the unit by of course reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar. As I read the book I made sure to make it as interactive as possible. Anybody who has read a book to a toddler understands how quickly their attention strays. As long as I keep them focused and looking for something I can get them to sit and listen. Maybe they will even remember something. The most important interactive part of the book was the first five days the caterpillar ate. I had them tell me what color and what food the caterpillar ate each day. By the third time we read the book they were telling me without me even asking.

We made a giant caterpillar out of paper plates. Each child painted a plate different color then we put the caterpillar on the wall. I found pictures of each of the foods the caterpillar ate and we pasted them onto the paper plate that matched the color of the food. Sorry the photo below does not show the an up close view of the food on the caterpillar.

 I then found pictures of the fruits he ate the first five days for us to marble paint. On activities such as these when they are required to take turns I also get out something to color with. I don't have to worry about them touching my paint, fighting with each other, or losing interest and walking away. We painted the same amount of fruits the caterpillar ate (meaning each child got to do at least two).

To keep up our discussion on healthy foods, I tried to include a food craft or activity each week. The first week we did carrot footprints which were super adorable as you can see. That was followed by painted red apples which never got cut out (way to go me...) followed up with our "Healthy Foods" and "Sometimes Foods" discussion.  Since they don't quite understand the concept of time yet we have been discussing what foods are good for our bellies. A food that tastes good may not be good for our bellies. If we eat too much of the sometimes foods they will make our bellies hurt. I'm not sure how well this is working yet but they seem to understand that fruits and veggies are anytime foods. Maybe eventually it will sink in.

 There have been many more projects correlating to The Very Hungry Caterpillar seeing as I try to an art activity every day and we have been focused on this book for the last month. But more about those activities and crafts in a future post.

If you like any of these ideas, want to see some how-to's or would like to see any other ideas I had/tried check out my pinterest boards at www.pinterest.com/kalielayne.

More to follow soon.....

Organizing the insanity

As I approach the end of my first year as a toddler teacher I have begun to realize how much I owe to my toddlers. Every day I seem to come up with a new solution for a problem I'm having or spend countless hours conversing with coworkers and scouring the internet for solutions. Pinterest has become my best friend when creating lesson plans (seriously, you should see how many boards I have related to toddler art, activities, resources, bulletin boards, etc). However, what I have come to notice in my endless hours of pinterest each weekend (ask my husband how easily I get sucked in) is that all the great ideas/blogs I find seem to come from stay at home moms. Don't get me wrong, they have some spectacular ideas. But I spend a lot of my time trying to decide if this activity done with 1-2 toddlers is going to work in a classroom of 10-12 toddlers and also if I have the same resources available to me at work. I work for a nonprofit "learning center" so whatever isn't available (of the very little we have there) comes out of my own pocket. Trial and error has become a new protocol in the classroom. Some things I have determined should never ever be done with a group that large or cost way too much money for me to do again (no more buying and coloring 9 pounds of rice). Others are a major hit that I want to do every single day! The only problem is, through all the insanity I have trouble keeping track of what works, what doesn't and what I want to try next. I surround myself with lists that help me organize my brain temporarily. But then the list ends up in a basket beside my bed with the countless toys that find their way into my pocket and enjoy the drive home with me every day. List: gone. Never to be seen again.

Hence, this blog. Inspired by Insanity: Life in the toddler department. A place for me to organize my thoughts, post pictures of results, and make lists of what needs to be done/what should be tried. Maybe I will even throw in a hilarious and/or endearing toddler moment every once in a while.And maybe in the process of  this creative chaos I can help another toddler teacher out there somewhere with their struggles. I may not have a lot of experience behind me working with toddlers but I like to think I have some great ideas to contribute. In the meantime, any suggestions/comments (only helpful, please!) in response to future postings are highly welcome. 

So for today, no ingenious ideas or adorable toddler artwork to share. I have fish to cut out, fishing poles to be made, things to laminate and in-laws to prepare for (fish/fishing pole are not for the in-laws...although, who knows, maybe they could be my next test subjects). All you get today is an introduction. As I tell my toddlers, you'll be okay. Just breath and get over it. More will come soon. Hopefully in the next couple of days here. Lots of great ideas to share as long as the insanity doesn't get me first.

Speaking of insanity, they finally fixed the roof in my classroom! There is a giant crack where the wall meets the ceiling. It looks as though they tried to prepare it at one point with dry wall tape. Whenever the wind blows, which has been quite often lately seeing as it is storm season, the wind gets trapped in between the ceiling and the dry wall tape and vibrates at a ridiculously loud volume. For the past, oh, 3 months of so this has been going on. And it always seems to start at nap time and continue on for the rest of the day. So as my kids are yelling over top of this absurdly loud noise (we have high ceilings making everything echo and sound three times as loud) my boss walks in and says, "you should play some music over top of it to try to cover the noise." Sometimes I wonder if people think about what they are saying before it comes out of their mouth.....Anyways, noise fixed! Maybe the insanity will recede a little bit this week....