How To Make Beautiful Wire Wrapped Stone Pendants

Simply cut a 2 foot piece of wire, make a "rabbit ear" loop, place the loop at the top of the stone and wrap until you use all of the wire.

TIP: Rough stones are easier to wrap than polished stones.

I found these child sized wire cutters and long nosed pliers at our local craft store. How perfect.

Some popular works on our shelves in the primary room right now...

Air, Land, Water work...a classic Water color painting with a masking tape resist: first make a design with masking tape on water color paper, paint over tape onto paper, let painting dry, and remove tape to reveal design.

Marble painting: place three drops of each color of paint onto paper in tray, spoon marble into tray, tilt tray to roll marble through the paint, marble will leave a trail of paint to create an abstract design, remove painting and hang to dry, clean tray and marble, return to shelf.

Using a scale to weigh miniature vegetables has been very popular; A simple transfer work for our youngest students while our older fives and sixes are working on estimation, weight, addition, and more.

An extension for the hundred board (my Mom's idea, thanks Mom!). I cut 10 small 1/2" slits on each side of a piece of cardboard (recycled), the child wraps yard around the cardboard to create a 10x10 grid, and fills in each square with a number to create their own hundred board.

Tying small pieces of yarn on a mesh grid to create a small rug...

Sewing a button onto a thin netting fabric (tulle)--great for seeing through to the other side and watching the needle as it moves through.

Sewing buttons onto felt hearts and then stitching two hearts together to make a small pillow.

Clouds In Our Classroom

It's so much fun to lay on the grass in our play yard at school and watch the clouds float by.
This was the inspiration for a whole unit on clouds.

Types of clouds identification and classifying.

Cloud push pin work.

Cloud books from our local library...

Some more cloud work in our practical life area. The sewing a cloud pillow was off the shelf being used when I snapped this photo.

Painting clouds with a clothespin and cotton ball. Excellent fine motor practice.

Painting clouds with a "dot painter". Great for Toddlers and younger threes, although the older children enjoy the work as well.

Spring Practical Life Activities

I apologize for not posting in a while, sometimes my life as director, teacher, mother, wife, friend, educational consultant/speaker, artist, and writer (not necessarily in order of importance) gets a little out of balance and things, like this blog, slip through the cracks. Thanks for being so supportive and patient with my posts.

I thought I'd start back this month with some basic Practical Life activities on our shelves now for children ages 2 years old through 6 years old.

Here's some of what's on our shelves right now (a little out of order because the blog up-loader had a mind of it's own this evening):

Using a plunge-type measuring device to transfer water: Using a baster to transfer water:

Using a funnel to transfer water:

Simple spooning, one-to-one:

Spooning and sorting:

Advanced exploration of color mixing (follows a series of lessons on basic color mixing): Tonging stones between containers:

Cute little bunny containers used to hold sand for scooping:

Soap grating for making our own laundry detergent:

Penny polishing (we used baking soda and water as a polish):

Using a strainer to strain glass stones from water into a bowl:

Pouring water through a saltshaker tops (makes a cool sprinkling sound) into a pitcher. child must unscrew top to pour water back in...pouring and twisting, two skills in one activity:

More challenging one-to-two pouring activity with clear containers and syrup pitcher:

One-to-two pouring activity with opaque containers:

Simple one-to-one pouring with clear containers:

Seed Balls

Today we made seed balls!

It's a technique for planting in abandoned places, and often inhospitable land, that was developed in Japan by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer in natural farming. And its fun.

1 part seeds, 3 parts compost, 5 parts clay. Mix in a little water to make the consistancy of play dough. Roll into small balls and let dry in the sun. Then the fun part....5,4,3,2,1...throw!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103129515

It's Maple Syrup Time

Here in the Northeastern part of the United States the days are becoming warmer and at night the temperatures still fall below freezing. These are ideal conditions to collect rising sap from sugar maple trees. We are very blessed to have six large sugar maple trees in front of our school. Each year we tap the trees, collect the sap and boil it down into maple syrup. It is a wonderful expereince for our students as we include our maple syrup project in lessons on science, practical life, history, nutrition, language, math and more.

History of Bread: Field Trip to the Flour Mill

Yesterday our class took a field trip to a local flour mill. Farmer Ground Flour grinds local organic grain into flours that are sold regionally. It is really exciting to learn about where our food comes from. The children were excited and inspired.

Fingerprints --are you a whorl, arch, or loop?

We've been studying the human body all month. After learning about our skin, we decided to make fingerprints. Here's the activity:

Pencil, paper, clear tape and your fingers (or toes!).

Rub a dark spot of pencil graphite onto a piece of paper. We used scraps of card stock for additional durability.

Rub your finger over the graphite.

Place clear tape onto your finger (sticky side touching graphite).

Place tape onto white paper to see fingerprint.

Now it's time to study and classify your print. Now this is real police work!
http://www.ridgesandfurrows.homestead.com/fingerprint_patterns.html

Analyzing fingerprints may be a little bit challenging for our younger friends.

Here's a great pattern observation introduction game for toddlers and younger preschool children.

Copy Me Game

A simple game fun for all ages. One player creates a pattern the other copies it. wonderful for building visual-perceptual and fine motor skills for reading and writing.

History of Bread: Lesson 1- Grinding the Wheat

And the Little Red Hen asked, "Who will help me grind the wheat?"

Wow, no wonder why it was so hard for Red Hen to find help, this is hard work!

Here are some locally grown, organic wheat berries bought in the bulk food section of our grocery store. Try smelling them, feeling them, tasting them, chewing them....I wonder who thought of grinding them? Who discovered flour? All great questions to ponder with your children.
The set up is simple: a spice grinder, a spoon, one container with wheat berries, and one container for the ground flour.