Another Smiley Face Lunch

Here is the smiley face I made for Snugglepuppy the other day as he now won't eat much of anything unless it looks like some kind of shape. I would have preferred peanut butter on the bread so we would have some protein, but he refused. The star is cheese. Not the healthiest lunch ever, but it gets him to try a variety of foods. 

Healthy Cute Kids Lunch

What can I say? He ate it all and asked for more... and then more carrots! 

Happy New Year to all! Hope 2014 brings you lots of health, happiness, and love :)

Chronicles of Summertime: Day 12

Day 12:
Today, we did a lot of indoor play. Snugglepuppy helped me put together an Elmo floor puzzle that was almost as big as him!

Snugglepuppy and I engaged in some dramatic play with food. We cooked some burgers and hot dogs and even baked a cake. All pretend of course. Being the cashier, he rang me up and gave me a total which, of course, I paid for with coins (or sometimes pickles, they look almost the same in our set, lol.)

Then I suggested we get out his little animals and some blocks to make a zoo as we haven't had the animals out in a while. We sorted the animals by water, insects, animals that fly, and all the rest we classified as animals with 4 legs. We also made a tree for the monkeys and gorillas with Megabloks. The snake didn't really have a home, so he kinda roamed free.

(Yes, he is sitting on a potty chair, lol)

After a while, the lion got a little naughty and started attacking other animals and biting them. They had to go to the doctor and rest for a while. Some of them needed bandages or surgery. But in the end, we just had to separate the lion into his own enclosure. 

We checked our seeds that we planted a few days ago, but they haven't started growing yet.

Grocery Store Field Trip

In order to schedule this field trip to Giant Eagle, we visited the website www.fieldtripfactory.com Here are some photos of what we did there.

We walked through the various parts of the store as the tour guide explained what was sold there. At the seafood section, we got fish stickers, at the deli, we tried turkey, and at produce, we tasted a slice of banana.

 We got to go back in the back to the cooler and freezer area. Also, he showed us the forklift, nicknamed Raymond.

 Look how high Raymond can lift those pallets!

Our fun tour guide also showed us how the compactor worked.

At the end, each child got to play cashier and scan some items on the scanner. We also got to take home some chocolate chip cookies!

Happy Shopping!

Nutrition Ideas

I'm not dead! Just thought I should start with that since I've been MIA for so long. Here are a few things we've been doing in our class focusing on our topic Food and Nutrition.

Found these pizza slice boxes in the back of a cabinet and decided to use them to make pizza. We added a little red paint to some glue to make the sauce, sprinkled on the cheese (shredded paper) and glued on pepperoni. Easy and fun!

Here is a great chart that my center purchased. It came with all the food cards sort. We put up pictures of the ones we ate for breakfast and lunch in this photo.

2 different graphs we made this week- favorite fruit and favorite vegetable. I liked doing the horizontal and vertical graph so that the children can see just a couple types of the many graphs there are. They get the opportunity to count, compare, and talk about more than and less than. Plus it is about them, so they had a good time. They were really anxious to see which fruit/veggie "won."

DIY Feltboard

Here is a felt board I made for the classroom awhile back and now use it with my son. It is just a piece of cardboard with black felt glued on and then a cardboard border with colored masking tape to decorate it. Very simple. I also made another one which I can't find now, but it was thicker. I used 2 empty fabric bolts from the store and taped them together. It takes a lot of tape, but was quite sturdy actually.

 Remember, you don't have to use felt to make pieces for your felt board. Laminated pictures with velcro on the back works as well. I made 4 sets of some different things that L is familiar with. The first is food as shown above.

Farm Animals

 Vehicles

Toys

To make these, I photocopied the images from a book I got at the library, colored them with crayons and then laminated and added the velcro.
I think this way is easier than cutting out felt, although I have made some of those as well. I like the idea I saw at library storytime for making felt pieces, using fabric paint for the details.

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE I LINK UP

Eggs-ploration

Last week, we did a little exploring with eggs. I brought in a hard-boiled and a raw egg for each class to talk about, predict what was inside and break them open to see what was actually inside. Here are some of the answers we got. Sorry I don't have any photos of the kids actually doing the activity as I was right in the middle of the action!

The kids had fun and learned a lot as well! It was exciting to witness their reactions as they watched the eggs being cracked open and waiting to see if their predictions were right. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE I LINK UP

Moon Dough

This was my first experience with Moon Dough although I have played around with Moon Sand a little. The kids thought that it was fun and a good substitute for playdough. I just love how light it is, like styrofoam.

As you can see, this set comes with tools to make food. My class loved it. They are always making cakes, cookies etc with the playdough.

You can practice some academic skills with this by making shapes, letter and numbers. Also, you can throw in some science by having them compare Moon Dough and Play Dough (or any other substance such as Oobleck, flubber, slime, etc). Have them describe how it feels, the texture, how it smells, how it moves, molds or pours, etc. But whatever you do, don't forget the most important thing, have fun!

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE I LINK UP

Storytime Sunday: Food

Here is my selection of books for our food study. I love the ones with the little veggie guys! The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza is a great book to show the steps in making a recipe. You can even have the children try to make the recipe on their own. The book The Doorbell Rang and another one I couldn't find on Amazon, How Many Ways Can You Cut a Pie? are really good for introducing division/fractions in a simple easy to understand way for young children.

Click HERE to see a past post I did about this book.

HAPPY READING!

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE I LINK UP

Adding Food-Related Items to Interest Areas

 We have started our food around the world study. Here are some of the things we added to our interest areas.

Class books we made by cutting out pictures of food from store ads. We have this in our library area. Below are some pictures of some of the pages.

This is added to the kitchen area along with the play food.  We will be setting up our own grocery store (pictured below with the open/closed sign)

To add some literacy to the area, we will have clipboards to make grocery lists, markers and paper to make signs and nametags for the workers, and coupons. For math, we will be adding a cash register with play money.

It is also good to have purses, wallets, and bags available for children to act out more realistically what they see their parents do when they go to the grocery store or supermarket.

These are cake making play dough toys which will be added to art area.

These rebus recipes are posted in the dramatic play area. Keep in mind visuals are good for all learners, but they can be especially helpful to dual language learners and children with disabilities. We will also be adding other recipes that families bring in that are traditional foods from their home countries. 

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHERE I LINK UP