"Walking Water": a photo blog

I found this activity at Irresistible Ideas for Play- Based Learning, and my class gave it a go!

Once ALL the liquid was in the bottom cup, they wanted to do it again.  Instead of starting over, I just put blue water in the top cut and left the red in the bottom and put in a fresh paper towel.  They could see that the red traveled up the paper towel and blue down, but the red never made it all the way up into the cup- however the blue made it down and mixed to make purple.




















It was a pretty cool experiment, surrounded by a lot of excitement.  Some of them actually watched it for large chunks of time, just watching it slowly move.

More light exploration (stained glass art project)

Our school is lucky enough to be housed by a church that has beautiful stained glass windows.   Sometimes we walk upstairs to the church and sit in the sanctuary, because it's nice to stretch our legs for the walk upstairs, and with the light reflecting through the predominately blue and purple glass it is incredibly peaceful,  and nice to have a few quiet moments together on moody, antsy days.
Once a year (or sometimes more) we take a "field trip" to the church upstairs specifically to look at the stained glass. On the best days, like today, when there is a little sun, we can stretch out our hands and see the colored shapes cast on them by the sun shining through the windows.  We can get up close to the glass and admire it, and peer through at the yellow, or green, or purple world outside the colored windows.  We can admire the great height of the glass, and the beauty.  There is a lot to be seen on a trip to an empty church.

 Even the boys are fascinated by the stained glass.

After there has been plenty of time to look, admire, and explore, we head back down stairs.  

We get a little fine motor practice in cutting up tissue paper into small shapes...

Decorate strips of clear contact paper with the tissue paper... (some children discovered that if you put one piece of tissue paper over another it would make a new color)...

... and stick it to our own windows to enjoy just a little taste of beauty of the church in our own room. 

In other news, we added old CDs to our cave of wonders which, when the flashlights were on them, created rainbows in the cave!  

"thing" painting

One of my favorite things is to find new ways to paint and new things to paint with.  (I also love finding new interesting tools for discovery the sensory table).  The honest truth is that if I gave children the same paints in the same way, there are some of the kids in my class that would NEVER tire of it.  There are others, however, that only want to paint when I come up with a new way for them to paint or a new thing to paint with. So it is for them (and admittedly for my own amusement) that I search for new ways to paint all the time.

While shopping at Target the other day (this was probably a quick trip in for toothpaste and dog food), I stopped in the "one spot" bargain section (where they have treasures for either a dollar or sometimes 2.50). It was in this section that I found some dish washing tools that you will see below and thought immediately of painting.  I put in each container 1/2 liquid tempera paint and 1/2 water, and shook well then put it out on the table with paper to paint.  Now, I did end up telling them that they had to push the button on the top to get the paint out after hearing several complaints of "it doesn't work!"  Once they had this working, however, they really had some fun.

This activity didn't appeal to everyone, but it had a few visitors that don't frequent art opportunities, and a few of the regulars made dozens of paintings.

The letters on the paper above, by the way, are actually created by a child attempting to spell dog on her painting for some reason.

"If it hasn't been in the hand, it can't be in the brain"

"If it hasn't been in the hand, it can't be in the brain."  Bev Bos

Here are some ideas to accomplish just that.  Most of these things can be used multiple ways- in and out of sensory bins, at home and in schools.  

#1: Mixed dried beans 

Last week we had beans in the sensory bin (actually there were peas and corn as well). This isn't really anything special, but it it really pretty and promotes sorting.  They were specifically fascinated by picking out the huge white lima beans. 

The mix of kidney beans, pinto beans, white lima beans, black beans, black eyed peas, split peas, and left over indian corn kernels make up this mix, but really any mixture of beans/ etc will do.  Below you can see there were spoons scoops and cups in the sensory bin but also sometimes ice trays or muffin tins can encourage sorting as well.

#2: Goop (also known as "Cloud Dough")

Last week we also made what my kids call "goop"- a concoction borrowed from Lisa Murphy, the Ooey Gooey Lady.   This mixture is made up of only two ingredients flour and baby oil- so you have double sensory smell and touch.  (I love the smell of baby oil).  

I let them help make the goop, they decided to have just slightly more runny than doughy.  

They also wanted to add a little blue.  

After a while they asked if we could have more goop in the sensory bin, so we made more- this time the "goop" was much more like dough.  

#3:  Moon Sand

Recently, a parent donated four small bags of Moon Sand with "Moon Sand toys" to our classroom.  While, yes, you can make really cool sensory things on your own or use just wet sand, Moon Sand is pretty cool, and versatile.  For anyone unfamiliar with it, it holds shape like wet sand and never dries out.  This Moon Sand came with some houses, a swing, some cars, and some people molds. They didn't care much about the swing or houses, but they (of course) loved the car, and also really loved the people molds. 

I put it out on box tops, (that we seem to have an abundance of), for easy set up and clean up.  They seem to enjoy it as a quiet activity.  This is also really great for any children that require sensory input. If he or she starts losing control I can just pop the top on the table and ask the child if he or she would like to play with Moon Sand (the answer is always yes).  For an "on the go" option, I can put it in a ziplock and stick it in my apron pocket, then when I need it I just hand the bag to the child and let him or her squeeze the bag.  It works for sensory input or as a transition activity.  


#4: Water, ice, snow

See entry here about water play.  There is really no end to what they can do playing with water in any form.  






#5:  Colored Noodles, Scented Rice


I took full advantage of the snow day today to create some new things for collages, mosaics, and our sensory bin.  


The scented rice idea came from this entry at teachpreschool.org. I modified it slightly, however.  In a bowl I mixed 2 packets of Koolaid with 3 teaspoons of boiling water and a teaspoon and a half of rubbing alcohol, until completely dissolved.  Next I put this liquid into a ziplock bag containing six cups of dry rice.  I mixed the rice and liquid completely.  Then I laid it out for four hours on wax paper before putting it in an air tight container. 

For the pasta I started with the instructions found here, but, again, modified it.  I used only a teaspoon of food coloring, and three teaspoons of rubbing alcohol, then added it to a ziplock bag containing 3 cups of pasta.  The instructions at the website above suggest that there should be more food coloring and less pasta, but as you can see below the pasta is quite dark and while they will lighten a bit when they completely dry, it will not be a lot.  

Purple mini rotinelle (wheels)

Green mini farfalle (bow ties)

mini orecchiette (shells)

Hot pink mini radiatori (nuggets)

Have fun and enjoy; I know we will. 

The evolution of paintings and the painter

Admittedly, I did not know that much when I first starting teaching.  I made a lot of mistakes, and learned a lot along the way. (To be fair to myself I had a lot of good instincts and completed each year far above just survival).  Still, looking back, I wish I had known what I know now, and I am sure that as time goes on I will wish that again for the present time.


When I first started teaching I could not figure out why most of the paintings my students made looked something like this:

These paintings are actually a little more colorful and imaginative than most of the others I had back then.  Every time I "let them" paint, this is what they made: brown pictures, or various shades of brownish- blackish green pictures, usually covered with paint coast to coast.  Why?  I could see in their drawing that they had miraculous figures and doodles, but why didn't they translate over to painting?  On one hand, it was okay, because they liked painting and painting is a great art/ sensory/ motor activity.  On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel something was wrong, especially when I saw other teachers had their class creating paintings something like this:

When I broke down and asked a teacher I knew why her children's pictures were different than mine she said that she made them not mix the colors on their paper. There was a voice in my head that said that this could not be right.  Children needed to be able to experiment! They needed to have control over their own creative process.  Still, I didn't know what I was doing wrong.  

I started trying to use water colors; the results for some children seemed "better" but many of the children still ended up making pictures that looked like their other paintings, just watered down.  

My revelation came on a day near a holiday when I had just four children there.  I got out the paints and put them on the table with paper and let them paint; nothing was different... yet.  They asked if they could paint another, and I let them, (still nothing different), but they continued to ask for more paper to paint more and I continued to let them paint.  I let them paint as many pictures as they wanted.  

Then, to my amazement, the figures from their drawings started to appear! They made interesting designs that I had never seen before and experimented with the paint in new ways! Paintings that probably looked something like this:

I am horribly embarrassed by not knowing this when I started teaching, and I wish often that I could go back to that class and LET THEM PAINT!  But, I am sharing this because maybe someone else can learn from it, or maybe someone else made the same mistake.

Two paintings three times a week is not enough.  Children learn through repetition and experimentation (which I knew, but didn't apply to art).  Every time a child steps up to the art supplies they are experimenting.  Every time a child uses a new art supply they have to learn as many possibilities for that art supply that they can.  They can't decide NOT to paint their entire paper brown until they know that mixing all the colors together and rubbing them across the paper makes a brown, crunchy painting.  They cannot create many possibilities until they have made others and eliminated other possibilities as being "undesirable" to themselves.  Every time I put out a new supply, most children make a brown picture or a picture with a lot of mixed colors and a lot of paint.  (In the words of Bev Bos "children need to use too much").  I see this over and over again.  Not only do they learn about the texture of the paint and about color mixing, but they are teaching themselves self regulation.  They are teaching themselves how much paint is "too much,"  that all the colors together make brown, and they don't like brown. Until they decide what they do not want to do, until they have eliminated that possibility, they cannot possibly do anything else... and how could I expect them to? 

The way to teach them how to make purple is not to tell them and then show them, it is to give them the materials, walk away, and let them figure it out for themselves. Furthermore, telling them not to mix colors is cheating them from a learning experience, not teaching them SELF regulation (since the regulation is, after all, being done by the teacher), and I am certain that this can qualify as some sort of torture since we KNOW they are just dying to mix those paints. 

Now that I know this, I do almost every art project at least two days in a row and we have painting or some other new art medium EVERYDAY.  The children can make as many paintings or pictures as time allows for.  I wish I had known this my first few months, so that the children had a FULL YEAR to paint  and create like children ought to be able to.  I cheated them, for months, I cheated them.  In the end, however, it is them I have to thank, for teaching me how to be a better teacher.  

The worst smelling, best fun ever

I have a student that often tells me that the activities that we do are the "best ever." The day I let them go swimming in shaving cream was the "best ever," the day we spray painted snow for the first time was the "best ever," and the project I am about to tell you about was "REALLY the best ever."  At least that's what I am told.  
Inspired by an article by Bev Bos I set about preparing for a huge smelly purple cabbage juice experience.  

The inside of a cabbage is amazingly beautiful!

The first thing I did (as instructed by Bev Bos) was to chop 4 purple cabbages into medium pieces and boil it in two huge kitchen pots with water a few inches away from the brim.  

After the cabbage was floppy and the juice a very dark purple, I strained both pots into large bowls.  I combined the floppy cabbage into one of the soup pots and boiled it again.  I probably could have done this one more time before discarding the cabbage, but at this point I was up to my elbows in cabbage juice.  

I then used a funnel to transfer it to every available pitcher and jug we had in the kitchen. 

I haven't bothered to do the actual conversion to see how many gallons of cabbage juice there were exactly- but there were at least 10 (there are more jugs on the second level of the cart shown above).  The cabbage juice sat in my class overnight like this for use the next day.  To my knowledge this did not make it smell any better or worse than it did right out of the pot.  

I had over 40 plastic dixie cups set out with a tablespoon of lemon juice in each and over 40 paper dixie cups set out with a tablespoon of baking soda in each.  I also had 14 cups, (for 7 children that day), half full of cabbage juice set out.  THIS WAS NOT ENOUGH, and would have been even more insufficient if the 10 children that is normal for my class had been there.  They went through the cups of baking soda and lemon juice in about ten minutes and the cabbage juice cups in about half an hour.  It was an uphill battle from the ten minute mark on to keep the children supplied with all the baking soda and lemon juice they needed.  In addition to needing cabbage juice refills at the half hour mark, we ran out of the GALLON of lemon juice that we had and so, had to improvise with vinegar.  This was a good substitute, but vinegar, as you might imagine, is slightly more reactive with the baking soda than the lemon juice was.  It became a huge "who can make their cup overflow- competition,"  which was fine.  In the end we went through about a pound and a half of baking soda, a gallon of lemon juice, a gallon of vinegar, and hundreds of tiny cups. However, it was all worth it.  

Here are some pictures I managed to take before the shortages: 

You can see both the colors and some of the reactions from these pictures although they worked up some much more intense reactions.  As you probably could have surmised, when coming in contact with an acid the cabbage juice becomes bright pink red, with a base it become blue and then green because cabbage is an natural indicator.  The colors are really stunning.  

I had one little girl who came late, after everyone was done, and luckily I had set aside enough vinegar, baking soda, and cabbage juice for her to do the experiment.  She did this differently than any of the other children;  All of them, for the most part, spent their time dumping baking soda and vinegar/lemon juice into the cabbage juice, but she started by putting cabbage juice into the little cups that held either baking soda or vinegar.  

Hopefully you can tell, despite the poor quality of this picture, that she ended up with cups of bright pink and cups of dark green.  She then dumped them all back into the big cup and asked me to refill her little cups with vinegar and baking soda, which I did, and then dumped the now purple liquid in her cup back into each small one.  This time the vinegar cups were a magenta and the baking soda cups a dark indigo.  She repeated this procedure a few times before going the route all the other children did in the end- overflowing her cups.  

Needless to say the children were completely in love with this experiment.  They learned and observed so much.  I fully anticipate to be asked when we are doing this again for at least a month.  We will do it sometime again, but my nose needs a break from the smell of cabbage and this time I will know to have out at least a couple hundred cups of baking soda and lemon juice before starting.  

At the end of the day each child went home with a reused mini water bottle full of cabbage juice, and a note explaining to parents what this bad smelling drink was and what to do with it.  I know of at least two children who went home last night and relived the excitement of the cabbage juice with their parents and siblings in the kitchen, and hopefully more of them will tonight and tomorrow.  

If you are attempting this in the full scale project version some words of advice:

*Have a lot of materials in "unlimited quantities" prepared for them.  They fly through the supplies. 

*Double line several trash cans to have near the project site to make clean up easy

*Have a lot of towels prepared to clean up overflow

*Have as many adults as possible to help keep things running smoothly.  (We did this with two adults and really needed at least two more)

*Be prepared for your classroom to smell of cabbage juice the next day and be prepared with the appropriate equiptment

Enjoy!