Winter Party!

Our last week of class before the holiday break is our Fun Club Winter Party, which the kids greatly anticipate and look forward to.

Students came in and went straight up to Mrs. Ramsay and Miss Julie to paint their Cinnamon Dough Snowmen with fabulous sparkling-snow glitter paint…

They then made beautiful decoupage collages of tissue paper snowflakes on aluminum foil squares…

We topped it all off with a discussion of two-dimensional (circle) and three-dimensional (sphere)objects as we rolled little spheres of cookie dough and baked snowball cookies. 2D is explained as flat, like a movie that we can’t reach into and grab, or a flat circle on the chalkboard…3D being like a 3D movie, or objects in space that we can actually hold, like the small ball I use to illustrate. We then discuss what is the same and what is different about a circle and a sphere. During our cooking time, we discussed other objects that were spheres as well…our list included: oranges, soccer balls, basket balls, hot air balloons, apples, snowballs, snowmen (as they are assembled), Earth, and the planets, to name a few.

Remember, any activity can become a rich learning activity if you just open your eyes and ears and look for teachable moments. Even passing the cooking bowl to stir (everyone does 1-2-3-pass it on!) can be done in French, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Mandarin. Senior Kindergarten practices skip counting by tens and counting backwards during cooking as well–something to do while the mixer is mixing.

The rest of our Winter Party was spent in playtime and a special movie with lollipops. (We watched “The Snowy Day”, “Click Clack Moo, Cows That Type”, and “The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash”, each about ten minutes long…all from an excellent Scholastic dvd series which I highly recommend. dvd book series)

All our little friends were sent home with their snowmen, snowflake pictures, and snowball cookies–and that is the way to end a Winter Party and begin a long holiday!

“Arnie the Doughnut”

First off, I selfishly chose this book because I find it completely hilarious. I cracked up more than the kids did, although they rather liked it as well.

If you haven’t had the opportunity, check it out: Arnie is a doughnut, born with chocolate icing and sprinkles. He eagerly looks forward to being purchased and going out into the wide world, which is exactly what happens. To Arnie’s great consternation, the man that purchases him, Mr. Bing, decides to eat him, at which point hilarious surprise and confusion erupts from both parties. Can a little doughnut create a different course of destiny for himself other than that of being eaten?

You’ll have to read it to see…interesting to ponder with preschoolers.

This week, we strung the beads that we made last week from our Sculpy clay. We also worked with Cinnamon dough to create little snowmen (our take-home gift for the upcoming holidays)…Senior Kindergarten handpainted glass vases instead. (Thank you, Robin, for the generous donations each year!) Lots of good fine-motor activities and also multi-step, multi-week projects which develop those listening skills, memory, and patience. Also, again, think of cooking as science…combining ingredients to form something new…using our senses to understand the properties of the materials we are using better…using our logic to determine why we wouldn’t be interested in eating these…

CINNAMON DOUGH:

1 cup ground cinnamon (I recommend purchasing this in bulk at a restaurant supply store–MUCH more economical if you have over a hundred to make as we did)

2 tablespoons of Elmer’s glue mixed well with 1/2 to 1 whole cup of applesauce

Combine wet with dry…you are looking for a dough consistency…too loose, add cinnamon, too dry, add more glue and sauce. Sprinkle work area with cinnamon before rolling out…dough rolls out better if kneaded thoroughly first. Cut to shape with cookie cutters. Don’t forget to make a hole with a straw if you are planning to hang these…they make AMAZING air fresheners or ornaments! Let them air dry on a cookie sheet, turning daily to prevent curling…takes about two days if you are in a dry, winter climate like Chi-town.

Also in preparation for next week’s Winter Party, we designed our own gift bags and cards as well…we emphasize a WINTER theme as opposed to a holiday theme. Our population tends to be pretty diverse, and I leave it for parents to determine what they want to teach their children about holidays, religions, and the lot.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie!

WEEK THREE of Fun Club brought us Laura Numeroff’s wonderfully fun books, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” and “If You Take a Mouse to School”.

Children love the cyclical nature of her books, along with the great illustrations and crazy animals…plus, the familiarity and repetition makes these great for emerging readers.

To activate our prior knowledge, we first used shapes to create our own little mice pictures. Children discuss what mice look like, how many ears and eyes and whiskers and whatnot…then they create on their own using the shapes provided. As you can see, they are far more creative when given the freedom to make it their own way within the given perimeters!

We also baked “Mouse’s Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies”. (For our diabetic and gluten-free students, we checked with parents first for the appropriate accommodations.) I love baking with the children because cooking is such a great lead-in to science, especially chemistry. They “taste test” most of the ingredients, smell the vanilla, help cream the butter, and sift the flour. They take turns and pass the bowls, usually doing “1-2-3-pass it on!” I use counting and simple questions to slip in extra Spanish and French…today it was “Que es el azucar?” and 1-20 en espanol. When all of the ingredients are mixed, the children roll their own cookies, getting SO messy in the process…but they are so excited to do it themselves, to get to experience what the dough feels like, to be the “chefs” (evidenced by the flour on our noses), and of course, to get to take home their cookies at the end of the day!

I’ve said it before…simple pleasures are so divine!

1 c. salted butter
3/4 c. brown sugar, packed (so cool to compare to sand at the beach / sandcastle making)
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs (important that they don’t eat raw dough because of this…also, what other animals lay eggs besides chickens? good discussion ensues.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla (how can it smell so good but taste so bad?!)
1 1/2 c. flour
2 c. oatmeal
1 1/2 semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine all ingredients in given order. Mix thoroughly. Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool. Hide from your mouse friends!