I apologize for the delay of the 'G' week blog. Due to the death of my spiritual leader a few weeks back, it has been tough on my side to be consistent with my daily routines. Schedules have gone hay-wire with a lot of time spent at the masjid (my worship place) grieving and mourning. Also, I will be traveling out of the country beginning next week until March (2/18 to 3/3) to perform certain customs.
During the 'G' week, we got a chance to explore activities with 'Glue'. Some of the things we did that children asked us to open again and again were...
Using colored glue sticks and sprinkling colored sand over. Some chose to make glue puddles using liquid school glue, and then adding variety of materials to it. Some even drizzled glue over the construction paper and made their own open-ended creations. Every child had a different way of using the same material.
We made fabric collages too...
One of the most loved sensory projects was making the 'Gacky Goo'. We followed a receipe which used school glue as the main ingredient. We chose to make it Green since the color started with the letter 'G'.
None of us had made this before and we teachers awaited to see how our Purple Room friends were going to explore it. The results were astonishing!
Making the gooeey dough!
We discovered that when held up in the air from end to end, the goo keeps stretching and growing by itself!
Wrapping a burrito!
Making finger/hand prints...
Seeing it stretch and grow...
The next da,y I added animals at the station.
They started to walk the animals on the gooey blob and compare and contrast the varied footprints. Some made track of different animals and followed them by "walking" on it with their fingers and saw how their fingers left a track too.
Some chose to dress their animals up for winter and made coats for them :-)
It was just the beginning of their creative exploration.
Another activity that they loved was dripping glue with the popsicle stcik and adding glitter. Many said they created their own universe with starry skies.
For letter 'G' we made G collages using cutouts of gorilla, grapes, colored glue, glitter glue, green and gold colors, and letter G stamps.
We also made a gingerbread man! I have to tell you a fun conversation that came up. Some friends said that we have to be very watchful when we make the gingerbread man. I asked them, "Why?" They said that the gingerbread man will run away and escape if we don't watch them, and then they might not have anything to eat. Hahahaha!
In this cooking project we worked with the concept of "doubling." For example, we discussed, "If we have to put two eggs in one packet, how many do we need in two packets?"
Later during the week we made our own version of 'G'hosts!
Adding an odd number of eyes (their idea)...
We did a small 'g'ardening project which was in a box. It was 'g'rowing a mushroom 'g'arden. We are watering the box twice everyday, and we already are seeing some mushrooms sprout!
We are thankful for J's mom, Sarah, who voluntered to talk about the Chinese New Year, the year of the Horse. She got many fun things for show and tell and also did many activities in the class. We ended with a fun treat of sweet rice crackers.
Making a 'g'alloping horse..
Finding the way on the Lunar New Year maze to help the horse find the orange...
Enjoying the rice cracker...
Additional things we did during the week were working as a team with puzzles and making our new play dough.
Warmly,
Rashida.
