Triangles and Circles

The Bunnies have been talking and learning about shapes. First, triangles and circles. The children painted some 3-D triangles with paint and of course, a little glitter. This group loves 3-D stuff in art! Also we read the book Ten Black Dots focusing on all the things you could make with circles. Then each Bunny made their own page for a class book. Owen was just beginning his page of four balloons in the photo.

We'll continue learning about shapes next week with squares and rectangles.

Mouse Paint

Earlier, I referred to the book Mouse Paint which is great for exploring color mixing. We did a bit of our own mouse paint in art. We dipped little mice (they look real, don't they!) in red, yellow and blue paint and then walked them across the white paper. Super fun!

Vehicles

I'm thinking that a few Bunny Rabbit moms have car floorboards that look like a little beach.

Color Mixing Experiment

We've been reading books about colors and color mixing. Mouse Paint is a wonderful story that nicely illustrates the three primary colors mixing into three secondary colors. We did a little science experiment so the Bunnies could see colors mixing in slow motion. We used clear pitchers filled with water. I squirted a layer of shaving cream on top of the water and then the children suggested color combinations to mix together. I dripped concentrated liquid watercolors on the shaving cream. Eventually the watercolors trickle down into the water, but the shaving cream slows the process down and allows for easy viewing of the colors blending together.
We watched for a few minutes then went to the playground. When we returned, we noticed that the red/blue combination still look mainly blue, not purple. I asked the children what we might do to make it look more purple. Wow - that took some higher level thinking skills to come up with the solution to add more red. They had to recall what we had already done, evaluate the situation, suggest solutions (more blue!), revise their thinking to adjust for new information (adding blue will make it even bluer!), suggest another solution and observe the results. This is the exact process that a scientist uses when conducting experiments.

We LOVE Books

So the Bunnies are really good at reading and enjoying books. The cleaning up part...umm...not so much.

heehee!

Snowflakes

For a couple of months now, a few Bunny girls have been hooked on making snowflakes. I showed Karis how to make one from construction paper one day. She taught the other girls how to make them, and she even dictated instructions for me to write so her mother could make snowflakes, too. She was convinced her mommy did not know how! After a few weeks of construction paper (which is thick when folded), I gave the girls coffee filters. Whew - they were much easier to cut. Oh my, they've made hundreds of snowflakes!

Tops

Recently we had some really neat spinning tops in our sensory table. Each top had a marker tip on the end so when it spun, the children could see the pattern the top made on paper. As you can see from the marks on the paper, some children could make the tops spin and some could not. No matter. It was fun anyway! One of the Bunnies said the top made a tornado. Do you see it?

Funny Glasses

We have these funny building components in our room. We call them "golfball builders", but I'm sure they have another name. They look like they have a golfball on one end, and the other end has a two pronged hook. They link together like a ball joint. At the beginning of the year hardly anyone could figure out how to play with these. Now that we are in the latter part of the year, these have become more interesting! Weston made glasses for me to wear, and Evan had to try them on, too. So cool!!