Spring Auction Update

I have been working on my spring auction item. Here are the trees printed on the canvas. I used a sharpie paint pen to paint the trees. I had to use three coats of paint, but I am really pleased with how they turned out!

More Apples

Here are some more fun apply activities that we are doing. In the dramatic play center, the students can pick apples off of trees and make apple pie.

We have our September words on a board so the students can practice reading and writing them.

We tried apple slices, apple sauce, apple juice, and apple jelly and made a graph of which snack we like the best. I was surprised that the students liked apple jelly the best.

We also sang a song about Johnny Appleseed. If you have ever see the Disney cartoon about Johnny Appleseed, then you have heard the song "The Lord's Been Good To Me". I used the same melody, but changed the words. Here are the words that I made up.

John Chapman was his name.

Born 1774

He planted seeds and helped those in need.

He traveled all around the land.

Yes, we remember him.

We made these two cute crafts that I bought from A Cupcake for the Teacher. The kids did a great job!

 This is the Johnny Appleseed hat.

Music Masters: J.S. Bach

This year I created a new program that I call Music Masters. Each month we learn about a new composer. This month we are learning about J.S. Bach. I teach the students about the composer, then we do a writing activity about the composer, and finally we fill in the notes on one of the composer's songs.

I gave the students a paper with the outlines of the notes, I projected the same paper onto the board and we filled in the notes together. They did an awesome job!

This is a sample of the writing that we did.

We listen to music by the composer of the month everyday during handwriting time. The students love it!

Class Auction

In the spring, my school has an auction. Each class makes something to sell at the auction. This year I thought of a cute idea. My class is going to make a four piece art project on canvas. Each canvas will have a tree painted on it (there will be one tree for each season) and the students will decorate the tree with their fingerprints. I painted the background blue and used the overhead projector to trace the tree onto the canvas. Next, I am going to use a paint pen to fill in the tree.

Religion Lesson: God Made Me Special

This week our religion lesson was about how God made each of us special. We talked about how each person has different talents that God gave us. We also discussed that God made us unique; there is no one else exactly like us. We might look like our brother, sister, mom, or dad, but we are each unique. We made a craft using our fingerprints because no one else has fingerprints like us. The kids made plants, bugs, and animals with their fingerprints.

This student made bugs out of his fingerprints.

This student made bugs, butterflies, and a bird.

The students did an awesome job on their craft!

Art Masters: Jackson Pollock

Each month, we learn about two artists. Our first artist of the year was Jackson Pollock. During the first week of the month we read a book about Jackson Pollock and then did some writing to help us remember who he was. During the next week, we did action painting. I lined the kids up on the grass and they made their creations.  Here is a picture of some of the students' artwork.They did a great job!

This is the writing that we did together. I created a summary of what we learned about Jackson Pollock and the students filled in the blanks.

This is how I lined up the students to create their masterpieces. I was able to have ten kids working at the same time which helped us to complete our artwork quickly.

Apple Labeling and Apple Graphing

This month our theme is apples. We are doing many fun activities using apples. We did an apple labeling activity to learn about the anatomy of an apple.

 The students had to draw seeds on the apple's flesh.

 The students' apples came out so cute!

This is a graph of our favorite apples. First, the students tried a slice of a green, red, and yellow apple and decided which one was their favorite. Next, they  put an apple cutout on the graph that was the same color as the apple that they liked the best. Last, we analyzed the graph and figured out which apple most of the students liked the best.