Mad Science Monday: Magic Shamrocks!

   Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!
   We are back with Mad Science Monday this week!
   The little munchkin came home from school today, so very excited about St. Patrick's Day. It was a huge deal in her classroom, and they went on a hunt around the school to find the sneaky leprechaun a who left a glittery mess in their classroom, and found some gold coins (chocolate candy) along the way. She wouldn't stop talking about it the whole ride home.
    Then she said,  " Mommy, we have to go home and find the leprechaun in the house." I was like - Uh oh! I hadn't planned anything like that!
    I am so glad that I made these Magic Shamrocks last night- a FABULOUS idea from Crystal Underwood, over at Growing a Jeweled Rose.  She has SO many fun learning and play activities on her blog, that are awesome!
    Anyhow, I told the munchkin that I was at work all day so I wasn't sure that the leprechaun came into our house but we could look for him. And what she "found" instead were the Magic Shamrocks on the counter and it was easy to convince her that the leprechaun had left them for her.

    This was another fun science/sensory activity, using simple ingredients once again. (One note though was that it needs at least 24 hours to dry.)
    Here is what you would need:
-Baking Soda
-Water
-Green Food Coloring
-Shamrock muffin pan (or cookie cutters would work too)
-Vinegar
-Any little treasures/toys
   Directions:
(Click here to see more detailed directions w/photos at Growing a Jeweled Rose blog)
-Put the desired amount of baking soda in a bowl and slowly mix water in it. You want the texture to be moldable and not too wet. Add green food coloring and mix it all.
-Place half of the mixture in the Shamrock muffin pan, then place treasures/toys in them and cover them up with more of the mixture. (I only had enough to fill two.) Pack it all in and allow 24-48 hours for it to dry, Once they are dry, they are easy to pop out of the pan.
-Place vinegar in a cup and use spoons to even plastic droppers and have fun watching the shamrocks come apart and reveal the treasures inside!

   Once the little munchkin was done, we placed some water into the muffin pan and she placed the little treasures inside the molds to clean them off.
    Here are some of the little treasures she found:

Another successful Mad Science Monday! 

(I can't wait to try this out in other forms, as suggested by Crystal-- Magic Rocks and/or Magic Easter Eggs!)

Shamrockin' Sight Word Fun!

    Well, we are not Irish at all, but that hasn't stopped the little munchkkn and I from engaging in some green fun!
    She has been all about learning her sight words lately, so I pulled together a few activities to help her to learn her new set of sight words.
    The funny thing that I love about my brain, is that it always seems to be in creative teaching and learning mode. I went to Joann's to look for a little leprechaun statue of some sort for a game I had in mind, but I had no luck. And when I spotted little leprechaun hats and little pots of gold- Bam! I thought of a different game and knew these things would work.

Sight Word Hide N' Seek:

    I wrote a new sight word on each hat (front and back) and she had to identify the sight word in order to lift the hat to find the pot of gold!

She loved it and after a few tries, she wanted to switch the hats around herself and had mommy and daddy try to find the pot of gold.

For some art fun, we did an activity called:

 "Secret Shamrocks":

I cut out shamrock shapes on white cardstock paper and used a white crayon to write out sight words.

 She used watercolors to paint the shamrock and as she painted, a sight word was revealed!

 She even painted rainbow colored shamrocks!

And another activity we did this weekend with her sight words was a sorting activity.

 Pots of Golden Sight Words:

I  made some black pots and labeled each one with a new sight word. 

 She sorted through the many gold coins to find and glue the right coin into the correct pot- 

and made lots of Pots of Gold with her sight words!

The best thing about all three of these activities is that they can be made in many different ways for many different skills such as counting, identifying numbers, letter identification, matching letter to sound, etc.... the list goes on!

Learning a lil’ about St. Patrick’s Day with my Preschool Munchkins

Just a note, I moved from the Chicago area to the Buffalo area last summer and my first job I landed was in a daycare center working with 3 year olds. It turned out to not be “my cup of tea”, so to speak. I desired to be in a classroom type setting where I would be actually teaching and working with children on a different type of level, as I was used to, having worked as a preschool teacher in a school district for 7 years in Chicago.

Anyhow, I began working in my current preschool classroom in the middle of February, so my classroom posts begin with March!

In my preschool classroom, we are not allowed to explicitly celebrate holidays (weird rule, but somehow I manage to squeeze it in my lesson plans and give students some general exposure to holidays without over doing it)

Here are a few things that my preschool students did as we briefly learned about St. Patrick’s Day. We briefly discussed the actual holiday and the history behind the holiday and then I took it a different route and focused primarily on symbols of the holiday, such as the Rainbow, Shamrock and Pot of Gold.

We have been working on patterns a lot and are slowly moving from AB patterns to more complicated patterns, such as AAB and ABB patterns. And I have a few students who can create an ABC pattern as well! All in all, they all did a very great job and I displayed their work proudly!

We also read the book, “Just a Little Luck”, by Mercer Mayer and then had a very elaborate discussion on what Luck is and ways in which we feel lucky!

I was thinking on my feet that day and rather than create a chart of our thoughts on Luck, we created a mini class book where each coloring page (compliments of kindergartencrayons.blogspot.com's Lucky as a Leprechaun packet) and each half page was labeled “I am Lucky because…”  I asked each child “Why do you feel lucky?” and proceeded to write down each child’s dictation in their sheet. I was very impressed by some of the thoughtful answers!

And I am VERY lucky to be working with some awesome four year old munchkins!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

      In the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, I learned how to color rice for my munchkin’s sensory tub- another fun idea from some fellow bloggers! So about a week and a half before the holiday, I made green and yellow rice and added some fun little toys I found at Party City for her to play with in her sensory tub.

As you can see… she loves it! She asks to play with it like every other day....  I think it will just be her sensory tub fun for the entire month of March! 












On Friday, she helped me to sort buttons by color, for her St. Patrick’s Day art activity.

 

After she found all the green buttons, she carefully glued the buttons onto a wooden shamrock shape that I bought at an arts & crafts store on one of my many visits last month!

She started this on Friday evening and she was going strong BUT then she lost interest. So we put it aside and took a break.

She continued working on it Saturday morning after breakfast!

 

Working hard the next morning…

I had some leftover green glitter paint in my classroom from my preschooler munchkins’ St. Patrick’s Day artwork, so I brought it home for my own little munchkin to use to paint her Button Shamrock. 

Finally! A finished product!  That only took 2 days to make! =) 

That’s my little munchkin…doing things on her own schedule!

Ha! And here’s the best part of our St. Patrick’s Day fun that turned out to be an EPIC Fail ---- Green Shamrock Jello Jigglers!!

They DID NoT turn out very jiggly… =(

I think I needed either a smaller dish or more jello because it was just not happening for us!

We only managed to get ONE good looking Green Shamrock Jello Jiggler!

Better LUCK next year, I guess!

Hope everyone had a great St. Patrick’s Day weekend!!!