by arTree

Top 5 Books in our Classroom

Holes in your nose

We started our year with many books about ourselves and our bodies and this one – by far – the most favorite one of them all. Who wouldn’t be interested in holes in their nose? Did you know that some animals have just one? Did you know how boogers are made? And that no matter how neatly you line them up, they are still dirty? 🙂 Now you know. You are welcome.

The Paper Bag Princess

The boys in my classroom love this book! We have read it so many times, I cannot even count it anymore. They know most of it by heart and even started to dramatize it… we especially had to draw the burnt forest and horse bones!

Pout Pout Fish and the Big Big Dark

We have been talking about ocean, fish and beaches and this has been an absolute favorite this month. It’s about a fish that overcomes its fear of dark with a help of its new friend. Kids relate to the fish a lot and love reading the book along with me.

Make Van Gogh’s Bed

Touch the Art series are very popular in our creativity-based preschool but I think one is the most popular one. Kids love to talk about these famous paintings and learn a lot in a really fun way.

Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes

Kids loved this so much, they decided to draw their own version of this book. They let Pete step in all sorts of different things, like chocolate, ice cream and bananas. We played a lot of games, learned a lot about colors and – more importantly – about a positive outlook on anything 🙂 Love the message of this classic.

What are some favorites in your classroom or in your home?

by arTree

Cards for Moms

Making gifts for moms has become a ‘thing’ in my classroom now.

We make gifts for them almost every day. Kids want to make pictures for their moms. They want to pick flowers for them. They want to wrap pieces of papers as presents for them (the more of them there are and the more colorful they are the better, obviously).

I scored a box of old (yet amazing) greeting cards at a garage sale and when the boys found them in our tinkering space, they were amazed. They immediately wanted to use them to make cards for their moms. True, some of them were wedding congratulations, Christmas cards, Valentine’s Day cards… but when the kids combined them together, glued some gems on top and wrote a personal message inside, I think nobody minded.

by arTree

Building a House

Yesterday the kids decided that my house burned down and I need a new one. What followed was amazing.

They started talking about what my house needs and of course, since they are four boys, the main focus was bathrooms. As of now, my new house has 18 of them (one of them being inside of a dump truck to make it easier). But that’s not all. I now have ‘pool noodle electricity’ installed throughout my mansion, along with a hose so that my house does not burn again… I have three beds, an attached restaurant and a lot of things to play with, including a fish and a monster. I have a high-tech security system that will scare all bad guys away and I have a very flexible roof that can be removed as needed. Honestly – what more can I wish for?

From a professional point of view – they worked on it for two hours, cooperated, helped each other, planned and estimated how what will support the weight of the logs… they measured and counted how many items they used. They wrote messages around the house practicing their literacy skills. They were so engaged, it was truly inspiring.

by arTree

Earth Day Celebration

I would love to invite you all to a free Earth Day event at Artree Preschool this Saturday April 22nd (from 10 to 12).
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– Create Earth day with us by creating clay pendants and painting a giant upcycled cake. 
– Plant sunflowers to take home. 
– Spin a wheel of fortune and win a crafty prize. 
– Explore our pirate ship!
– Visit our fish and a frog, say ho to the mason bees, bugs and the butterflies and walk Bob (the tortoise).
– Discover the fun behind upcycling and tinkering.
We will have a lot of games and activities for kids of ages + a small snack.
Come see what our little preschool is all about.
Also: if you register for our preschool by the end of April, we will waive the registration fee.
See you this Saturday and please, bring your friends and family! This is an event for kids of all ages!
Location: 21415 SE 19th St, Sammamish, WA
by arTree

Happy Pi Day

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Have you ever wondered what’s inside a computer keyboard?

Well, my little engineers don’t need to wonder anymore – they know! 🙂

We celebrated Pi Day yesterday by opening two old computer keyboards and popping all of the little keys outside. It kept 5 kids busy for over an hour so I think it was a big hit! They took turns with the grown-up tools and  patiently unscrewed every last screw that was holding the parts together.

Now we have a box filled with computer scraps – I’m thinking robots… let’s see what the kids come up with! They often take me on a totally different journey. For example, I would never think of using the keyboard parts to create a shaker 😉

 

by arTree

Pet Rocks Rock

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We have been talking about animals this month, especially pets. And since not all of the kids have pets at home, we decided to make our own. We chose the rocks (everybody got two) we wanted to use and gave them a proper bath. The kids loved splashing and scrubbing the rocks clean. Then they dried them in a towel and let them rest for a bit.

Rest didn’t last long though since everybody was so excited to start painting. We used regular tempera paint – and covered the whole rock with colors. Then we added feathers, beads, eyes, flowers, buttons and yarn to make our animals unique.

As they were drying, we filled out their adoption certificates, signed them and told stories about them. Some of the rocks were friendly bugs, others were parts of a vicious snake… it was really fun seeing the different animals and hearing the creative stories behind them.

by arTree

Pink glasses for everyone!

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What color glasses would you wear if you had a choice?

We explored light, colors and color mixing with these awesome glasses. Kids had a blast and tried one, two and even six of them at the same time.

‘It is orange!’ cried one.

‘I made it really dark! It’s so dark I don’t even see anything’ laughed the other one.

‘I have two colored eyes! One yellow and one blue!’

Then they tried mixing the colors on the overhead projector and even on the light table… sharing the goggles with each other and talking about the way the colors made them feel. It was really fun and it made me think they are SO ready for art lessons about secondary colors. YAY!