Scavenger Hunt

Encouraging the class to spend more time outside isn't the hard task. Children naturally love the outdoors and can find absolutely anything to play with or, quite simply nothing at all! let their imagination run wild and see what they will develop by themselves.

As an introduction to more solid 'green' time with my class, I introduced the theme of the scavenger hunt.

They got on board really quickly and we talked about all of the thing we might find at our local 'big park'. (We are fortunate to have acces to a few parks in which we can play. Two of these parks are green and filled with trees, one has a pond with turtles (we counted over 40 this day) and some flowers too.

The only unfortunate issue about taking children to a 'green' space within the city is that they know that something else is out there. "I want to play" was the chorus after a solid, but not long enough 15 minutes of scavenging. Still, step by step for everyone and this is the first of what I hope will be may outdoor, green and wild experiences!

See my EARTH DAY post to see our pot pourri!

Earth Day

 

Rather than try a craft for Earth Day, I think the meaning is better shared with activities that directly teach what Earth Day is about - Nature.
As a class, we are propagating ivy and rooting it in water. It's a nice and simple activity, that improves the appearance of the classroom too.


After all the herbs and spices from our India activities plus the falling sakura blossoms, we made a simple pot pourri. The smells were just lovely!

INDiA ~ Ganesh!

Inspired by this great book....http://www.penguin.com/book/the-little-book-of-hindu-deities-by-sanjay-patel/9780452287754

The class were able to take a step towards Indian mythology without really having to learn too much at once.

Some of the short movies on youtube scared them as they are still a little young but the pictures in this book they simply couldn't get enough of!

Ganesh is easily a character for young children to relate to - he's an elephant after all! Why he is so, my class don't really care, but they like that he has lots of arms!

So, the task? Let's make a elephant head and see if we can dress up for an awesome finale at the end of the month wearing Indian Saris too!

 The final product!
It was so much fun and we even decoratedna framed print out of the main picture for a momento!

INDiA~! Bangles & Bhindis!

We have been enjoying making many many Indian-style bangles. One style, we made from plastic bottles and wrapping yarn around a cut off part. It was such a simple activity, but the class loved it and kept wanting to make more and more! Great for the fine motor skills too.

The second type, was simpler, made from toilet paper rolls. Again, these were popular and we used tape, gift wrap ribbon, sequins. Fun!

INDiA ~~ Holi~ & Rangoli~!

We made our own natural dyes!!

See HERE for instructions


For the theme of India, I thought it would be great to mimic the Festival of colours, but with all that synthetic stuff, it would be difficult to really enjoy the process of getting messy.

First we practiced making flower shapes by starting with a circle and then pushing out the flour. Some of the children really enjoyed mixing the colours for this activity.

Then, came the floor painting - 

We started with water colours and small paintbrushes
...moving onto the spot paint pens, which was way more fun.

The kids loved this - floor activities are always fun plus they can add
their own personal touches too! (How many smiley faces can you see?)

(In this instance, we didn't use the flour for the floor design; we just took it to the park ad played with the colours. That was fun enough!)

INDiA!! ~ Henna Hands

 Kids just love drawing and they love drawing on themselves, so this is a perfect activity for them. Ok, so henna is brown and more about the patterns, but reggio is more about what the kids want to do with it all....

 

For the finale, we went with more of a henna feel and used ONLY brown...with some inspiration on the side and practice under our belts, it was a super fun activity!

INDiA ~ Chai Tea!

  This was such a super fun activity for the class. Everyone got to choose their own spices to add to the milk break and enjoy the smells and textures too along the way.

Unfortunately, all but one hated the taste but the fun was definitely in the making!!