Pre-K Wednesday: Ocean & Sea Creatures!

Hand-print crab!

Since the Summer is drawing to a close, we wanted to make sure to include a week (or two) dedicated to the ocean before we send off our kindergarten kids and begin our new school year.  Since we live by the beach, it was easy to create a sensory tub full of shells and seaglass, and I even found a fully intact sand dollar to show the kids! We created hand-print crabs (my example is pictured above) at the beginning of the week, hand-and-foot-print lobsters (example pictured below), and paper-bag jellyfish.

We also did a variety of circle time activities involving music and books. The kids' favorite song to sing is called "Slippery Fish," and it goes:

Slippery fish, slippery fish

Swimming in the water

Slippery fish, slippery fish

Glub, glub, glub

OH NO! I've been eaten by a...

Octopus, octopus

Swimming in the water...

And it continues with a tuna fish, great white shark, and finally, a humongous whale! After you sing about the humongous whale, rather than saying you've been eaten again, you sing, "Glub, glub, glub... BURP! Excuse me..." The kids love to hear their usually-ladylike teachers letting out a huge, fake burp!

We've also been reading a large number of sea-related books, like Eric Carle's Mister Seahorse (you can buy it at my Amazon store) and A House for Hermit Crab (buy here). We also read The Ocean Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta, and the kids loved hearing all about the creatures we could find in the ocean.

Enjoy your last days of summer!

xoxo

Succulent {Garden}

The final product!

So, in an earlier post, I said that I would update y'all when I began to work on my own garden, and now my garden is complete (for now, at least!). I added moss roses to some of my planter boxes that had plants left by the previous owner of my home:

Although the moss roses added a little something to my garden, the plants I was most excited for were the succulents:

Echeveria Chroma

I wanted a nice mix of the colors, heights, and looks of succulents, so I started with my favorite, (pictured above) called Echeveria Chroma, and (pictured below) Graptosedum, otherwise known as "California Sunset": 

Graptosedum "California Sunset"

After that, I wanted to add some height and interesting-looking succulents...

Elephant Bush

The one pictured below, called Blue Chalk Sticks, is super funky! I love it!

Blue Chalk Sticks

String of Buttons

Last but not least, I bought the String of Buttons, which is super cute and fun, in my opinion! The finished product is shown at the top of the page. I really like how it turned out!

It's really important, with succulents, to have a well-draining soil, so I used Miracle Gro Moisture-Control Potting Mix, which you can buy here if you so please. 

Happy gardening!

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Zucchini Bread and Graduation!

Our homemade zucchini bread

We made zucchini bread with the kids this week! We let them grate the zucchini into small bits and allowed them to measure out our other ingredients. The zucchini was from our garden! It was a fun and time-consuming activity. We used a recipe from the Better Homes & Gardens' New Cook Book. You can buy the book here or see the recipe below:

Zucchini Bread

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit. 

In a mixing bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 tsp. ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. baking powder, and 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg. In another mixing bowl, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 cup shredded unpeeled zucchini, 1/4 cup cooking oil, 1 egg, and 1/4 tsp. finely shredded lemon peel. Add flour mixture and stir until combined. If you please, stir in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts before pouring batter in a 8x4x2-inch loaf pan. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes, remove bread from pan and cool thoroughly on a wire rack. Wrap and store overnight before slicing, makes 1 loaf (16 servings). 

Enjoy!

Graduation cupcakes

Many of the families were excited for their children to graduate for the first time ever, and one mom even made these great graduation cupcakes! She used funfetti cupcake mix (I'm in my twenties and funfetti is still my favorite). She made the graduation "caps" with a lollipop stick, a Reese's peanut butter cup, Hershey's chocolate (2 pieces per cap), an M&M, a sour worm-type candy, and melted chocolate as "glue." 

They turned out so cute! 

Hope your baking adventures are turning out delicious! 

xoxo

Pre-K Wednesday: Camping Theme! (With Mason Jars!)

The school where I work is up-and-coming, which is great because our class sizes are low and we get to come up with new ways to teach, finding what ways work best. Right now, we're trying theme weeks in order to inspire our creativity as teachers and give our students some structure. So, our very first theme week is: Camping!

We set up a tent and a "picnic table" inside the rec. room, and with our mural, it looks like the kids are camping on a beach! For snacks, we've been doing things like graham crackers, hot dogs, and we're even going to have s'mores! Since we can't have the kids around an open flame (danger alert!), we're going to cook them on the stove and let them pretend to make s'mores with their own "campfire:" 

Link

Earlier this week, we did a mason jar printable project: since we don't have fireflies/lightning bugs in California, we used the printable on top of black construction paper, and let the kids finger paint lightning bugs!

My example piece

Example in the middle, with two great projects by the kids on either side.

This project was great: it was easy, quick, and the kids loved it. We will definitely be doing things like this again.

xoxo,
Caryn Elizabeth