Ants Ambling Along

Bear, Baby Boy and I went for a nature walk on Monday.

We saw lots of leaf cutter ants trotting along in long tracks up and down our driveway.
They are amazing.
They can carry such gigantic leaves.
If we were as strong as an ant, we could carry a car over our heads!

(photos courtesy of Wikimedia commons)
My camera just would not focus on these little guys.

I wish we had some plastic insects, specifically plastic ants. I would have had her stamp their legs into playdough to make ant tracks. We stamped a cat paw stamp in the playdough instead.

Click picture to visit other animal track activities.

Tot School

Bear is 26 months old

Bear wasn't too interested in trays this week. She seemed bored with everything. Our printer is broken so I can't print anything, not that it matters, as Bear is a hands on girl and not much into printables.
She loves her art projects though.

1. Turkey feather sequencing on her new magnetic turkey.
2. puzzles
3. making pizza while Baby boy watched
   
4. teaching her animals how to follow a recipe
5. pouring "tea" (cold water) for a tea party
   
6. clothespins
7. clothespin turkey
   
8. beads
9. continent map
10. duplos
11. the penny drop game (thank you Nicole at Tired, Need Sleep for the idea) but I used a flat marble instead of a penny. Bear really loved this game. It was the only tot school activity in which she showed interest.
    
12. size sequencing apples
    

Click here for more tot school.

What Bear is Reading

Tomie dePaola books are great!
This story is about a boy who brings his friend to visit his Italian grandmother.
He tells his friend to look out for chicken feet in the soup, and sure enough, there are chicken feet in the soup.
I love how the boy starts out feeling annoyed with his grandmother and even a little embarrassed, but leaves her house full of love and gratitude for her.
The illustrations are funny and tell a lot of the story.
There's even a recipe in the back for the bread the grandmother makes in the story.
Bear enjoyed hearing this book over and over.

To see what others are reading, visit Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.

Art Appreciation - Hans Hofmann

In light of the fact that Open Ended Art will be focusing on Hans Hofmann the first week of December, I thought I would compile a few facts for all of you.

I collected these facts after reading various pages at the Hans Hofmann site. The photos in the photo collage are also from there. (I hope that making the photo collage does not infringe on copyrights. Does anyone know about this?)

There is also a You Tube video here for those of you who would like more information, although I doubt that the video would be of interest to little ones.

(click to enlarge)

• Hans Hofmann was an abstract painter who lived from 1880 to 1966.

• He painted in a unique style that mixed elements from Fauvism, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism.

• Hofmann created landscapes in his paintings. His landscapes aren’t ones with trees and land, but ones of space, form, and color.

• Believe it or not, Hofmann’s paintings are mostly derived from his passion for nature. He looked for geometric forms to represent nature.

• Hofmann was friends with Picasso and Matisse and many other artists.

• He was also a teacher.
  

• He studied in Munich, Germany where he discovered Impressionism.

• He spent ten years in Paris, France. This is where he met Picasso and Matisse. Here he learned about Cubism and Fauvism.

Teaching Notes

An important part of teaching art to children is to awaken their creativity by giving them a chance to view art and discuss art before going to do art. You learn to write by reading and having stories read to you. Similarly, you learn to do art by seeing art and discussing it.
In teacher talk, this is called creating context.

• Think bold, bright colors. This is a good time to teach bold, bright, vivid as opposites to weak, pale, dull. The photo collage has examples of both.
• Have your child choose one painting. Ask him what it reminds him of. Ask him what he likes about it. Discuss the colors in it. Is there any one part of the painting that pops out at you?
  
• Look at the paintings with your child and ask her which paintings are similar and which ones are different. Discuss how they are different. There are some that lean more toward Impressionism and others that lean more toward Cubism (think Picasso).
• Discuss shapes evident in the paintings.

Now go out and do some art!

The Albino Pumpkin

On Sunday, I found the perfect squash.
It was just the shape to stand in as a pumpkin
and only cost me an 8th of a pumpkin.
(Remember, the only pumpkins in Costa Rica cost 16 dollars.)

Except it was white.
So we called it the
albino pumpkin.


Bear thought it was heavy.
She liked looking inside it.
She did not like scooping out the "yuckies."
But she was fascinated by the light coming from inside.

The next day, we roasted the seeds.
Bear had never tasted pumpkin (squash) seeds and loved these too.


Visit Susana at My Family, My Forever for more Learning Through Love ideas.

Magnetic Turkey

This is a great holiday craft you can use to practice patterning with your little ones.

Materials:

construction paper or craft foam of various colors
(I used construction paper because it is what I had)
sheet of magnet sticker or advertising fridge magnets you don't mind cutting up
liquid glue (if you are using the advertising magnets)
glue stick
black marker

How to make your turkey:

Cut a circle/oval out of a dark brown.
Cut a head shape out of lighter brown.
Use glue stick to glue the head to the body.
Cut a triangle from orange for the beak.
Glue that on.
Draw on eyes.
Cut out oblong shapes for feathers from the colors you desire.
Glue or stick magnet strips on each "feather."
Glue or stick magnet to the back of the turkey's body.
If you used glue on the magnets, let it dry completely.
Hang on fridge, or play with on cookie sheet.

Behind

I love my readers.

I love reading comments.

I love responding to comments

(so please activate your email address in your blogger accounts so it doesn't say from "no-reply" when I come to respond to what you wrote!)

I love reading blogs.

I love writing comments on those blogs.

But right now I'm backlogged.
So please forgive me if you haven't gotten a response
or a comment from me lately.
I'm getting to it!

stART - The Princess and the Pizza

We read The Princess and the Pizza at breakfast time.

I'm sure the project to go with this book is very obvious,
and it's not art.

We made pizza!

This is not a new activity for us.
We make pizza once a week.
It is normally part of our Friday Family nights to make pizza together.
This time Baby Boy joined us on the counter to watch.

Bear favorite part is to eat the dough.

We also played with her felt pizza.

Be sure to visit A Mommy's Adventure for some more great stART projects.

More Clothespins!

It seems
I just can't get enough of clothespins!

Check out this cool turkey activity at My Montessori Journey.

Pincer Grasp Workouts - Strawberry Hullers

Pincer Grasp Workout Number 8

Strawberry Hullers

photo courtesy of Food Wise

Bored of tongs and tweezers?
Here is a nice way to rekindle interest in transfer activities.

Use
a strawberry huller
to transfer those erasers, buttons, or pompoms!