this is one of the best things i’ve done this year.  so often i’ve wished for a really shallow sensory table type tub that can’t be slid off the table, etc.  one day i realized that one of our hula hoops would fit perfectly on top of one of our small tables.

so, hula hoop + duct tape = table with an edge!

we change it out every week and have had great success with it being a standing work space. (and this table full of goodness is a combination of my personal dice collection and a huge bag of thrifted game pieces. score!)

this week we also had ribbon hanging down over the table for snipping practice.

our tiny fingers really get a work out (i think i worked for almost 10 seconds to pick up a teeny googly eye one day).

we had a sinking/floating experiment on here one day (no photo!), so i taped on towels for hand drying.

talk about an opportunity for cooperative play…there are six children around this tiny table!

some church friends (one of whom is also a preschool dad) put in a new hot water heater for our church/preschool.  the sturdy box was left for us.  we bring all the blankets and pillows from the whole classroom in it.  we reinforce it with colored tape.  we cover the opening with fabric.  we pound on the top and make it sound like thunder.  we hide in there and are really quiet so that a teacher has to look to find us. and one day, a couple of friends got the box to roll!

enjoy the movie:

with halloween over, we thought we’d try something a friend posted on line: growing pumpkins directly from the pumpkin.  let me know if you try it, michigan friends!

we cut a hole in the top, just like one would to carve a pumpkin, and added dirt:

(ooooh, and the DANGER of this experiment.  i had to experiment with which knife worked best, which meant bringing the whole knife tub out!)  we also planted some of the seeds in dirt in a bowl to see what differences there might be.

all was well for five days and on the sixth day, no one was at preschool.  on the seventh day, i unlocked the door and by the time i got to the top of our stairs, the smell was HORRIBLE.  so horrible, it was an opportunity that had to be taken.

the pumpkin had rotted, split open on the bottom and leaked the horrible smelling juice all over the table.

a class list was made:

i agree that it smelled like poop, pee and throw up all together.  after letting both classes experience the bad smell, we cleaned it up.  however, we have discovered a crevice in the table that still has the bad smell if you put your nose right near it.  we’ve left it and marked it with an arrow.

we took the rotten pumpkin to the garden and posed with our best sad faces.

it was amazing to me that not even one of the seeds had started to sprout, but the seeds in the bowl (from the same pumpkin) were already inches tall.  as of this week, the seeds in the bowl are still growing!

now the question is:  since it is too cold to transplant the pumpkin seedlings outside, how long will they be able to stay alive in the bowl?  ooooh, the anticipation!  go science.

with our hands-turned-turkeys, the return of turkey rob and conversations of home, we anticipated thanksgiving.

turkey rob’s rainbow feathers were plucked and “planted” every day. when his red “gobble maker” fell off, it was repaired with candy corn duct tape. he had a lot of love this year.  and he was the centerpiece for all our show and tell times:

this year children could have a teacher paint their hands to make a turkey print or they could paint their own. we used regular watercolors and it worked great.

families: you can ask your child if it tickled or not…that was the biggest topic of conversation.

since it was H week and all our thanksgiving themed books depicted families in homes, we had some school conversations about our homes. we reenacted the three little pigs (not my idea, but someone remembered it from LAST YEAR…and it was just what we needed to do that day anyway!). we made a house of leaves to act as our house of sticks:

following our homes conversations, i asked what they knew about our community’s homeless shelter and what they thought it meant to be homeless.  some of the oldest kids in the classes remember when we had a preschool friend who was living at the shelter and that he brought a suitcase with him every day. some of the kids have volunteered at the shelter with their families and churches. some children equated homelessness with camping.  i thought the collection of thoughts was pretty touching.  perhaps my favorite is the suggestion that homeless people are brave. indeed.

these were genuine conversations. not even the phrases about pooping and peeing were funny…just serious and authentic. we’ve sent this letter to our community’s homeless shelter which works so hard at not only providing shelter for people, but helping people move out of homelessness.

and families, stay tuned:  we will be collecting things for the harvey county homeless shelter as a christmas project.

along with a real egg laying hen in our classroom, we also spent time with good old humpty dumpty.  i read from this book every week and love the photos to accompany these olden time rhymes:

we did a few different projects to represent good old humpty.  one involved real egg shells, so guess what we made for snack!

then everyone got one egg shell to crack and glue the pieces within an oval drawn on paper.

oh, poor old humpty dumpty.

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we also made 3D humpty dumpty friends.

we used kleenex and two pieces of egg shaped paper glued together the day before.

one side had the glad face (for when he first sat on the wall) and the other side had the sad face (for after his fall).

(and some humpty dumpty friends had freckles)

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we also made eggs out of crumpled up paper and masking tape.  wow, did we ever use our whole hand muscles!  the sneaky thing about these is that hidden inside is a ball of golden yellow playdough acting as yolk!  hee hee hee.

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and no matter the prop, we could act out our poem:

humpty dumpty sat on a wall:

humpty dumpty had a great fall:

all the kings horses and all the kings men (running hands on legs):

couldn’t put humpty together again (quick-find the sad face side and give him a hug).

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and always, always, i offer the father gander version too:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the horses, women, and men
Put Humpty Dumpty together again.

one class changed it even more to suggest a child’s ability being all that was needed:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All of the children and none of the men
Put Humpty Dumpty together again.

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but maybe my favorite part was their own “readings” of the poem: