better late than never, eh?

to me a “child centered” classroom means allowing the children to take things to another level…

instead of just using one piece of paper to write her name, she wrote the names of her entire family…

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bringing chairs from the snack table over so they could make their tower higher…

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adding scissors to the magnet corner to complete the “mouse trap…”

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using family corner cups in the tub table…

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moving the “store shelf” to better serve mr matt breakfast…

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permitting messes to be made and left until clean up time…

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bringing a cat to school…and playing “find the cat…”

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dumping out all the legos and using the box for a game “two girls covered the box and left it covered until everyone guessed what was in it when really there was nothing in it…”

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we call it “work time”…we encourage the children to “go play”…we love to see busy minds and bodies…

kansas has a birthday!

we took a loooooooong picture walk through the picture book version of little house on the prairie.

there are times when it doesn’t seem that i’ll be able to keep a group’s attention with reading a story, but picture walking through it seems to work.  maybe the drama of, “ooooooooo-look by the wagon!” or “how do you know it’s night?” or “how many girls do you see?”

then we looked at lincoln logs, real logs and used paper logs to make a house like way back when.  a favorite part for some was giving the cabin a trim when done.

complete with doors…some opened, some didn’t.  some were nearly as big as the cabin, some were tiny enough for a mouse.

with sharp knives and real lemons, we did some taste testing…here are the faces to prove it:

then graphs for who liked the lemon and who did not:

then painting with yellow liquid watercolor over white crayon on paper plates.  i attempted to scent the paint with lemon oil and lemon juice.  it did smell like lemon while wet, but not once dry.

i think i’ll go back to “lemonade” kool aid for scent.

this was simple and aromatherapeutic.  i added lavender oil to lavender paint (purple + white).

we looked at photos of lavender fields (amazing!) by passing my phone around since i forgot my computer.

we used these finger sponge paint things  (i tried to find them online to link over and can’t!) and made lavender flowers.

this paint plus the playdough with lavender oil made for a verrrrrrry relaxing room.