Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Rip and glue collage letters

It's been such a busy month! Kindergarten has been filled with days of cutting, glueing, creating, exploring, playing, and lots of learning. To start off the year we worked with learning about our names. This project is a simple one but be forewarned it does involve some hands on adult cutting after the kid part is complete.

1. Create the large capital letter for each name by using WordArt (select the basic straight one and increase the outline to about 3.0).

2. Provide strips of construction paper to each table. We talked about how you only need one color at a time so use a little and then pass it
on. Instruct the children to rip the paper into little odd shapes- no scissors! After a few minutes it will become clear who has stronger fine motor skills. (On the second day I pre-ripped the paper and gave them confetti.)

3. Have children glue the paper all over the letters. Encourage the children to cover the outline and all of the white space inside the letter.

4. Print out "_______ is for ______________." and have each child complete the sentence.

5. Cross your fingers for a parent volunteer or a large block of prep time.

6. Cut out the letters on the lines- this will involve flipping the page over to be able to see the lines. You will have to do some re-glueing as some of the pieces will be glued on the outside of where you are cutting.

7. Glue both the sentence and the letter to black paper.

I am debating laminating the finished product but am torn because the layers being stacked add a great visual element. My reason to laminate is that I will be hanging these over the cubbies and am concerned about little hands causing little pieces of paper to come detached.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Apples, Apples Everywhere!

With the start of school every year comes apples. Apple tasting, apple printing, and of course amongst oodles of other things- cooking projects. One of my favorite apple recipes to do with young children is Swedish Apple Pie. What's great about Swedish Apple Pie is that it has very few ingredients and it makes it's own crust!

After using an apple cutter (with students) we provided plastic knives to a small group and instructed students to chop the slices into chunks. We also worked together to measure and mix the crust mixture which a teacher spread on top of the apples.

I do not have a specific recipe that I use each year but this one from All Recipes is what I used last year.


Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 pounds Granny Smith apples - peeled, cored and sliced
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 3/4 cup melted butter
  • 1 egg

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. Toss apples with 1 tablespoon of sugar, and pour them into a pie plate. Thoroughly mix together 1 cup of sugar with the flour, cinnamon, butter, and egg. Spread this evenly over the top of the pie.
  3. Bake in preheated oven until the apples have cooked and the topping is golden brown, about 40 to 45 minutes.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/easy-swedish-apple-pie/detail.aspx