SEWING-PART 1; PRACTICE

For the month of January, we focused on sewing.  We had dabbled a little with sewing in December with some embroidery thread and felt.  The children really enjoyed it, so I thought it would be great to focus on sewing for a whole month.  Sewing is such a grounding activity.  A few of the children's grandparents sew and it can be such a bonding activity to do.  It is also great for building fine motor muscles in their hands which will help the children as they start writing more and more.  We started practicing putting yarn in and out of embroidery hoops with burlap.

After practicing on the embroidery hoops with yarn, we moved to meat trays with embroidery thread.  The children drew a picture on the tray and then stitched the picture.  It was tricky to poke the needles through the trays!

This child made part of his family.

One of our challenges was knowing where to put the needle in from the bottom!

SEWING

This December, we tried our hands at sewing.  I put out some felt and real needles with embroidery thread.  The children really enjoyed putting the needles through the felt and sewing.  They were very excited to make things and said they were making quilts.  The first step was just getting used to putting the needle and thread through the felt.  Some kids made felt balls and decided to give it to their cats for toys.  As they practiced, a few of them started asking me about how to stop the felt from bending.  I explained how they could make smaller stitches closer together and that would stop it from doing that.

Just look at her concentration!

Working together and helping each other.

We also had some plastic sheets and plastic needles to use for sewing practice.

Making a felt ball cat toy.

Practicing smaller and closer together stitching.

RADIO VISIT!!

One early morning in November, I heard on a local radio station that they were asking local businesses to help collect food for the Food Bank.  I called right away to request a box because this fit in perfectly with our Community unit.  In October, we focused on working together and helping each other in the classroom, and in November, we focused on our Community outside of our classroom.  We worked all month on how our Community helps us and how we can help our Community.  We collected food for a week and then arranged to go on a field trip to the radio station to bring our food box and participate in the festivities.

We are waiting sooo patiently....

We had a special snack....

And we got to go into a real radio recording booth!! 

We sang our turkey song...5 Fat Juicy Turkeys and it got recorded.

Then we got to listen to ourselves singing; first how it sounded...

Then, we got to hear our voices sound like chipmunks; low; slow...

And backwards!!

Here we are posing for a picture before going on the air live in a different booth.  We were so excited to be able to visit our local radio station, have a tour, and be able to have our voices recorded and be on air live!!!  Radio stations help us learn about news and weather, local events, and play music for our listening pleasure!  

COMMUNITY MAP

After drawing individual maps, we worked together and helped each other to make a large community map.  The children cut strips of construction paper and glued them down for roads.  They also drew different community buildings including houses, a library, bank, school, hospital and market.  They glued the different community buildings and added a train track.  

Gluing roads...

Cutting roads...

Adding a house...

Gluing the hospital down...

Adding the school.

STONE SOUP

As a culmination of our community unit, we read the story Stone Soup.  There are many variations of this story, but I have found one that I prefer that stars a town with animals who are visited by two pigs.  In the beginning of the story, the townspeople are super grumpy and locking their town up from the visitors.  They aren't willing to share.  Then, as the story unfolds, the pigs come up with a plan and show the villagers how to share.  It is amazing to see how the animals faces go from grumpy, mean, and angry to smiling and happy once they learn how to work together and help each other to make stone soup together.  Everyone ends up contributing as part of the community and the story ends with a great feast and party with the villagers and visitors.  Once the children hear the story, they love to help with retelling as the week goes on.  We do book-related activities throughout the week and at the end of the week, we get to work together and help each other make our own stone soup!  

The children made a list of what ingredients they wanted in their stone soup and they went "shopping" for the ingredients!  Preschoolers really are imagination experts!!  They took turns shopping and checking their friends out of the market.

Of course, the highlight of the week was actually preparing the stone soup!  Here, a child is using a butter knife to chop some pears to put into the soup.

The children also chopped some apples.

And some potatoes...

They scraped their chopped fruit and vegetables into the pot and also added some frozen mixed veggies and elbow noodles.

We couldn't forget to stir it all up before putting it onto the stove to simmer!

It was sooo yummy, we all ate bowls and bowls of it!