From animal fur to flower petals, we can find artistic patterns hidden throughout nature. Nature often inspires artists to paint or make fabric in unique ways. We discussed when we wear a coat and how it keeps us warm and we talked about coats that animals wear. This Invitation to Create invited children to plan how to use patterns in their own expressive art. When there are no steps or directions to follow, children are able to take creative risks. I provided the children with markers, stickers, paper, cotton balls and glue. The cotton balls came out when one child mentioned he wanted to make wool!
We read the book Polk-A-Dot pants and created our own polka dot pants. We used clothes pins and pom pom's to create dots. They used fine motor skills to pinch the clothespins and paint with the pom poms.
We have also been reading the book Beatriz, Bananas and the Very Big Hat. We learned about different types of hats and that "hat" starts with the letter H. Hats can also help protect our heads. The children created a crown by weaving the band through the slits on the triangles. This required some hard work and patience, but they were able to do it!
We used story telling pieces to retell the the story of Beatriz and the Bananas. I asked questions such as what happened when Beatriz fell asleep? Did she trick the monkeys to get her hats back? They worked with their friends to retell the story.

We learned that shoes and socks come in pairs.  We created a shoe and practiced lacing.   
We worked on the letter Hh this week.  We celebrated another birthday! 

Touch! We use our hands to touch and feel things. There are many different types of textures, such as rough, smooth, bumpy, soft and hard. Some things we touch are different temperatures.
We used sand to create a rough texture for our art. Some used a spoon to transfer the sand others pinched with their fingers and some poured the sand!
We read Ten Red Apples and then played a counting game with felt circles, our pretend apples. Each child took a turn to roll a dice, identified the amount and removed the same number of felt circles and we said, "the sheep at 4 red apples." Each child chose what ate the apples!
We use our noses to smell. There are strong, mild, sweet or stinky smells. We like certain smells and dislike others. We smelled spices and vinegar. Some of the kids like the smell of vinegar!
We discussed how some flower smell good and then I provided the kids with paper cup, scented markers, scissors glue and paper. They created their own flowers! ​

We see with our eyes. Our eyes are different colors. We made a graph with our eye colors today. Eyes can move up, down, and side-to-side. We use our eyes for looking, spying and watching. We looked for hidden pictures today. They selected a card and hunt for the matching picture or letter.
Today we made art inspired by Piet Mondrian. We looked at a work of art from Piet Mondrian. His art is full of shapes and specific colors. We discussed the shapes and colors that were used.
We also read the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? 

How do your bones feel under your skin? An x-ray is photo of hard things inside soft things. Our body has hard bones covered with soft skin. The kiddos viewed the x-ray photos and we used chalk and crayons to create various effects and expand their understanding of bones. The children were invited to create their own X-ray using a pre cut skeleton.
Arms move in different ways. We can shrug our shoulders, bend our elbows and ties our wrists. Oour arms have bones that can break. We use arms to carry pull and pick up things. We can also use them to hug!
We used play dough and tangrams to build designs. This was a fun independent play that created a lot of discussion! The kids built people, bridges, dinosaurs and robots.
We created our own x-ray's. We painted hands white, placed hand prints on white paper, scraped black paint across the paper and the hand prints magically appeared!
We also worked on patterns with buttons.​

We talked about our heads this week, so of course we discussed the skull and brains. We used spaghetti noodles for the brain and the hard-plastic bowls represented the skull. ​

This month is All About Me!  We made self portraits.  The children were shown an example of a self portrait, we discussed all the details.  Then they tried to draw all of their features, including a nose, eyes, ears and mouth.
The kids were given a paper bag, assorted colors of paper, markers, glue, scissors, sticker eyes and were encouraged to create a family puppet.  Some chose to make themselves others chose their parents!​