Metamora Community Preschool

Saturday, February 21, 2015

We Love Kandindsky

Watercolors were at the easel last week. One of our students created her own Kandinsky and I had to share!

At MCP, books are in many places in our room beside the library shelf. We have a classroom library for children to sit and look at books but we also place books in many other areas of our room.

We have books outside for reading. Train books are in the building center with train set. We have cookbooks in our kitchen. During our dinosaur unit, dinosaur books were in the dramatic play area, blocks and in the library. You get the idea---get the books off the shelf and place them around your home and in the car. Want your child to read? Have books available in a wide variety of places!

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Fins to the Left

Watch sharks, stingrays and sea-turtles at the National Aquarium. We have been sharing with the children at snack time.

http://www.aqua.org/explore/baltimore/exhibits-experiences/blacktip-reef

Monday, February 16, 2015

All Summer Long

The Ocean Floor

Without a doubt, summer is my favorite season. This week our MCP students will get a little TLC for the cabin fever we all experience about this time of the year in the Midwest. It's our annual Super Summer Seashore Safari.

Our bulletin board looks like a quiet ocean floor now but with seashore stencils in the art center who knows what will be lurking in the sea-grass?

MCP Seashore Bulletin Boards---
http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2013/03/surfs-up.html
http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2014/03/one-fish-two-fish.html

Our messy tub will be out later in the week with sand, sea creatures and seashells. A messy tub is easy to create for home use---http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-messy-tub.html

Our dramatic play is the seashore and much more! To see what's happening, check out this previous post---http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2014/02/super-summer-seashore-safari-2014.html

Want to hula? Check out YouTube for some fun and easy 'how to' videos.
Want to see the sun, the surf and the sand? There is a webcam for almost every beach I searched. My personal preference? Southern California!

Do you and your child want to do more? Turn up the heat a little and pretend it's summertime at your house!

Sunday, February 15, 2015

You Better Stand Clear

What do you do when 257 cereal boxes come tumblin' down?

Recycle and reuse them.

We use boxes in our art center for collages.

http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-collage-box.html

Simple shapes make great stencils in our art center. We have stencils for holidays, themes/units and seasons. We use stencils for the children to create our bulletin boards. Look under our MCP bulletin boards for ideas.

Cereal boxes have great pictures for lacing cards.

http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2009/12/lacing-cards.html

http://metamoracommunityprek.blogspot.com/2014/09/lacing-cards-2014.html

At home you can cut cereal boxes (or any box) and attach to an office book ring. Have your child look for the match in the grocery store.

Use a department store shirt box as a template and make your own gift boxes for small presents.

A postcard stamp makes a cute postcard for quick notes and thank you cards.

If you have access to a book binding machine, you can create journals/notebooks.

Thanks for saving all the cereal boxes! We look forward to construction in 2016!

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Pablo Picasso 2015

Our study of Pablo Picasso is coming to end. Our MWF students learned that geometric shapes can be two dimensional and three dimensional. We introduced cubes, spheres, cones and cylinders. We talked about Picasso's Cubist period and his work. We have several small examples of his Cubist period and the children were able to individually see the work. It is really interesting to listen to the children talk about each picture. We will have these posted in the art center by the easel.

To create our own Cubist style art, we gave each child a paper bag. Lines were drawn on the bag and each student cut to the line. We demonstrated how they could curl, twist or fold the 'hair'. After the students were finished cutting, we placed crayons and office stickers in the center of the tables. One student used only orange stickers on one side and yellow on the other side. His conversation with his table mates was his 'orange period' and 'yellow period'. Wow!

Our next step was to give each child a bottle of glue. We placed lots and lots of magazine eyes, mouths, and noses in the center of the table. The result was incredible!