5 Ways To Have Fun With Dandelions

Spring weather is finally here for us and the girls have been having fun with the plethora of dandelions they are finding in our yard and around the neighborhood.

I'm certain this list could easily turn into a 100 but for today we'd like to share 5 of the ways we've been having fun with dandelions.


1. Make Wishes- Really, how much does this scream childhood! Kids love to pick wispy dandelions and blow wishes. They love it even more if you do it with them. We had fun asking how many wishes they each made and how many seeds do they think they blew away.

2. Make a bouquet- Often it's the simple things that are the most fun! My girls had a blast walking around the yard and creating their own dandelion bouquets. After they create their bouquets it's a nice touch to add them to vases and use the as centerpiece for a meal time.

3. Observe them with a magnify glass- This is a great way to discuss science words like magnify, comparing and contrasting, and observing. You can also discuss parts of the flower like seed, petals, and stem. 

4. Make An Observational Drawing- I set up an "invitation to draw" for the girls using a clipboard, paper, and oil pastels (with the dandelion colors). I encouraged them to look at the dandelions to make their drawings. Again, another opportunity to discuss the various colors and parts of a dandelion.

5. Paint With Them- I love finding ways to connect nature with art! The girls loved using the dandelions in lieu of paintbrushes to create a mural.

My 4 year old used it to make dandelion prints. 

My 3 year old enjoyed using it as a brush and making stokes and circles with it. 

There you have it! Five of the many ways to have fun with dandelions! 

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Our Butterfly Garden Continued...

We have butterflies!!  The girls were so excited to see our chrysalides turn into butterflies!




 After the first chrysalides turned into a butterfly it took a couple of days for the rest of them to turn into butterflies and all the while the girls enjoyed observing the butterflies in the garden.

 

We read lots of books on butterflies (I have another post on some of the books coming soon) and the girls looked at various pictures of butterflies as we talked about the similarities and differences of our live butterflies and the ones in the pictures.

 

 Then it was time to set them free...

 






 This was such a fun project for the girls and we will most definitely be doing it again next spring!

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The Makings of a Butterfly Garden

Our butterfly garden and caterpillars arrived in the mail and our journey begins as we watch these caterpillars turn into butterflies! I'm not sure who's more excited me or the girls!




The girls have been loving the caterpillars!! Every morning they wake up and want to see the caterpillars.

They are obviously very curious about the caterpillars and the process of them turning into butterflies.  To learn more about the process we read this book From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Deborah Heiligman


 


To pick up on their growing interest we also found some pictures of caterpillars online and printed them out for the girls to observe.




We talked about the different characteristics we saw and I encouraged the girls to describe the various caterpillars.

After observing the real caterpillars and the pictures the girls created their own representations of caterpillars using mixed media of oil pastels and water colors.  When I taught with the Reggio Emilia Philosophy we did many projects that included mixed media, observational drawings and creating representations of what was being studied.

First they used the oil pastels to draw a caterpillar.



My 2 year old wanted to draw a caterpillar too and in her mind it was indeed a caterpillar!




Next they used watercolors to paint over the oil pastels. Mixing these two types of media creates a cool effect and texture when dried.




Mallory's completed caterpillar! She loved this project and I think we will do it again with butterfly pictures once our caterpillars turn into butterflies.



Be sure to check back as we document the growth of our caterpillars turning into butterflies!

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Earth Day Planting

Weekly Kids Co-op is up and running and there are loads of Earth Day activities so be sure to check them out!

We are continuing our Every Day is Earth Day fun and this week we painted terra cotta pots and planted seeds!





 I bought these super cheap planting pots from Michael's and the girls painted the outside of them.

 

 We read this book "Seeds, Seeds, Seeds" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and talked about all different types of seeds.

 

We explored the seeds we were going to plant. The girls touched them and we talked about color, texture, and size of the seeds.
 


We talked about everything the seed would need to grow, water, sunlight, and soil. My 3 year old helped dig up some soil for our pots.

  

 We watered the seeds and now are waiting anxiously for them to grow!!


 

 By the way, do you love the Target $1 aisle as much as I do? I found all these goodies in the $1 aisle and they are perfect for our Earth Day activities!


 






Check out more Earth Day activities at the weekly Kids Co-op below!

Sink or Float Experiment

Here's a fun little story extension from the book Who Sank the Boat by Pamela Allen.

The book has a simple little plot about animals that go for a ride in the row boat. As each animal hops in the boat the question is asked "Do you know who sank the boat?".

Great story to introduce the concept of what makes things sink and what makes things float.

After we read the story I made a simple graph- with the words sink on one side and float on the other.



Ahead of time I gathered several objects to test if they could sink or float. I told my daughter we were going to conduct an experiment and be scientists. We talked about those new words :experiment and scientists. My 3 year old pulled from the bag and I had her predict if she thought it was going to sink or float. (we also talked about the word predict).

She tested it out in the bucket of water and then placed the object in the corresponding column.





When she was done testing them all we compared and contrasted the columns. I asked "Which one has more?", "Which one has less?".



She loved it and after we were done wanted to find more objects to test!

Bringing Outside In!

The weather outside is frightful....

Yep, it's just too darn cold to take the kids out in this midwest winter so we decided to bring the snow inside!



The girls used measuring cups to experiment with the snow but you could use plastic cups, shovels, small buckets, mini containers, the list is endless.  For my 21 month old the experience was all about feeling the snow, touching it with gloves and without gloves, and dumping it in and out.



For my 3 year old she also enjoyed the process of simply "playing" with the snow but for added stimulation I included these nifty little magnify glasses in her tray. She was able to put the snow in them and look through to see the magnified individual snowflakes. A great way to introduce the word magnify . We also talked about the word observe as I asked her what she observed in the magnify glass.



For more added fun I also gave the girls a spray bottle with red food coloring mixed with water. They had fun making the snow red!





Who says you have to freeze to enjoy the snow!!!

Story Extension Activity with a Leo Lionni Book

Hello and Happy New Year!!  I am so excited to begin the new year with some fresh and abundant ideas for this blog!  Thank you for coming along for the ride.  And as always, I love to hear from you so any feedback is appreciated!

When I taught preschool I absolutely loved story extension activities.  Story extension activities really can be anything you do to extend the book of choice such as art projects, acting out the story, making a book about the story, etc. the list really is endless. I plan to include many posts of my favorite story extension activities in the near future.

Really there is nothing like seeing a book come to life through a child's eyes based on a project you did together!  It's such a great way to celebrate the joy of GOOD books!

Today we read Little Blue and Little Yellow by Leo Lionni.  On a side note Leo Lionni is a fabulous children's author and illustrator with some great gems under his belt.




The book is about color mixing- when little blue hugs little yellow they turn into little greens.

After we read the book I gave the girls a zip lock baggie with squirts of blue paint and yellow paint.



We talked about the book and I asked my 3 year old to recall what happened when little blue and little yellow hugged? "They made green!" I asked her how we could make green? She looked at her paint in the baggie and said "With the blue and yellow."

And away we went! Both girls loved squishing the paint around in the bag!! Fun and simple story extension that even ties in some science with color mixing!