Tuesday is our Wet-on-Wet Painting Day.

Wet-on-Wet painting is a technique that blends the colours in a rather magical way. It is a different experience than just using tempera paints or water paints on dry paper. Its not really about painting anything in particular it is about experiencing colour.

Usually Tank just fingerpaints on painting day but today he had a little painting strike....until I gave him a paint brush...then he was thrilled.

I put out some new Valentine's works on the weekend. This is chocolate play dough...the children fill a heart chocolate box with their creations. It smells so good.

The children are starting to get used to the plain yoghurt..today we had it with fresh blueberries and real maple syrup.

Tank reminds me so much of his older brother Tiger...who at the same age used to pull an empty sled around in just the same way.

One of the Amaryllis plants has fully bloomed...it is a lovely deep orange colour....so pretty for the children to look at and examine the parts of a flower.

I have added a wok and some chopsticks to our housekeeping area while we learn about China this week.

I have a bird feeder just outside the window on the tree...it is amazing how many birds the children learn to recognize...but that is not what they are looking at today....

A squirrel....awakened from his winter slumber.

Children love to build towers........

One of our moms donated some small banner sized paper...the children have been making signs....Tiger told me this one said "North America, that's where I live"

Peanut is thrilled with her new reading ability.....so are the Tree House Gang!

Happy lad outside today.....

Tiger and Sparkle playing trucks together.....

Chinese caligraphy work....

Tuesday is our Wet-on-Wet Painting day.....

Everybody got into shoveling outside today.....

Happy Chinese New Year!

Merlin helping to mix up a batch of Moon Cakes...a Chinese New Year treat.

The boys today working on the world map puzzle...we are learning where Asia is this week as we focus on China and celebrate Chinese New Year.

The mini cylinder blocks are perfect for my littlest student....Tank is just 16mths old and finds these blocks very interesting. He worked with this one for 20mins today.

Look how well our Amaryllis plants are doing! Everyone is getting excited to see what colours they will be.

We have had a lot of absences this week as a bad cough passed through the preschool. One day only Princess attended.

It was very interesting to watch one child work in the room. She went right to work and kept working until the end of our free choice period. She began the day with painting then she cleaned the table...then lots of math.

Spindle boxes

Number rods...

Fish with bubbles...cards and counters.

She took a little break and played dolls for a while...

I introduced some extension cards for the knobless cylinders...

It always amazes me to watch a child freely choose their activities in a prepared environment.

Our learning focus this week is dinosaurs.

Our dinosaur play table...

Flowerpot doing the dinosaur puzzle..

The children took some dinosaur cards and copied them to make plastercine sculptures...

Wet-on-wet painting...

Into the woods...

We went looking for tracks today.....it was beginning to snow so any small tracks were already filled in..but we did find deer tracks, rabbit tracks and grouse tracks.

A great sliding rock...

Today's art project

We finished off the day by doing some chalk drawings...

Jan. 10-13, 2012

Merlin checking on some of the girls working in the Montessori area.....

Some of our boys working in our Montessori area....

Sparkle and Princess playing dolls.

One of those natural learning moments....I looked over and Merlin and Princess were making letters with the blocks.

This letter fishing game was so popular this week...each day we played it together during morning circle. I couldn't believe how quiet everyone was as their friend tried to catch a fish....they were so intense. I think I will keep this game around for a while.

Wiping off the snowman tracing cards......a prewriting activity.

Wheels really enjoyed this work...it is mixing colours. This work has several steps and a particular order of doing things...it takes a lot of concentration. The children love it!

Flowerpot working with the felt snowman work...