How can you get the piggy into the pen?

We have been playing with science again! I love science with young children! 
We explored FORCE and MOTION. 
Not really officially part of our curriculum, but it can be part of science inquiry, so I think it fits! 
So I asked my children...How can you get your piggy into it's pen? 
Then I gave them a straw, a pompom and a paper plate. 
The children then "experimented" and tried out various ways to get the pig into the pen. It was fascinating to watch! Some tried to swat the pom pom with the straw and others tried to scoop the pom pom.  Then, quite by "accident" one of the children was playing with her straw and sucked the air out and picked up the pig and put it on the plate! She was so excited she jumped up and told everyone exactly how to do it! So cute! Then everyone tried it. 
Then one child discovered that the paper plate can move when you blow a cushion of air underneath the plate! So exciting! 
We decided to have races down the hallway using the paper plates, straws and taking the piggy pom poms for a ride! SUPER FUN!

Look! I did it! 

A cushion of air underneath the plate and it can MOVE! COOL!

Word Surgery!

We turned into doctors and performed word surgery! 
These particular words were having some pain, so we needed to remove part of the word and "stitch" the words back together with an apostrophe. 
We were working on CONTRACTIONS! 
To make it more fun, we wore special doctor masks. It was a lot of fun! 

Leapin' Lizards!!

As the year winds down, we are still in full learning mode! This past week we had a wonderful visit from A Reptile Show! It was great and the children learned so much! The presentation focused on the needs of these unique animals and just how difficult they are to care for. 
The man doing the presentation,(Jason) rescues various reptiles and cares for them and then finds them a new home or keeps them and takes them around to teach children about reptiles. It was excellent! 

This tortoise was rescued and brought back to health

This monitor lizard was raised from a tiny little lizard and he could get even bigger! 

This beautiful snake is almost extinct! There are very few left in the wild.

The children got to touch each one of the animals. It was interesting to listen to the children talk about how the animals skin felt, words like smooth, bumpy and cool.  

Most children were surprised that the snakes were not slimy at all! 

When pigs fly!!!

Our piggies are finished and they are up and flying around our room! We worked on painting them and adding in special details to make our pigs UNIQUE! They are so adorable! 
We began by painting them a bright pink! We hot glued a curly pink tail and then added things like ribbon rosettes, fake flowers, glitter and other details! One even had a Viking helmet made out of paper and one had a cool eye patch! He was a pirate flying pig! 

hot gluing the tails on!

3 little piggy tails!

Painting our piggies.

Add more paint!

Cover up all those white spots! 

Look how cute we are!!

Waiting on the drying trays before we take flight!

Flying pirate piggy! Notice the eye patch!

Flying around the room! 

Papier Mache .... the modified way!

Yes...I am a little crazy! I started a papier mache project with my kids. It actually wasn't that bad! I mixed white glue (from the dollar store) with water. Then the kids dipped strips of white photocopy paper into the glue mixture and wrapped it around a mini pop bottle. 
                                         We are making little flying PIGS! 
Right now they are drying and we will paint them next week and add details. Then we will hang them from the ceiling in our classroom! They look so cute right now and they aren't even painted yet! I will take photos of the finished product as soon as they are FLYING around our room! 

We started our pig making by tightly rolling paper legs and then hot gluing them to the mini bottles. Then we cut out ears and hot glued the ear shapes on.

Then we papier mached!! 

Some of my little darlings really did not like the feeling of the "goopy" glue, so they 

needed a little help to get going with the wrapping and to show them that the glue wasn't all that bad! So I dove right in too! 

I love the BIG ears on this one! 

Aren't they so cute? 

Everyone wanted to make one, so we had them drying everywhere! Some were on trays, some were on our drying rack. 

Can't wait till they are painted up and detailed and then FLYING!

In my opinion...

We have been writing about our opinions. So we started with writing about our opinion about the BEST pet. We started by learning all about just exactly what an opinion is and then deciding which pet we liked better and why we thought that opinion. After we wrote our opinion, we painted a picture of the pet of our choice. 

A visit to the Farm!

We went on one of our last field trips to a local farm for kids. It was a lot of fun! The day was very sunny and I even got a little bit of a burn. (yikes). Our favourite part of the trip was feeding and petting the new baby donkey, named Jose. He was so cute!! 

We learned how to feed horses and all about what they like to eat.

We fed baby lambs and learned about their needs.

We fed a Jersey cow.

We touched some baby ducklings and learned about what they eat.

The farm also had this wonderful bouncy thing built right into the ground! 

It was very fun! 

The Farm day was a lot of sunny fun!