We started the morning off with a cute art project. We made painted polar bear masks with puffy paint. (Idea came from easypreschoolcraft.blogspot.com)There are many different recipes for puffy paint but the one that I used came from my files, equal parts school glue and shaving cream. We colored a nose, eyes, and a mouth on the back of a paper plate then painted the face and ears with the thick, gooey puffy paint. It took longer than expected to get the paint to stick to the paper plate and make it look puffy. So our activities today are few but fun.
While the paint was drying we immediately started making our bear paws for snack. [Of course after we washed our hands and the table.] We used canned biscuits and rolled them out to about 1/4" thickness.
Then laid a spatula across the biscuit and cut between the toes with a pizza cutter. The spatula was there to prevent any accidental cuts through the whole paw.
Next, we dredged them through a cinnamon sugar mixture and placed them on the baking sheet. We used whole almonds for the bear claws. While the students washed their hands I put the biscuits in the oven to bake.
We started our morning meeting, sang our Yak, Yak Bird song and practiced counting. The students then finished measuring the snowmen with the marshmallows. By this time the bear paws were done and cool enough to eat, so we washed up and were ready for a yummy snack.
We took our warm bear paws and drizzled (our new word for the day) some honey over them. My intent was to make them tasty, but one student created her own scenario that her bear had been eating honey and got all sticky. So much more imaginative than I might have been. We also had celery with peanut butter (a class favorite) and apple juice.
It had snowed over night so there was this beautifully inviting snow in the back yard just calling out for us to come and play. We decided to make trails in the snow and then look at them from the deck to determine if we had made any designs. We had a little accident, one student fell in the snow without gloves and it was very traumatic for her and getting the snow off became very dramatic. Our play time was shortened.
We came in, got warmed up by doing some exercises, and then took about ten minutes for free play. Read Polar Bear, Polar Bear by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. We ended the day with a game of "I have .... Who has...?" Using geometric shapes and colors. It was very enlightening to see who could identify the shapes without the other students helping them.
Homework was to finish their bear mask by cutting out the eyes and adding a tongue depressor. For science they were to do the Dancing Raisins experiment, found at jugglingwithkids.com, and took home our Zookeeper Book (an extension of the Polar Bear book found at makinglearningfun.com.) They also got to take home for the very first time a Book Buddy Bag (an adaptation of a program seen in Denver Public Schools.)
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