Jungle Animals Everywhere!

We finished our Jungle week by creating "Jungle Art." The great thing about art, you can be creative and make it the way you want. We looked at some pictures of jungles and jungle animals to get some inspiration.

Then the kids created their own watercolor jungle scenes.

The kids worked so carefully and they each created a very unique jungle!

Bryn carefully painted pink stripes on her zebra and then covered them all with red. Will made black and brown spots on his. Lily liked the more traditional black stripes but added some pink and orange also. Amelia painted blue and purple stripes on hers because it is a girl. Zane and Stella both liked the blue striped look. Stella also created a soft comfy bed of leaves for her zebra. I wanted to take their pictures with their completed art work but many of them were still damp when it was time to go home.

For snack we ate Tiger Tails (carrots and ranch) and Zebra cakes. They all agreed that Zebra cakes are the best. Zane told everyone where to find them at Safeway so they could be sure to ask their mom's to buy some.

Then we were ready for a jungle safari! We divided into two groups. One group was assigned to find all the orange and green animals while the other group found all the brown and yellow animals. We braved the wind and went outside to search for the paper cut-out animals I had planted around the yard. The kids had so much fun and even asked me to hide the animals so they could find them again. The wind was getting stronger though so we went back inside.

We finished off our day playing hide and seek with a snake.

In The Jungle

We continued our Jungle theme by learning some important facts about jungle animals. Things like, the biggest python was as long as a school bus and bears eat ants. (People might need to eat ants also to survive.) We also learned that African elephants have the largest ears and tigers can run fast but they get tired easy.

The kids took turns thinking of words that begin with "J" and came up with quite a list. For each word they thought of they got a turn throwing a bean bag at the bear to knock him off his rock. That was harder than it looked but eventually they all knocked the bear off.

We did a maze and helped the snake get to his favorite rock. Sometimes it's easier if the snake can just jump over the walls. And jump begins with "J".

Jungles make a good place for animals to hide. Our snack was hiding too. The kids had fun finding the hiding bears in all that (coconut) grass.

We went outside to play "Catch the Snake by the Tail" but it was more fun running around. The sun was warm but the wind was a little cold still. Bryn and I stayed in the warm sunshine and watched the kids play.
Nebraska really doesn't look anything like a jungle.

J is for Jungle

The kids worked so hard today! Our theme this week is The Jungle so it was the perfect opportunity to make Monkey Bread!

We read over the recipe, collected the ingredients and rolled up our sleeves. We learned that dipping bread dough into melted butter made it feel slimy and that cinnamon sugar kind of feels like sand. We also learned that when it's all baked together it tastes YUMMY!

Bryn asked if she could eat as many as she wanted.

Why is it called Monkey Bread?

We practiced writing big "J" and little "j" on the chalkboard. Then we colored a silly monkey with a tail that made a "J" on the branch.

Each monkey was colorful and unique!

We had a great discussion about all the different animals that live in the jungle and even practiced making some animal sounds.

T is for Transportation

For our last day working on transportation, we read the story "Whoo! Whoo! Goes the Train" about Allan, who loves trains. Next we worked on our shape for the week- octagon, and made very colorful stop signs. The funnest part of the day was making our own tranportation out of a box! We had some really great almost-finished projects! Too bad we ran out of time!

 

You can go on skates. You can go on skis. But please go. Please!

Today we practiced writing "T's", which was easy! Then we read a Dr. Seuss book called "Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now!" In the classic tradition of Dr. Seuss, there were plenty of creative modes of transportation mixed in with the regular ones. Then we played our transportation Bingo game. Next we headed outside for a game of Red Light/Green Light. We finished up with a cracker train for snacks and singing "The Wheels on the Bus/Bike/Tractor/Train/Skateboard" (you get the idea).

Get your move on!

This week we are working on the letter "T" and learning about Transportation. First we learned that transportation means moving people or things from one place to another. Then we talked about all the different kinds of transportation there are- on land, in the air (all the way into space), on water, and even under water. The kids came up with so many types on their own, including horses, elephants and camels! They realized that most of the modes of transportation on land use wheels to move (except the animals!). Next we ate sailboat apples and worked on making Transportation Bingo cards. As moms started to arrive we pretended to be some kind of transportation. We had a helicopter, horses, a camel, an airplane, cars and an elephant I think.