Uu is for umbrella

We read a story (The Umbrella by Jan Brett) about a boy who tries to find animals in the forest. While he was climbing a tree to get a better look, different animals start piling up in his umbrella. The other story (Umbrella by Taro Yahima) is about a girl who gets her very first umbrella and she can't wait for it to rain.

The theme Umbrella allowed us to talk about weather.

Our centers were cutting and practicing to write the Letter in our names (or improve our penmanship).  We couldn't always get to those centers - we have been tending to run out of time, probably because we spend a lot of time time talking about our theme.

Our art/craft: 1) an umbrella collage - The children were able to use the glue bottle and sprinkle rice (for rain) on the glue.  They applied more glue and I sprinkled on the glitter.  The children chose whether they wanted a three dimensional or a two dimensional collage.  The 3-D collage was an open cupcake liner and the 2-D collage is when they folded the liner in half to make a half moon shape.  The hardest part was trying to get the chenille stem to stick to the paper.  Hot glue would have worked better, but that's too dangerous for my comfort.  2) The children colored an umbrella with crayon.  I then crumpled it up and soaked it in diluted black paint to give it a dreary day look.  It didn't turn out the way the book claimed.  The paper easily ripped and one batch of diluted black paint made the paper look purple.

Here are this week's photos as well as a video at the end.  Note: Next week, we will do the theme "Cc is for caterpillars".  I ordered caterpillars, which will turn into butterflies and we have been looking at them this week with magnifying glasses.

Trying to squeeze the glue out

3-D umbrella collage

adding rice

Our caterpillars for next week's theme

Our center - cutting

Coloring the umbrella and adding rain (they loved this part)

Trying to look at the caterpillars with magnifying glasses.

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