Our Lady of Fatima Feast Day

May 15th was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima this year and it fell on a preschool day for us.  So I read the children the story of what happened in Fatima almost 100 years ago.  We recreated the miracle of the sun with our art project you can see below:

First we painted a paper plate yellow to make the sun.  

After it dried I cut around the edges to make points for a bright shining sun.

We wanted to recreate how the sun turned different colors during the miracle of the sun.  We covered a pre-cut circle of cardboard with foil.  Then the children painted the foil with a mixture of half glue and half water.  Once the foil was covered, they place cut pieces of colored tissue paper all over the circle, painting over the tissue with the glue mixture to make it stick.

The finished product was a beautiful, shiny circle of color!  The kids really enjoyed picking out colors and painting over them.

I used a brad to connect the colorful circle to the paper plate sun.

Once the two pieces were held together with the brad (not too tight), the colorful circle could spin and spin, as the colorful sun moved around the sky during the miracle of the sun.

ZOO ANIMALS

We are exploring the fun of animals for the next few weeks and this week we talked about Zoo animals. 

BOOKS:

The Zoo that Moved (true story about the Los Angeles Zoo moving) - by Gloria D. Miklowitz and Don Madden

Goodnight Gorilla - by Peggy Rathmann

Barney Goes to the Zoo - by Linda Cress Dowdy and Karen Malzeke-McDonald

Hop- Skip- Jump-A-Roo Zoo - by Jane Belk Moncure

ART:

We created lions with fork painting.  I didn't get pictures of the beginning of the process, but you can imagine.  We took a bowl and put it upside down on the yellow paper.  I helped to hold the bowl down as the children traced around it with an orange marker.  The I had them draw a small upside down triangle in the middle of the circle (to make the nose), two half circle lines out form the triangle (to make the mouth), and two larger circles for eyes.

Then they dipped a plastic fork in a shallow bowl of orange paint, making sure to press the fork down flat to get the bottom of the fork filled with paint.  Then they took the fork to the paper and pressed down and pulled to make the "hair" of the lion's mane.  

They continued the fork painting all around the face of the lion creating a beautiful mane and cute lion!

TABLE TOYS:

I put playdough out with popsicle sticks (long and short sizes), and animal shape cookie cutters.  The kids loved cutting out animals and putting them in "cages" they had made from the popsicle sticks stuck in playdough.  Some of them just used the cookie cutters as animals for their cages, as seen in the picture below.  They enjoyed their playdough zoos.

Transportation

Transportation is our theme for a couple weeks.  We talked about the basics - cars, trains, airplanes, helicopters, bikes, skateboards, etc.  and some of the kids suggested things like parachutes and roller skates as well.  So many things to explore with this topic. 

 

BOOKS:

 

Fred and Ted's Road Trip by Peter Eastman



Clink Clank Clunk! by Miriam Aroner
The Big Book of Things That Go by Dorling Kindersley Limited

Red Light, Green Light by Margaret Wise Brown

Jets by Carrie A. Braulick.

Helicopters by Jeffrey Zuehlke

 

ART:

Painting With Cars

When we read the funny book Fred and Ted's Road Trip by Peter Eastman, one of the character's in the book drives his car through a mud puddle.  This was perfect for us to lead right into our art project.  I filled up a plate with brown paint and we pretended it was a mud puddle. I supplied the kids different types of toy cars that had different types of wheels on them (some smooth, some with bumps, etc.) so that they could get a different pattern depending which one they used.  I gave them some light green card stock (good to have heavy paper to allow for them to "drive" a lot without ripping the paper), and let them drive around. 



 

 

Paper Airplanes

I didn't take any pictures of these as it was too hard for me to take a picture of each fold I made as I was making them.  Once the kids started playing with them outside we were having so much fun I forgot to take any pictures and then they took them home!  Sorry.  For this project I again used heavy cardstock so the planes would hold up well when we flew them outside.  The kids decorated them with stickers, markers, and crayons however they wanted (we folded the paper together first - I folded and they pressed it down flat and straight).
I used the book Paper airplanes. Flight school level 1  by Christopher L. Harbo.  It has instructions and photo-illustrated diagrams for making a variety of paper airplanes.