GERMS!

It's been a long standing debate in our house.  Do dogs or humans have cleaner mouths?  Well, we FINALLY know the answer to this question, maybe?! 

 My middle two kids, J and A, have a science fair project due this month.  I found this great tutorial over at The Kitchen Pantry Scientist's Blog on how to make your own bacteria growth plates from common kitchen ingredients!  How exciting is that? 

 I remember as a kid (ya know, back in the day when there were not so many regulations and safety rules) when I would go to the lab (in the basement of the hospital) with my mom, who was a lab tech, and watch her work.  I remember ASKING to have her draw my blood at about the age of 6-9ish (I know, crazzzzzzzzzzy) so I could test it on the machines and look at it under the microscope.  The petrie dishes with red gel were especially fun.  Mom would draw pictures in them with the specimen and then see what would grow!  It is one of my fondest memories of my mom and I. 

Back to the experiment.  We decided on testing one girl, one boy, a dog and a cat.  We gathered up all the supplies and made our DIY bacteria growth plates.  I threw them in the fridge, and life happened.  I forgot about them for a few days ( ok, ok, a week).  I went to pull them out when mom was here, since she is the expert in all of this anyhow, and found that they had frozen!  You could see the crystals forming and all!  We let them sit out for a bit to thaw.  

We hypothesized about which one would grow the most germs.  The dog does eat cat doo-doo and lick her own rear, so we thought perhaps the dog would have the dirtiest mouth of all.  Other than that we were just merely guessing.

First victim, a BOY, so innocent looking, right?  He was NOT thrilled with the swab.

 Then the dog.

 

The unsuspecting cat.  NOT THRILLED.

And last but NOT LEAST, the girl.

 

 Mom got artistic, as usual and drew a smily face with girl germs... EWW!

RESULTS!  Well, sort of.  I am unsure if the fact that they froze had something to do with it, but they seem to be liquifying, and smell just HORRENDOUS.  EW EW EW!!!

It seems, that the girl germs are growing the most, but really, we are unsure.

 We will have to do this one again, next time, and test different surfaces in the house and see if that does better, if I don't freeze them first :)

Mirrors in the classroom

I recently added mirrors to our classroom.  At first, I just put one sitting by the light table.  It got almost NO attention at all.  

I decided it needed something more and went back to the dollar store and purchased several more.  I duct taped the edges of them and hot glued them to a foam poster board.  Once it was all cool I attached it to the wall surrounding the light table.  

 

 That's all it took.  Once those mirrors were at eye level, the kids could not get enough.  I would catch them making faces and checking themselves out.  It is QUITE funny to watch a preschooler make faces in the mirror.  

 

The other night, I caught my son making faces again.  With amazement in his voice he says to me, "Mom, there is something in the back of my mouth like a raindrop!" "What is it?"

  We talked about what it was and I encouraged him to draw a picture. He insisted he didn't know how to draw  and I gently guided him through figuring out what shape each part was.  He decided that his mouth was an oval shape, as was his tongue.  He drew the raindrop shape and then teeth too!  Once his picture was done I could just see the feeling of accomplishment on his face.

 

Pinwheels- a tutorial

To top off our wind themed week we made some super cute and functional pinwheels!  What preschooler doesn't like pinwheels?  My 3 year old has been begging me to buy him one for months. Something about them is mesmerizing.  The beautiful colors spinning around and around in the wind just make me smile.  

 To make your own you will need:

~ a pencil

~ 3/4 inch pin with round head

~ tape- I used masking tape but you could use almost any kind

laminated white paper or some type of lightweight plastic paper*

~ permanent markers

*You could also make these with just card stock type paper, I decided to go with a white sheet of paper through the laminator to make them more sturdy and durable for outdoors!

I cut my plastic to 5 inches square and folded it corner to corner both ways, making an X across it. 

Then I made this fun little design with zig-zags in different colors and cut from each corner about half way to the middle.  You will end up with 4 "flaps"  one one each side, each with a point on each end.

  

Take one point and push the pin through. 

  

  

Pull each flap up using the same point of each one as you go around and push the pin through.  

Once you get the pin through each flap, stick it down though where the "X" meets in the center.  It will look like this if you did the right edge of each flap.  I had to do it a couple times to get the right flaps.

Next, take your pencil and find the little holes  ( they are tiny) in the metal part below the eraser.  You are going to press the pin in one of these holes and out the other side.  

  

Once it is through, bend just a small amount of it ( 1/4 inch or so) down.  You will be taping this down to prevent being poked.   

Take some of the tape and wrap it around that point of the pin, taping it down tight to the pencil. I did about 4 layers of tape.

There you have it!  Now all you need is a windy day, or if your in Arizona, a fan!

Kid made wind art

Since we can't just use the wind on any given day to make art ( in Arizona at least, we had to recreate a windy day, indoors!  I set up an invitation to create with a fan at one end of the table, a piece of card stock taped town, and droppers in the watercolors.  The little white containers I am using are wonderful!  They are from a set of poster paints that Wal-mart sells.  Once the paint was gone, I washed them out and filled them up with a rainbow of watercolors.  These are the perfect size for these little water colors and droppers, and since they are all connected, not as easy to spill over!   

The paint was dropped out in front of the fan, and to our surprise, there really wasn't much "wind painting action" to be had.  The paint pretty much just went straight down! 

 

Not to worry, the kids decided they could use straws to blow the paint around!  There is something about little kids and straws that just don't mix unless you have spit involved.  Most of the art we created this day involved spit laden paint.  Gross, yes, however we did learn how to control our breathing so paint didn't go up the straw! Pretty soon the kids started seeing shapes in the paintings.  Imagine cloud shapes, only with spit-paint! 

 Two of my students decided to take the adventure in wind painting even further by adding in other elements and tecniques!    First, they tried squeezing the paint into the straw.  Every color in the rainbow went in, and black brown came out!  I just love the look on the cute little faces when they see this color mixing action.

 

 

 

After a GENEROUS amount of paint was on the paper, they decided to go ahead with print making.  I cut up some smaller sheets of paper to use for this. 

 

 

 

 After getting the smaller paper on, one student liked it just like it was and decided it was going to stay there!

 

They were REALLY enjoying the moment and ended up with multiple pieces of art.  It was fascinating to watch them create, explore and then reveal the art they made.

At one point another sweetie pie of a student brought them a snack, because artists sure do get hungry!

Wind

Arizona isn't known for it's wind.  In fact, we really don't have wind all that often.  We have PLENTY of hot days.  Between the months of May and October you can usually guess the day's weather...HOT!

I wanted to spend a whole class on the subject of wind.  We started our circle time talking about what makes wind, what things blow in the wind and whether or not wind was something you could hear or see.  We searched for "wind" inside the classroom, which was quite exciting!  One student pointed out the  ceiling fan, and another ran around as fast as he could proclaiming "Look, I am making wind!"

After our discussion I set up the table with a fan at one end, and a tray of objects to "test".  We checked to make sure the fan was blowing our "wind".  They all thought this was pretty fun, now that it wasn't just a fan, but a wind maker!

Our tray had things like feathers, paper leaves, rubber bands, cardboard pieces, and other light and heavy objects. They diligently tested the objects one by one, making observations as they did.  "This one is heavy", "this one rolls", and "whoa, this one went fast!"  Once the kids got the idea, they started searching the room for more items.  Markers were fun if you lay them the right way, and dice just don't roll.  The most fun was when they found that pony beads when laid just right roll really, really fast! 

"Look Miss Rachele,  my hair is blowing in the wind!"