Category: Room 4

Happy Fall Y’All

Today we had our first taste of Fall (I know, I know it’s not official until next week) by making homemade apple crisp! Yum-o! Each of your little darlings took a turn to operate our apple corer, peeler, slicer. Yes! We cored, peeled AND sliced! Then we snapped our spirals into pieces and layer them into a buttered pan. But that’s not all! We topped our crunchies  with brown sugar/cinnamon crumb topping! Oooh la la! We ate this delicious concoction after our lunch. We loved it so much that we will bake it again tomorrow.

Moon Sand: A Fun Sensory Experience

During their early years, children engage in a variety of sensory activities. It is through these activities that children’s fine motor skills, among many other areas of development, are enhanced. One type of sensory activity that children often enjoy and have fun with is sand play. Through sand play, children explore their sense of touch and discover new textures. Because it is open-ended, sand play can also be very soothing to children. Children can simply enjoy the texture of sand as they run their fingers through it and also have the freedom to make whatever it is they desire. From pouring sand into buckets to building castles and running cars or plastic animals through it, children gain the opportunity to explore their imagination and creativity.

Teachers and parents can encourage children’s involvement in sand play both at school and at home. There are different types of sand that children can play with. One very cool and fun type is homemade Moon Sand (also known as cloud dough). Although there are a variety of ways to make it, moon sand can be made with two simple ingredients: flour and baby oil. By mixing these two ingredients, moon sand not only has a great scent but is also moldable, safe, and fun! Getting children involved in helping make the sand can also be enjoyable for them. Moon sand is an easy activity that parents can do with their children at home and most importantly, it is exciting and lots of fun!

Moon Sand Recipe:

  • 8 cups of flour
  • 1 cup of baby oil
  • If desired, add powder-based colors (i.e. powdered tempera paint or powdered drink mix)

How to make it:

  1. Pour the flour into a large bowl.
  2. Add any powder-based color into the flour and mix it.
  3. Add the baby oil to the flour and mix all the ingredients together.
  4. When the sand feels soft and moldable, it is ready to be used.
  5. Store the moon sand in air-tight container and it should last up to a month (add more baby oil if it dries up.)

Children in Room 4 having fun while playing with homemade moon sand:

moonsand2Author: Adriana Gonzalez, CSULA Child Development Intern

Surfin’ Safari

Room 4 had a safari inspiration, starting with our new bulletin board, which was filled with your child’s art work! We then added vines that decorated our celling, along with animals that hung upside down and stared down at you. We read many books such as: Giraffes Can’t Dance, Who Is the Beast, and A Color of His Own. To top it all off, we had a visit from Reptacular, and exotic animal show that featured animals that the children were able to touch! They learned all about the animals and where they came from. It was a “wild” week of fun and adventure!

Two Fantastic Fridays!

Last week we ended our dive into island life with an enormous obstacle course bouncy house. This derby-licious week came to a culmination with an adorable petting zoo trip! We walked all the way to the BIG school to see a hen, a rooster, ducks, fluffy bunnies, a sassy goat, and an gigantic alpaca! It was awesomely furry and clucky! We of course threw in lots of sand, water and bubble play into the mix. Have a blessed and relaxing weekend!

Everything’s Coming Up, Moses!

This week we have been learning about the way God helped baby Moses by saving him and having the princess find him so he could be safe and live in the palace. We taught about this in chapel this week and all your kiddos did a terrific job! Today we made a baby Moses snack: Chow Mein treats for the hay, inside a cupcake liner basket complete with a mini marshmallow to represent Moses’ body, and an M&M for his head. Your little blessing will be bringing this home to share with you 😉. We also painted the Nile river and placed baby Moses in it. After all this Moses talk we decided to have a hand at parting our own sea, or swimming pool as the case may be 😜. The water was reluctant to part, but a great swimming time was had by all!

Freedom!

Today we realeased our beautiful winged friends into the  great outdoors.  It was definitely bitter sweet for some, but wholly exciting! Here’s a look-see….

Happy Cinco de Mayo from Room 4!

Today we celebrated Cinco de Mayo and a friend’s birthday! We celebrated with a full blown fiesta complete with a nacho bar, Latin tunes and learning some Spanish! We closed out our party with some muy delicious cupcakes for our friend’s birthday. Ole!





      





Fruit Day!

This week we’ve dressed in crazy hats and crazy clothes, done human color blocking, and on some days, we didn’t even bother getting dressed (pj day that is 😉). Today was Fruit Day and our last day of our annual Week of the Young Child celebration. We celebrated with the construction of fruit kabobs! We threaded and pulled our fruit to kabob perfection and then topped it with whipped cream! Thank you beautiful parents for making WOTYC so much fun!