Recipe for Gak!

For preschool this week we learned about things to do with Halloween!
One of the fun things we made was Gak.
Here is the recipe:
1 C. White Elmers Glue 1/2 C. Hot water(really hot)
3/4 C. warm water 1 TB. Borax
2 drops of food coloring

In a gallon ziploc bag put glue, warm water, and food coloring.
Zip the bag closed and have the kids mix this together.
Next in a cup mix together hot water, and borax. Open the bag, add the borax mixture,
and mix together until a soft ball forms and some of the liquid is gone. Next pour the mixture in to a bowl and let the kids continue mixing until the watery part is most gone. Pour the excess liquid off. then you have GAK! Store in a ziploc bag in the fridge. The kids love to play with this.
Make lots of fun colors.

pumpkin luvin' boys

Spooky Spiders!

Today @ preschool we learned about Spiders.

For one of our Centers made blow spiders with straws and water colors. The kids were really good at this and loved to watch the paint spray across the page.Jack
Ray
Carsten

We also played with the play dough, which is one of every bodies favorite Centers.

Mason cutting out Halloween shapes.

Today the big hit was finding the spiders hidden in the leaves.

Look! Jack found a spider!

Then counting the spiders. Brigham found a lot. He counted to 21.

For Snack time we made spiders,

We put eight pretzel sticks in a small Choc. donut,
and then added the choc. kissables for eyes.
They turned out great and the boys had fun eating them.

For Activity we made follow the directions spiders webs and then colored & cut out a spider to put in it.

Here is Ray, with his picture. He actually cut his spider in half, but we were able to glue it back together. The boys had fun, and did a GREAT job at following directions!

Fire Station Fieldtrip

Fall theme - Oct 2nd (katrina)

Another fun Fall day...

Centers today were: Leaf art, grab bag math, trains, and puzzles.

The Leaf Art was definitely the most popular. Leaves that we had found on our Fall Walk were painted, and prints were made. The prints turned out way cool and the leaves looked really neat as well, so we added that to their art.




There was a place to wash paint from their hands, but the kiddos enjoyed mixing the paint in the water as well.

During Circle Time, we worked on our Calendar, sang Do you know the colors of our rainbow, and read Color Dance.

We've learned that Snack Time is a great time to do our Letter Box. Today we worked on the letter "Ee." For a twist, I had items in the box that started with E, and some that did not. We decided which items began with E, which did not, sorted them, and even got to hold one for a bit.

For snack we had soda crackers, apples, and peaches. The boys enjoyed watching me cut the apples and peaches and guessing how many pieces there would be each time I cut them. Ray was the first to figure out that after I cut the apple in half and then in half again, that there were not 3 pieces, but 4. Way to go bud! They thought this was a bit of magic, so we did it again and again as we passed out the snack.

Soon it was time for Project Work, and we began to make our Pumpkin Cookies together. The boys were very excited to help me make the cookie dough. Later, Brigham wanted to eat the dough, they all thought this was a great idea, but as I had put an egg in there, I explained that we should only eat dough with eggs at home with our mommas and daddys. For Miss Katrina would feel soo bad if any of our preschool friends got sick from the dough. :) So I'll include the recipe below:

Pumpkin Cookies

2 sticks of butter

1/2 c turbinado sugar (i found mine at smith's)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 can pumpkin puree

1 c rolled oats

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 c chocolate chips

2 1/2 c whole wheat flour

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes (yes, my oven broke, so we were cooking them for much longer...thx for your paitience everyone!)

Everyone was so good, helping smelling, tasting, etc. When it came time to put in the spices, I let them smell several (parsely, chile, cinnamon, etc.) and asked them to tell me which they thought would taste good in the cookies. They all had good ideas. (we have some great noses and bakers) I also had them help me find the ingredients. When it was time to add the pumpkin, I showed them cans of corn and pumpkin and thankgoodness they chose the pumpkin! Same with the chips, they could choose between the corn chips and the chocolate chips. We had fun making decisions together.

As our cookies were supposedly baking, we went in the front room for movement and music. We began by doing the Dance book, copying the moves and positions of the dancer. They are getting pretty good!

We watched a clip of the Disney movie, The Game Plan, that is about a quarterback who plays a part in his daughter's ballet recital. We watched their performance that took place in the forest with fairies, animals, a witch, and her bats. The boys were very into the ballet and wanted to watch it again, we didn't have time, but if anyone wants to borrow it, let me know. :) After the clip, we had our own Fall Ballet, where we moved like the forest animals, trees, and bats.

Soon it was time for Outside play. Everyone enjoyed spending time in the pumpkin patch, admiring Tonya's sorting of the pumpkins by size and color.