We Love Writing our Names!

All the children in our classroom were very excited with our new writing section! This area is filled with letters, pictures of ourselves, papers, pencils, our names typed out and our new address book! We are encouraging our children to continue an ongoing project with last years class. We sent out a homework assignment where we would like our parents to work with their children in practicing writing and learning their address! We are putting them in our class Address Book so we can write letters and send them out to our friends through out the year! Please bring back the homework assignment if you haven't already! =)

The children did a little experimenting when they went to the writing section, they would just grab a bunch of letters and their pictures and glue them on a piece of paper. We started to have a conversation about what we could use these letters for. Than the children thought their names since they had the pictures their too!

                                          We began searching for the letters that were in our name...

                                                    Than some of us glued our names on the paper...

                                        We started practicing how to write our names on  the lined paper...

                                                       Some of us traced over our name....

 

                                            

                                                                  Where is that P!?!!!!???

 This exercise helped our children learn their letters, practice writing their names, recognizing different letters and learn how to write on lined paper. They are having the most fun creating "messages" and once they start receiving them in the mail at their homes, we hope to create a love for writing.  We would love to share their work with you and become a partner in this project.  Please feel free to ask Ambreen to see your child's work.  The children are welcome to bring in cards, paper, envelopes, etc for this project.

We would love for our parents to continue this project at home as well, please let us know if you have any questions.              

Making Our Very Own Bird Nest...

Since we have been learning about birds, we moved on to the next part of our project:WHERE THEY LIVE- AND THEIR NESTS!

The students imagined they were a bird and started thinking of things they could use to make a nest! Once they thought of different things they drew out pictures of it and wrote down what materiel they would use.

                         By:Mateo-"Birds use sticks and mud!" (He wanted to show his bird in the nest..)

By:Ashley-feathers,grass,leaf,sticks & wood chips

 

By:Kaelynn-Sticks

So we went and bought lots of materials and set it out for our children to start making their very own nest! We told them to once again imagine they were a bird. 

The materials we had were:

• sticks
• hay
• yarn
• newspaper strips
• cut paper
• clay(as mud)
• fur

So the children began their mission....

One of the students used clay to connect the sticks together to make a circular shape..when she realized it still wouldn't hold together,she began using yarn to tie the sticks!

                                           Getting a little help from one of our older students ;-)

These students had the bottom layer of their nest secure..they were  trying to figure out what to use for the baby eggs to lay in that would be nice and soft?!?!!

  We took our nest and told Mrs.Maryam, "were done!"   We started to talk about how if we put the eggs in the nest they would fall through,and how their was no protection around our nest to keep the eggs safe from predators! We brought some eggs and tested them out in our nest to see if they were safe and wouldn't fall through....

                                           

 We started looking in our bird book to see all the materials and how they were used..this helped us to better understand how and why a bird used each thing they did..that's when we looked at our own stuff and saw the fur! We would use that for our eggs to lay in! :o)

 We worked on our nests for a while. Many times it would break or mess up and we would have to start all over again. It was a good experiment for us to try out because we were determined to make our nest the best way we had imagined in our head! The students never gave up, they just kept trying! All the nests were  made very differently, not one was the same with another one!

Doing this activity really helped us realize the hard work that birds do when they make a nest. We even joked around about how birds only use their beaks to make the nest. It took hard work for us to get our nests to be strong enough to hold an egg and to protect it from falling out of the nest. This really helped reinforce our knowledge about what materials birds use to make a nest and how they build them.
   
                                                                    Our end product:

                                                                        By: Annika & Ashley

By:Tirza

                                             
                                                                            By:Dimi

By:Joshua

Aviator Art!

The children in this classroom have really taken a big interest with our bird project! We have moved onto making  more bird feeders out of different materials! First we used the plastic bottles,than we used milk cartons and now we are on to the egg cartons! We have a total of 7 feeders in our backyard and plan on making more ;o)

We have been exploring through all kinds of new bird books we have in our classrooms, that has inspired us to do many different art pieces for this project.

Tirza was looking at a very interesting book we received,"Extreme Birds, The world's most extraordinary and bizarre birds".She looked at a image of a sword-billed humming bird. The bird with the longest bill..After looking at the picture and learning the cool facts about it,she made the very same bird out of play dough! Look at the amazing detail in this art piece! The students love looking through this book and learning about bizarre birds! Come check it out with your child!

 

As we looked at the many different kinds of birds, some children wanted to make their own birds out of modeling clay! After creating all the body parts we added on feathers and painted our birds. Our final pieces look like real birds!

A very detailed green & yellow peacock!

                                                                "Peacock" By: Ashley.P

"The bald eagle was searching for fish and worms."

By: Kiersten.S

This is a little preview of some of the things we have been working on. We are proud to say our bird project will be displayed at the Art Show By the students enrolled at Little Wonders and private lessons with Marjon F.Aucoin.

The show will be held at the Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land

13016 University Blvd

Sugar Land,Tx 77479

The show will take place on August 28th from 2 - 4.  All student artists will get in for free.

Discounted tickets will be available to the public at the entrance of the museum.

 We would like to encourage and invite everyone to come to the show and see all the amazing things that are going on!

Bird Feeders

 

Blue Jay -Ashley

The children in our classroom have started an amazing ongoing projects on Birds! Phoenix brought a bird house to school and the children wanted to hang it outside on the tree branch! We started thinking if the birds have a house they will need some food out there to eat! We started talking about what birds eat and how we could give them the food.  This led us to create bird feeders! In one of our discussions the teacher asked the children to name some of the birds they knew.  The three birds we focused on were.......

                                                 Our state bird-Mockingbird By: Tirza

                                                    Mocking Bird-By: Nohea

                                                                    Cardinal-By:Mateo

After we drew our birds, we got to work planning out our bird feeders.  And of course we can't start building with out a plan, we made our blueprints ;0)  We started drawing pictures of our bird feeders and how we wanted them set up. The colors,designs and how many holes, measuring the length, width, and height.....just like real architects.

                                                    Our seeds and peanuts for the birds =)
Next came the question, what do birds eat????  We started researching in books and on the computer to see what birds eat.  We found out that birds eat different kinds of seeds, fruits, and insects.We also learned how you can tell what kinds of things birds eat by looking at the shape of their beak. We looked up details on how to attract certain birds to our backyard by providing them with the right kinds of food!
After drawing and designing our bird feeders, we took our plans and creating them out of different types of plastic bottles. And of course we had to paint and decorate them just the way we wanted ;0)

                                                      Filling them up the seeds and peanuts....

                                                     One of our very colorful bird feeders...

                                              Sharing and showing our friends the bird feeders...

  

Now for the fun part..........hanging our final product from the tree! 

We cant wait for the birds to come visit! 

Since than we have researched different designs and ways to make bird feeders.  It seems like the children are creating a "bird heaven" outside!  They are also starting to plan a fund raiser to buy a bird bath......stay tuned to hear the details on this.  

This project has gone into many different directions and the students have created very special art pieces while learning some very interesting facts about birds.Check back soon to see what all we are learning!