Simple Banana Treat

Since I turned my kids into monkeys for the week, I thought we should have a banana snack! Today was our swimming day, so we didn't have a lot of time to make something. This banana treat is so incredibly easy! First I poured some cookie sprinkles into bowls.

Then I cut bananas in half and stuck a popsicle stick into each one. I was planning on having the kids just dip their bananas into the sugar, but I was worried the banana would fall off the stick or get smashed. So, after all the kids washed their hands really well, they picked up the sugar with their fingers and sprinkled it over their bananas.

That's it!

We made sure to make these right before lunch so the bananas wouldn't turn brown before we had a chance to eat them. I know it might seem silly to take a healthy snack and add some sugar, but the kids gobbled them up with their lunch!

To go along with our banana snack, I read The Boy Who Loved Bananas by George Elliott.

After seeing monkeys at the zoo, Matthew eats nothing but bananas. Pretty much all day, every day. Soon he starts feeling a little bit funny. Does he turn into a monkey? Read the book to find out!

Ten Little Monkeys {Class Display}

It's been a long time since I've done a class display, so I couldn't wait to get this up on the wall. We are learning about monkeys this week, so I decided to turn my kiddos into jumping monkeys! First I found some monkey clip art that I liked. I mostly traced them onto white paper, but I also had to draw a little myself to get them exactly how I wanted them. After making copies, the kids used watercolors to paint them. There were three monkeys from which they could choose. Then I took a picture of each child making a monkey face (ha!) and cut it out and attached it to their monkey.

(These pictures were taken at nap time, so forgive me if they aren't so great.) I cut the faces into "heart" shapes on the top and made sure to cut the kids' ears off, since they already have ears on their monkeys. Then I laminated them to make them sturdier. Some kids just smiled when I took their picture, but some made an ooh-ooh, ahh-ahh face, and one child even puffed his cheeks, which was adorable!

Then I made a bed out of poster board and construction paper. I used dot markers to decorate the bedding.

I displayed them in the hall with the title, "Ten Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed."

Skinny hallways prevented me from getting a better picture of this. Sorry!

It turned out really cute and, as always, the kids love seeing themselves whenever we walk by!

Making Art with Kool-aid

Today's art project turned out so cool (kool?), I can't wait to share it with you. I brought in some kool-aid packets and dumped them into bowls. The kids used their fingers to sprinkle the powder onto white card stock paper.

Then they used a spray bottle to lightly mist their paper. (NOTE: Spray your paper away from the bowls of powder unless you are done with them. You don't want to dissolve the kool-aid before you sprinkle it on! This may or may not have happened today.)

It was like magic! The colors appeared instantly when the water hit the paper. The kids LOVED it! (And so did I!)

 So beautiful! And the smell! Oh, the smell...

Not all the powder dissolved, so there was an interesting texture.

I made a rainbow. I just couldn't help myself.

I wish I had green, but my grocery store didn't have any. I also didn't try yellow because I thought it would be too light, but now I wish I had.

Did I mention how good this art project smells? Mmmmm...
Also, kool-aid seems to stain your fingers just as badly as food coloring. Just a little bit of a warning for you!

Science Fun + Art

This past week was all about science experiments. I decided to compile them all together for you. We started the week off with a bang -- Exploding Cola! I took the kids outside and dropped a bunch of Mentos into diet coke. I barely got out of the way in time! I recorded it on my camera and then took some snapshots from the video for you.

Then we made some "exploding" dot art. I normally tell the kids not to slam down the dot art markers because it might ruin the sponge tip, but this time I said it was okay. It turned out very cool!

On Tuesday we did the ol' water and oil trick. They each made their own bottles.

The oil became cloudy after the kids shook them up. I'm not sure why that happened. I made the big one and mine never became cloudy. Oh well, the kids didn't seem to mind! On Wednesday we did the Walking Water experiment. I put blue water in one container, yellow water in another container and put an empty container between the two. Then I folded up some paper towels and made the "bridges."

Within a few hours, the paper towels were colored, but there wasn't water in the middle container yet.

After nap, the kids awoke to some green water!

I decided to leave it overnight, and this is what it looked like in the morning:

On Thursday I put a bunch of baking soda in a bucket and the kids used droppers to add colored vinegar.

They loved how it foamed up! For art, we decided to use droppers as well. I added some water to tempera paint and then we dropped the paint onto paper.

We ended the week with Sink or Float, but I didn't get any pictures of that.
I hope you enjoyed my recap. It was a fun week!

Spinning Top Art

We did a very fun little art project today! We used spinning tops dipped in paint! The kids had a blast and the results were so cool. I wasn't sure if it would work, so I tried it out first while the kids watched. First I used too much paint and the top only spun a couple times. So I spread out the paint with a brush to make it thinner and it worked much better. I got out some more paint colors and more tops so the class could get to work.

Boy, did they LOVE this project!

It kind of reminded me of marble paintings, but this might have been more fun. We had to dip the top in paint after every spin, and often the top would spin off the paper (which is why I put down a tablecloth) and a few times fell onto the floor. Mine would always spin up and off the paper, so I had to keep turning my paper to get the paint in all directions.

The kids had an easier time. Maybe I was spinning it too fast.

Fun, right?