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Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins

11/30/2018

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Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.. Grease 12 muffin cups, or line with paper muffin liners.
Combine flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl. Mix egg, oil, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla extract in a bowl; stir into dry ingredients. Fold in zucchini and chocolate chips. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full.
Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes.

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No Cook Play Dough Recipe

11/30/2018

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Here is the play dough recipe that we use, that lasts for months in an air tight bag or container!

In a bowl mix:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
3 tbsp cream of tartar
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Add and knead:
2 cups boiling water

Knead in:
food colouring or icing colouring (will make a more saturated colour)

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November 30th, 2018

11/30/2018

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November 30th, 2018

3..2..1.. Blast Off into space we went this week! The kids did so well counting backwards from ten. I think we blasted off about one hundred times this week!

We learned about the planets, the stars, satellites, gravity, astronauts and rocket ships. We made rocket ship names, where the kids practiced recognizing the letters in their names, putting them in the correct order and wrote or traced the letters. The kids worked hard together on a large cardboard rocket ship; complete with flames and a tin foil window. They went on a space number hunt and then had to find the matching number. They also sponge painted the Earth and made toilet paper tube star finders.

We were scientists this week, trying to figure out how to make a balloon rocket go up. We talked about pressure and how that can be used a force to push a rocket upwards. We experimented with blowing the balloon up more or less as well as pointing the pressure escape in different directions. We learned that things don’t always go according to plan and sometimes scientists have to try a variety of techniques or ideas before it will work. The Balloon Rocket was something we did everyday!

Our letters this week were X and Y. We also practiced singing and making Mat Man.

We made a few snowmen this week. Great practice in teamwork! The kids also found an igloo!

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Oral Hygiene

11/19/2018

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November 23rd, 2018

Brush Brush Brush and Floss!

This week was all about Oral Hygiene. How do we keep our teeth and entire mouth clean and healthy? We brush, floss and eat healthy food on a regular basis. We took a tally of how many of them brushed their teeth that day and they all said yes of course! We talked about how often we brush and how we brush. We also practiced flossing…it sure is tricky!

The kids practiced threading little white teeth with yarn, painted with toothbrushes and cleaned little toy animals with toothbrushes. They also practiced cutting on a straight line by cutting out little square paper teeth to make an opening and closing paper mouth.

We squished and rolled play dough to make the shape of the gums in our mouth and added little buttons for teeth (great for fine motor work!). We also practiced our letter recognition and fine motor work by listening for a letter and brushing that letter off of the Mega Blocks ‘teeth’.

Our letters this week were V and W. We talked about what diagonal lines are and how many lines we need to build these two letters.

The nice weather we have been having has allowed us to continue our long adventures to far away parks and into NoseHIll Park.

Some other things we have been working on this week include number/counting puzzles, ABC puzzles, play dough, creating mini books and researching what future astronauts need to learn in order to become astronauts. I know what we are learning about next week!

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5 Senses

11/16/2018

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November 16th, 2018

Hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell…we learned about our 5 senses!

We explored our sense of smell, touch and sight by mixing two colours in shaving cream to see what colour it turned into.

For our sense of touch we identified many different textures from smooth and soft to bumpy and scratchy. The kids went on a hunt to find a bunch of objects that had certain textures and then they sorted them into texture groups.

To explore our sense of taste we tasted sweet, sour, spicy and salty. The faces they made when they tasted anything other than sweet were pretty funny! But then they thought it would be funny to keep trying the ones that gave them a funny face. Crazy kids!

We also sorted and matching pictures that represented the 5 senses to the part of the body that uses each sense.

There was great learning on the go this week! We made two trips to Nosehill Park. We were on the hunt for ways that we use our 5 senses while out on these adventures. ie: hearing birds and the wind rustling the plants, seeing all plants and the airplanes, feeling the rocks as they climbed and even the pokey plants too! The also took notice of the footprints in the snow; taking notice of the patterns and shapes that each had, comparing size, shape and texture, as well as what type of person or animal they belonged to.

Some other things we did this week included baking (always a favourite!) and fun in the field with Bella. She sure loves playing with these kids!

Our letters this week were M and N.

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We Remember

11/8/2018

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November 9th, 2018

We Remember.

We learned who/what veterans and soldiers are and how they fight and have fought for our freedom. The kids were very proud and excited to walk down to the store to get their own poppies and to put the money in the tub for the veterans.

We talked a lot about peace and what that looks like, especially in our everyday lives on small and larger scale. ie: peaceful actions like keeping our hands to ourselves and using kind words, to helping those less fortunate.

For Remembrance Day we made torn paper doves, practiced our cutting by cutting out and colouring hearts as we continue to listen to Susan Salidor's I've Got Peace In My Fingers, went on poppy scavenger hunts (If you put anything into a scavenger hunt they love it!) and used Q-Tips and paint to practice our names.

Our letters this week were B and A. We had fun using stickers to make letter B and go on letter scavenger hunts (they then told me what colours, letters and/or letter sounds they found while on their letter hunt). While finding words that began with A, a couple of the kids asked, "Why do some of the A words not sound like A?”. What a great observation! It was a great chance to talk about what A and U sound like when they are neighbours. One of them then compared it to how Q and U sound different when they are together!

Some other things we did this week included number recognition/counting puzzles, making a couple visits to the ravine by NoseHIll Park, watching many geese heading south for the winter, making tracks and snow angels in the snow and snoozing in the leaves.

Some of the books we read together this week were;
Pete the Cat and the New Guy- James Dean
The Peace Book- Todd Parr
Love the World- Todd Parr
It’s Okay to be Different- Todd Parr
Friendship is like a Seesaw- Shona Innes

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Halloween

11/2/2018

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November 2nd, 2018

Happy Halloween! It sounds like everyone had a safe and wonderfully spooky Halloween night!

We talked a lot about ways to stay safe during their night of Trick-or-Treating. I used a whiteboard drawing to represent a safe Halloween night; porch lights on, going with a grown-up, walking on the sidewalk, etc.

Of course we scooped out a big pumpkin to collect all of the seeds and the pulp. So fun! Some were really excited about it and some seemed disgusted and just watched. After scooping out the pumpkin we thought of a pumpkin faces we could carve and the shapes we could use to make that face. When it was carved the kids tried putting the pumpkin back together like a puzzle.

We also measured pumpkins using yarn to see which one was bigger than the other, looking at which one is taller/shorter than the other, and we used a food scale to compare each pumpkins weight to see which was heavier.

The kids used their little fingers to thread yarn through Halloween images, counted and matched ghost numbers, and identified and represented numbers with gems.

We made witch's brew using baking soda and vinegar. They each made up a magic spell and poured in the vinegar…and poof! The witches brews bubbled over and happened to all be a different colour!

It was quite fun to watch the kids dig through spaghetti to find Halloween creatures. During this activity the kids did anything from identifying colours and matching, to figuring out what letter each of the creature names started with.

The Halloween songs we learned and danced to this week were, “The Skeleton Dance” and “Who Took The Candy?”. The kids did a great job practicing their left vs right and following a hand clapping beat.

Our letters this week were R and K. We discovered a few words that sounded like they started with R when actually they began with a W ie: wrench, write, wreck. It’s great to now see that when the kids get in a habit of learning about/building letters and playing letter games they start playing letter identification games all on their own during their play time.

We also went on a Nosehill Park adventure where we saw many holes dug by tiny animals and the new stairs being built up the hill.

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Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins

No Cook Play Dough Recipe

November 30th, 2018

Oral Hygiene

5 Senses

We Remember

Halloween

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