The two year old class and three year old class took a fieldtrip to McDonalds a few weeks ago. Judging by our outfits, the weather was pretty hot that day. Happy Meals and Ice Cream all around for this bunch! So much fun!!!

Who Is My Neighbor?

We have been reading and discussing the story of "The Good Samiritan" in which Jesus answers the question "Who is my neighbor?" We came up with the answer that our neighbors are everyone around us and that God wants us to treat everyone we encounter with love and kindness. For that reason we made "neighbor puppets."

So even if our neghbors don't look like us (or maybe they look completely silly), God calls us to love them.

"We love others because God first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Overheard at the Lunch Table

For some reason today the chidlren were discussing how large their brains were. This is what I overheard at the lunch table.

W: "I have the biggest brain in the world."
C: "Uh-uh. God does. Nobody has a bigger brain than God."
N: "What about Jesus."
C: "His brain is the same size as God's. They are the same person."

Bread and Butter

Our theme for the month of March was "Folk Tales Down on the Farm." As part of this theme we read and compared different versions of various folk tales. One of my favorites is always "The Little Red Hen," so to go along with that story my class made bread together.  I am not quite brave enough to make bread the old fashioned way with all the kneading and resting and rising; and honestly I am not sure that we would have the patience to do it that way!  I brought in my bread machine and we talked about wet ingredients and dry ingredients and then added them all together and poured them in the bread machine.  We checked on it throughout the morning and were able to see the mixture change and rise in the machine.

While we were waiting for the bread to bake, we also made some butter. If you have never made butter, it is one of the most simple and fun things to make!  Start with room temperature heavy cream and a clean, lidded jar.  Pour the cream into the jar and add a clean marble if you wish.

SHAKE!  A lot! Take turns, because this part can take a while. The colder your cream; the longer it will take.

As you shake the sound will change from a sloshy liquid sound to a very quiet, almost silent sound. The cream is getting thicker and you are about half way there.

Shake some more!!

The sound will change again to a sloshy liquid sound accompanied by a louder "thunk." That is because the cream has separated into butter and buttermilk.

Shake it a little longer and then separate the butter from the buttermilk. Rinse the butter with clear water while stirring it around in the bowl. This will remove all the buttermilk and make your butter stay fresher longer.

Add butter to your fresh baked loaf of bread.

Eat and enjoy!!

 We ate our fresh bread and butter for afternoon snack and had enough left over to share with parents.

March goes out like a Lamb . . . snack

March comes in like a Lion and out like a Lamb. That is the unit that the 2 year old class is currently exploring. To tie up our unit, we made "Lamb snacks" for our snack yesterday. After their disappointment in realizing the bagels were covered with cream cheese and not icing, the kids had a lot of fun putting their lambs together and eating them. Check out their pictures with their lamb snacks!! They liked eating them better than anything!! Everyone had 2!! Could not believe it! They wanted even more!!!

He ate the ears before I could get a picture :)"Ms. Stacey, I am wicking it!"

She DID enjoy eating her lamb snack!!

This lamb snack had a mustache :)

Not really sure how she ended up with three ears :)

"Posing" with our lamb snack :)

Snow Much Fun!!

Today we had a snow day at school! It snowed about 3 inches on top of some leftover snow from the weekend. Our local schools were out and the roads were a little tricky, so we had limited staffing available and fewer kids than usual.  We managed to have a place for everyone who called and the best part is that we actually remembered to ask parents to send in snow gear. Ms. Stacey and I kept our 15 kids together in the "big room" to play and snack. Then we all helped each other get ready to go outside. School-agers are really helpful for zipping coats, finding hats and holding jackets!!
We took the kids up to the upper gravel lot and let them loose. They made some huge snow balls that turned into a snow spider, a snowman, and some other creation that they enjoyed sitting on and jumping off. They had such a great time running around in the snow and playing. It was a lot of work to get ready, but I am really glad we did it!!
After we played outside for a while, we came in, changed out of our wet clothes (Ms. Pam surely appreciated the two pairs of socks I stuck on her heater to dry!!) and then each kid got to make their own pizza for lunch. They were really messy, but the kids scarfed them down, so they must have been good.
I think almost everyone is sleeping now, so we must have really worn them out outside. Days like this are fun because the kids get to play with kids they don't normally play with that often (the school-agers and other classrooms). It's also nice to have another adult to hang around with in the room.

Cooking Class

The two year old class has been doing a "Kids in the Kitchen" unit this week. Today we did a little cooking and made some Friendship Mix. Each child brought in a favorite snack of theirs and it was added to a big bowl of popcorn and mixed together. Each child took a turn adding their own favorite snack and stirring. Our friendship mix was our snack this morning. In addition, they are each wearing their Chef Necklaces. Fun times!!