U is for Utensils

Today we talked about Utensils. What a word. The kids had a hard time figuring out what the word meant. I took all the Utensils and laid them out on the floor in our circle and covered them with a towel while we talked what we thought the word meant. Then I took the towel off and all the kids said, "OH!! Those are Utensils!!" We talked about how utensils are things that have to do with eating, making, moving, or mashing food. We talked about forks, spoons, butter knives (utensils we use all the time) and then pointed out the ones in our stash that we don't normally use on a daily basis. Like the potato masher (smasher, smusher), the baster (which all the kids pointed out looked a lot like a paint brush) and measuring spoons.

It was a lot of fun listening to the kids talk about how, when, where and with whom they use certain utensils with at home or Grandma's. We noticed that we had 2 potato mashers, but they didn't look a like. One even took a guess that one of the potato mashers was a waffle maker because of the design, they are pretty smart kids!!

We didn't use our Utensils in the normal way. We decided to use them as paint brushes, thus the connection to the baster. We were all very excited to see what would happen when we used each Utensil. They found out that "painting" in a stroke type of manner wasn't all that easy with the potato masher, the spatula's, or the tablespoon, it was more like stamping. It was a lot of fun to go out of our comfort zone and use something silly to paint with. So look out Mom's & Dad's, if they take the whisk out of the drawer and you find it at the paint easel, I'm Sorry in advance :)

(the bottom of the plate was used also, not quite a Utensil, but who cares)

Little Man was taking his morning nap when we did our Utensil prints, but he had a grand time working on those gross motor skills when he woke up!! He has been climbing everything he can, and his balance is getting so that he doesn't fall backwards to much anymore!! He is growing so fast!!!