Slime Revisited

We started our morning with lots of free-play. On Mondays I like for the kids to get reacquainted by having a nice block of time for free play. We start all of our mornings off with free play, but usually we start our circle time at around 9 or 9:30... but Monday's we don't start until 10 or so. I also decided to change up our week a little. I was going to read The Mitten by Jan Brett and focus on the letter Oo... but I changed it up to do the letter Gg for Groundhog, and read some of the Groundhog books I have. It fits into the Winter/Animal theme we have for the month... so I ran with it. (Which I love that I can do!!!)



We have calendar, introduction of our Theme for the week, letter, shape, etc... then we break up into our Quiet Work Time (which is really Center Time... using the word Quiet helps with the noise level). We read Groundhog Day by Margaret McNamara to understand what Groundhog Day is all about. This book also helped us with the concept of Pretend, as they use a Hamster to be the Groundhog, and Shadow. We also went outside and played with all our riding toys with the School Aged Kids, who were home from school due to a Teacher Work Day. (I need some of those :) ) While outside we ran after our Shadow's and wondered what it meant if WE saw our Shadows.



During Free Play we took the Slime our of the fridge again and had a grand time... We started off on the table. We love how cold it is when you first take it out of the fridge and how it doesn't stick to your hands to much.






The kids then decided that the Sensory Table looked lonely without any flour in it and moved the Slime there. We then added some animals.

The animals were a great hit and got some of the more apprehensive kids involved, since they didn't really need to touch it. They just moved it around with their animal.

Though Mr A decided to try it. "It's COLD Shell!!!" We only got him to play with it with that 1 finger and his animals... but he did and that is great!!!

The kids also loved the suction noise the Slime would make when they would press one of the animals into it and then take it out. (The School Agers taught them that) It was also interesting that when they took the toy out of the Slime the Slime didn't stick to the bottom of the animal, just to the top. HUM....

So, even though we wanted to focus on the Groundhog today, Slime was the hands down winner of the morning. Fun was had by all!!! Tomorrow is a new day :)


Yesterday I posted about my dismal organization skills. Thank you Bev and Ms Debbie... It is nice to know I am not alone!!! I did get to that area next to the fridge. OK, I know it doesn't look perfect and I haven't really addressed the issue of the pile (that keeps piling up) yet, but I will get there. Baby Steps :) I think I may follow Bev's advice and put up a couple of those plastic magazine rack kinda things on the wall over there, that will at least help make the counter stay clean. I also will look into where I can put some sort of desk/Armoire thingy to hold my "office." IKEA might be a good place for that.

Before After :)

Saving the Slime

Slime... Gotta love it!! When I found the recipe for the slime I was excited to find out that I could keep it for more than a day. Teacher Tom asked if we would keep it to use on Tuesday... and "Oh Yes" we will... I have a few little ones who didn't want to touch it. They looked at it, they poked it with skewers, and they told me what they thought it would feel like, but they didn't touch it. I want to give them the opportunity to touch it at their own pace and leaving it out for more than that one day is the key. I will make sure there are lots of different tools that they can use, I know with time they will touch it and figure out if they like it or not.

I think it is sooooo important to let the kids experiment at their own pace. They have been told "No" so many times that they are afraid to try new things. (not all kids of course) I remember when a child first came to me, he would not go to the sensory table. He was apprehensive of anything I put in there. I started out with simple things like water, cotton balls, or beans. I would but tongs, cups, spoons, and buckets in there. He would look at the materials, peek over the side, and then walk away. He liked the water, but that was it. I would try to get him to try it, but didn't push it. It took about 2 months, but he finally started using the utensils and then his hands. He loves it now and loves to get dirty... but the Slime... that will take a little while. He's not so sure yet... but I know him and he will touch it with time. His own time :)

So our Slime will be here for as long as it stays safe and non-moldy... and when it gets moldy we will get our magnifying glasses out and see what that looks like. I think I will probably add some polar bear figures and penguins to the slime next week and that might entice some of my hesitant preschoolers to play with it.







My own children have asked to take it out of the fridge to play with it... so I am now hoping it will last the long weekend. Having 4 little boys in the house and all this stuff from preschool... sometime the two don't mix and I have to redo some of the play dough or paint material... so if the slime doesn't make it, I will just have them make some more. A project I think they might like even better than playing with it :) Huh...

Slime Day

I can't believe it is Friday!! We have had a lot of fun working with the letter S, learning about Animals we would find in a Pond, counting, reviewing and experimenting!!

Today we finally made Slime!!! We were going to make a make-shift version on Monday with Flour and Water... but the kids really had and are having a blast with the flour as it is, so we decided not to do that. Even the School Age Kids are loving the flour table :) So, I asked some teacher friends of mine if they knew the real recipe for Slime and The Princess's Mom told me Borax and Glue... Ok... I can do that!! She didn't know the exact recipe so I went online (gotta love the Internet) and found a whole bunch of recipes... I followed this one. I liked it because it said to but the mixture in a ziplock bag and let the kids knead it. They loved it. It took about 10 minutes to knead it to perfection, and we had to help towards the end, but it wasn't to bad.

Tip: Use a real ziplock bag and not the zipper kind as the area at the end, where it closes, leaked :) Little Miss M wanted to do it and when I gave it to her she did a great job, but it started to come out at that one spot so we had to stop.



Here is a picture of the ingredients and of Ryan combining them. They enjoyed the fun of measuring and mixing... It was really neat to see the glue quickly turn solid, but not solid. (Is there a technical name for that??)

Here we are kneading the mixture... They used their observation and prediction skills to tell me what was happening... Some could figure out it was getting thicker, others just wanted to play with it as soon as possible.

We all loved looking at the Slime... again we used our observation skills... before we touched it... we thought it might be wet, cold, slimy (of course), bumpy, squishy, and slippery. We have been using a lot of descriptive S words this week and it is really great to hear them being used :)

Finally we get to dive in and touch the stuff we made... they confirmed that indeed it was definitely cold, slippery, squishy and SLIMY!!! They continued to play with it and experiment with it. Would it keep the shape of their hand? Would it ever warm up?? How about cutting, could we cut it??

I wish I could post all my photos, but I would have to many. I want to show everything we do, but there isn't always room. Instead... we also had calendar, show-in-tell, circle time, singing, counting and free play. We then got to go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather. It is finally getting back up to the upper 50's and it feels great. I miss the snow, but we were getting antsy to go back outside :)

We found this ice left over from our cold spell... the kids had fun trying to get it to move, come out of the turtle, and trying to break it into pieces... That is what it looked like when we went back inside... so we didn't get to far. We did predict that it would be melted by Tuesday (we have off on Monday)... so we will have to see. We put the top on the turtle and I will have to make sure my own children don't get into it... but we'll see, they can be pretty crafty boys :)