5/22/2012

Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty  with the Busy Bees was anything but something that you might snooze through.  It was such a hoot!  Since I had already shared with them The Nutcracker back in December, we reviewed a little about Tchaikovsky, orchestras and ballet.  I taught them a few ballet steps-- releve, plie and jete.  We discussed that boys can participate in ballets too!  I told them about how strong males were in ballet. We found Russia again on the globe.

We also discussed who authors are and how Sleeping Beauty was written by the Brothers Grimm. We discussed how people have taken that story and written it themselves into different versions of the story.  We looked at several different copies of this book from the library, noticing what was the same and different.  

We also talked about what a character is and identified the ones in Sleeping Beauty.  Then we headed off to the table to color and cut character puppets from the story.  (This is shown in the first picture below, after the videos). Afterwards for math, we put numbers on the back of the puppets and discussed ordinals.  This way the kiddos could take their puppets home and know which came first, second, third and fourth in retelling the story in a puppet show.   

While the kids we were working at the table, they had the funniest conversation! It started with Noah and Sydney saying they wanted to be paleontologists when they grew up.  At which point Syd chimed in that she was going to be a paleontologist AND a mom. Noah, not to be outdone, then announced that he was also going to be a dad of 90-20 kids! Calli pipes up that she is going to be a missionary. Paige says she is going to be a mom. Ryder says he wants to be a basketball player.  Lincoln says he doesn't know. I say, fair enough. :)

On Wednesday, it was showtime! Below is our very own Sleeping Beauty production. Props were child-made-- the boys cut and glued together swords and the girls cut and glued together flowers.







Math (pictured above)... Aurora sleeps for 100 years in the story. We made 100 by each child counting out 10 bears and making a group of 10. (I did the extras to equal 100). Then we made 10 groups of 10 to show what 100 is. We wrote the number 10 on a post it note by each group.

Art (shown below)... Tchaikovsky painting.





The kiddos working on their props for our ballet/play! 

5/06/2012

California Pizza Kitchen

 What an awesome field trip to CPK!! First, everyone (including siblings) got to create their own pizza. 




 Then, we all got to tour the kitchen.  Pat was great with the kids, and let them see everything. 
 The pizza's waiting for the kiln.
The dough press. 
 The prep station.  Little did we know, those yummy pizza's were for the mommy's.  :)
 Some of the pizza's getting cooked.  They move them around the entire time so they get cooked evenly. 
 The chopping area.  All their veggies are fresh and chopped daily.
 Salad station and cooking area.
 The fridge.  Wouldn't that be awesome to have at home?!  To the right of Pat, is the freezer.  Some of the kids braved the frigid room.
 The bread slicer.
 The kids watching their pizza's being cooked.
 Brunch. Nothing like a scrumptious pizza right after breakfast! 



 CPK was great.  They treated us so well.  We all got drinks and lots of pizza.  Amazing that this was all free!!