Thursday, November 21, 2013

Chutes

One day, walking home from school and noticing this:

A chute


That same day, reading ECE wizard Tom Bedard's blog and seeing that he built a cardboard chute apparatus for his classroom sensory table.

Finally, walked past the school's cardboard recycling bin only to find the most perfect cardboard boxes, one being a narrow chute, which led to this



One side has two tubular chutes that release
into a 5 gallon bucket.  The other side has a
long chute pouring into a big plastic bin and
a shorter one pouring back into the table.

Check out Tom Bedard's blog here:
http://tomsensori.blogspot.com

Friday, September 20, 2013

Magic

This week at school I've been introducing magic tricks, mostly simple sleight of hand stuff. I've been closely observing the kids as they interact with this magic.

Now, I must admit that I have always been fascinated with magic, of both the occult and the "stage magic" variety. So it's never a stretch for me to play the role of Wizard or Magician. I love it. I usually do these tricks out on the playground after lunch, when everybody's feeling good and just goofing around.

Today I put an orange crayon in one open hand and hid a red crayon of the same size in my other hand, keeping it at my side. I get them to focus on the orange crayon. Then I place the other hand over the orange crayon, with the red one still hidden, and I chant a made up magic spell, glossolalia style. Then I open my hands, with the orange crayon now hidden in one hand while the red crayon is revealed in the other. I have magically changed the color of the crayon. Pretty basic stuff.

The youngest kids, 2-3 year olds, tend to be quite convinced by my magic powers. They believe fully in the magic. Most of the 4 year olds are totally willing to suspend disbelief as well, however, one can observe that something is at work in their brains. They are starting to want to try to figure out what's going on with these tricks. By the time they're 5 they usually know exactly what's going on and are more than happy to share the hidden workings of the tricks. If they're into it enough, they might even start performing their own tricks for their younger classmates, the true believers.

I'm not claiming that anything important is getting learned with this activity, but as a teacher, there's nothing I like to see more than a kid with a furrowed brow and an active brain, clearly trying to figure something out.







Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Smurf Mansion and Scarab Pyramid



A bunch of cardboard boxes hot glued into a structure with many rooms and levels.
Mysterious Symbols painted on the walls.  Holes to look through. 
Random bits, toys, and games pieces from the junk box arranged and glued into place.
A childhood collection of smurf figurines.






The boxes below were glued together into a kind of pyramid diorama.  Anyhow, the kid who painted it said it was a pyramid.  On the left side he painted Egyptian hieroglyphs surrounding a scarab beetle while explaining the meaning of the symbol to me.








Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Giant DIY Spin Art Machine

We've been doing a lot of spin art on a small scale in our classroom.  We've used an old turntable with markers and paper plates.  We've also used a salad spinner with tempera paint and cardboard cutouts.  

Recently I found some instructions for building a large scale spin art machine using a power drill as the spinning motor.  You can see in the picture below, it's a pretty simple set up.  I built a frame out of scrap wood to hold the drill in place, then put a T-nut and bolt through a plank of wood and attached it to the drill.  All you do is screw a canvas to the spinning plank, lock the drill in the on position, plug it in and start adding paint.




Here's a video of the Giant Spin Art Machine in action.  I made a cardboard wall around it to catch the paint spray.


Here's how the above canvas turned out using acrylic paint:


I also tried using watercolor and a big sheet of watercolor paper with some nice effects:



Now it's time to see what the kids do with it...