Friday, April 12, 2013

Mud Day

Hey Friends,
What a busy week! We finished our unit on mud, seamlessly setting the stage for plants, by focusing on soil this week. I did so much with this unit that I think I'll post a separate blog post featuring the actual lessons at a future time. For now, I just want to celebrate surviving another two weeks of teaching! My students' behavior continues to be one roller coaster of a ride. I will say, getting spit on and told "you suck" by the same little five year-old girl was a new experience altogether. Interesting way to start off my career to say the least. You know what they say, sticks and stones...


Perfect for decorating mud pie! I was trying to figure out the best way to do Mud Day without getting 19 children too dirty. I decided the "just add water" route was going to be my best bet and it turned out fantastic! The day before, I filled 19 pie tins with potting soil, collected a ton of blossoms that had fallen off the tree right outside of my classroom, and found a tub of pebbles left by the old teacher who was in my room last year (Jackpot!). With the help of my custodian, which bless his soul for helping me get everything set up and keeping the kids in check, we had a very enjoyable afternoon creating some mud pies that really looked pretty enough to eat!






Some of my kiddos started to get really creative and decided the blossoms and rocks I provided weren't enough. They started looking around for sticks, leaves, flowers, seeds, "poisonous" berries as they like to call them, and other items they had written about in their mud pie recipes last week. Their mud pies were just wonderful. After they were done, I inserted popsicle sticks with their names on them and reminded my kids we were leaving the pies out over the weekend to "cook". A super fun activity and a great way to end a dirty unit ;).

As always, thanks for reading and remember to take some time to enjoy what you do.

2 comments:

  1. Just now catching up on your last few entries... Love this!! I've never seen mud pies before that were actually beautiful. Good lesson planning, good photos. I bet this will be one of the rare things your kids will remember about kindergarten. Like I remember taking 100 steps down the hall on hundred day, or the day kids brought in pets and someone's kitten clung to my shirt with its claws like velcro. Aww :)

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    1. Yes! It was a pretty awesome afternoon. Even my most challenging students, behavior-wise, were very well-behaved. I really expected to see mud pies to the face but my kiddos were civil. I was so proud. :)

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