Who doesn't love noodles?

Our curriculum lately has been fueled by cooking projects.  This week we tried packaged spaghetti compared to noodles we made by hand!  Below Anders exhibits his technique for consuming noodles.

Flour is an essential part of noodle-making.   Nabil shows us how his dad taught him to clear off the top of the cup of flour with the spoon for accurate measuring!

We made a little burrow in the flour for the egg...

After taking turns mixing by hand, we employed Jill's food processor.

It was loud, but made a good dough for us!

We roll it out.

Then help each other crank the pasta machine.

Boom!  Pasta!

We also had fun crushing spices with a mortar and pestle, even though we didn't use the spices...

We also "practiced" making spaghetti with our play dough.

I placed some numbers out and the children put counters down for each number.

I just had up to 10.  Noe asked for 11 and 12.  Good practice recognizing the numbers, ordering them and placing an actual number of objects with each number.

We enjoyed water coloring this week too.

The T/Th group spent a lot of time building a house in the blocks.

They got cozy and read books together in their house later.

Colin concentrates on beading...

And Jane and Colin decided they wanted to re-enact Humpty Dumpty again.

A very busy week!

Pizza and Red Riding Hood

Our week segued from exploring shapes, to the shapes involved in pizza, as well as things that are RED.

Below an example of how we use writing in a purposeful way in the classroom.  Whenever possible, I  involve the children in making decisions, asking them questions and making lists.  I sound out words as I write their comments and ask them, "What is that letter at the beginning of the word, 'pizza'?"  

And here they are going through those steps!  Below, mashing down our dough to make a platform for sauce and cheese.

We grated cheese together . . .

put the sauce on . . .

and, as the list said, we ate it! (after cooking)

Beautiful artisan pizza!

The children had a lot of fun playing with the play pizza, too.

We also made pizza pictures this week:  Summer created a beautiful, "Apple Pie Pizza."

We read and re-enacted the story of Red Riding Hood. ( FYI, I said that the wolf wanted to eat Red Riding Hood's treats for her grandmother).  Below,  Joy is Red Riding Hood, being given the basket of goodies for Gramma by her "mom", Bridget.  Jane is the Wolf-in-waiting.  Colin played the heroic Woodcutter.

And in T/Th, Summer played Red Riding Hood and Noe an excellent Wolf!  The kids remembered the lines and the sequence of the story quite easily.

We also have a mini-set for re-enacting the story as well.

Colin shared his Red Riding Hood puppets with us!

We had a nice surprise of snow this week!  We brought some inside to play with.

We enjoyed water coloring the snow.

We were excited to actually play in the snow outdoors!  Noe and Jane are great reminders of all the gear we need to enjoy the snow:

good gloves

boots

snow pants

warm coat

hat

We made a lot of hearts this week, too.  Below a heart to trace and a heart to paint!