G is for Gumdrops 2/6/2012

The week before Valentine's Day is a great time to learn about candy.  As kids were filing in for the day I had a couple of videos playing from youtube about how candy is made.  (And now, a week later, when my boys ask to watch something and I ask them what they always request these videos!)

 During our reading table time the independent readers got to go fishing for letters.  We place some magnetic letters on the train table, and when they catch one with their magnetic poles they get to sing the song!  The song goes like this: "G says /g/, g says /g/, every letter makes a sound, g says /g/".  And so on for each letter.

 J was so excited about being at the reading table in his group.  He just couldn't hold it it!

 Here we watched (or re-watched) the how candy is made video on the big screen.

 Since we were also learning about the letter G it was fun to use an over sized golf ball, green paint, glue, and glitter to make some art work. 

 We also got gumdrops and made a graph of how many of each color we had.

 First step - sort the gumdrops!  A was the fastest at this, a great example.

 Then put them into the graph.

 Then color under a gumdrop so we can have a great record of it.

 Having a day of learning about candy is a lot of fun, a lot of energy, and a lot of mess, but at the end of the day it's always worth it.  I love my job!