Summerschool 2: Popcorn & Scizzors

DAY 1: One day I had the brilliant (read: horrifically messy) idea of putting popcorn in the touch-table. No, not popcorn seeds, but actual popped popcorn! We put the popcorn popper in the touch-table, along with a big bowl, some spoons and scoopers and things, and ran that thing over and over until the touch-table was full of popped popcorn and Orville Redenbacher was well on his way to another purchase by our family. The kids couldn't have been more elated. They loved pouring in the seeds, scooping the popped corn away from the popper, scooping it into jars, eating it all the while. Yes, despite my efforts to reinforce the idea that the popcorn needs to stay inside the table, this activity made a huge mess. Popcorn everywhere. BUT, they had an absolute blast - and for several days. Summerschool that first day was super easy, and provided hours of entertainment. (sorry, no pics. Would have been fun to document the disaster though :)

2: The next summerschool I drew a few trees on construction paper and filled a jar-lid with Elmer's Glue. I showed them how to dip the popcorn in the glue and put it on the tree. I think I even sang the "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree" song at one point. The kids got it to varying degrees. Seville went so far as to draw her own tree. Trajan did pretty well with gluing the popcorn on, but ate most of his popcorns after dipping them in the glue, and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to convey to him that ed to work, that he could eat the other popcorns but the glue-dipped ones were for his tree. He continued to think of the glue as a dipping-sauce. Oswell showed little interest in gluing popcorn on his tree, but really wanted to draw with the markers and then wanted to play with the scissors, which I had gotten out to cut out some leaves and bugs and things for added fun.

Trajan's Tree

Oswell's Tree (lots of marker-drawing, not so many popcorns)

Seville's Tree, complete with rabbit-dwelling in the trunk next door

Seville added a Cardinal with a long tail to the "example tree"

3. Since the scissors had been such a hit, once Jared got fed up with the mess and threw out the popcorn, I just put all the kid-scissors in the touch-table along with a bunch of things to cut: construction paper, ribbons, yarn, junk mail, whatever. They spent tons of time over the next several days cutting things up. Not really related to popcorn in any way, but one thing led to another.