If you’ve never been in our room in the morning, you might not know of the obsession our class has with pandas. Everyday, pandas are running amok in our loft. Baby pandas are sleeping, eating and cuddling all morning long. We’ve had pandas star in our journal entries and outdoor play. We even made a connection with Miss Smith, our Mandarin teacher, when she brought her panda, Meng Meng.
We learned to greet a panda:
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And have been discussing their not-so-varied diet: Bamboo!
Our disheveled loft decorations took a turn for the worse earlier this week and needed to be recycled, so it was looking a little bare (please forgive the pun.) After looking at the railings for a while, someone noticed that they looked a little bit like a panda’s favorite food. The only parts that were missing were the leaves.
With the help of a few images culled from Google, leaves quickly began sprouting from our bamboo. An eager group of scissor wielding leaf designers began a production line of greenery.
Branches were designed using pipe cleaners. All additions were attached using our favorite fixative: tape! Almost the entire class volunteered for this project. With so many different jobs to be done, spreading out the work was a cinch. The largest obstacle we faced was time. Before we knew it, snack time was upon us. The children helped me make a “To Do” list to help us continue the project another day. It contains some curious tasks, but we’ll see how it all shakes out as we go along.
To Do:
- Panda Food
- Make a Panda
- Hang More Leaves
- Make a Panda Pinata
- Panda Water
- Panda Vegetables
- Panda Bed
As we cleaned up a collection of tiny, green paper slivers began to coalesce. A few students wondered if we could use them for panda food. I immediately had visions of tiny, green snowflakes raining down all over the classroom, coating the carpet.
Umm, maybe we could find another way to use them as food.
We tried an experiment. Take one part tiny paper slivers and one part Mod Podge, mix them up gently with your fingers and let them dry on waxed paper over night. The next morning, you will have a lovely, stay-in-one-place panda meal. It worked perfectly.
Love the Mod Podge and paper sliver panda food, and of course the wonderful emergent curriculum.