beans, beans, a musical fruit...

we're doing a bean unit! counting with beans, gluing beans, a bean table (much like a sand table but... with beans), and, of course, bean burritos!

i am trying to do some craft or art project regularly. (i was thinking "daily", but i think i forgot yesterday already! so "regularly" it is.) today's project consisted of picking any color paper you like, then mommy drawing lines to divide it and numbering the boxes 0-10. then the kids job was to glue the corresponding # of beans in each box. kj & i did her glue dots together, but the boys did the whole thing by themselves. both used way to much glue, but with nothing else on the agenda i thought they could just learn about how much glue was too much by trial and error. 14 hours later, k's is still wet! on the brighter side, i figure this is 165 beans less to pick up off the floor after we have time at the bean table! (shown below)

this is a favorite with all our kids and today went better than any past experience. i don't think there were ever more than 100 beans (or so) on the floor at once! (in the past, we've had ALL the beans on the carpet! - not so fun) hooray for bean day!