movin' along...

Here are some transportation activities we did last week:

{Language} Alphabet Roads: 

These printables are from makinglearningfun.com - we cut the letters out, glued them to construction paper, and laminated them.   I used to have a set of mini cars that would work better with these, but our matchbox cars are working for now. 

{Sensory}  Beans, Blocks and Cars: 

Rocks or sand would work with this activity too, and I when I do it again I'll put it in a larger, flat container - the sensory table is too curved and deep to run the cars around much.  

My students ARE having a great time with the trays connected to the side of the table.  They fill the tray with beans and run the cars along the length of the tray through the beans. (AND we're practicing using hand brooms to clean up our mess off the floor!)

{Math} Car Count (printable from prekinders.com, titled "Road Count"):

I wanted to do this activity outside in our parking lot, but it was FREEZING the day we did it, so I improvised with our classroom car collection.  I gave everyone a worksheet and blue and red crayon.  I lined up the cars on the table, one by one; if it was blue we colored a circle blue, if it was red, we colored the circle red.  At the end we counted up our circles to see which color had the most.  

This activity challenged my 4's a little and it was a great way to assess where my students were with their attention spans, listening to and following directions, and counting skills.

{Building} Train Table: 

Always fun to play with trains!  We kept our snow out and had some other helpful vehicles clearing the tracks for the trains to pass through.

{Art} Wheel Art: I have a HUGE amount of leftover shapes, pictures, etc that I am trying to use whenever I can.  I was happy to put them to work with this activity.  I placed the shapes and pictures on a table with glue, scissors, and markers, and let the kiddos make their own transportation artwork.

{Art, Sensory} Car Paint & Car Wash:  Painting with cars is so much fun!  We did a group painting, I covered our tables with paper, put the paint on trays, gave everyone a car and let them go at it.  We had a lot of finger painting too and kiddos with paint up to their elbows!

To clean up, we had a car wash the next day.  We used large, flat containers with a little soap and water at the bottom, gave the students painting sponges and let run their cars and trays through the wash!

Keep following along for more transportation fun!

Miss Eileen

Ii...eye...aye...Ii

We had some inchworm fun to help learn about letter "Ii".  Thanks to Deborah from Teach Preschool I had some activities at my fingertips - great for a busy time of year : )

Big "I" with Inchworms - Hiding in the Grass (Inspiration here) :  We glued small green rectangles on our capital "I's".  We tried to glue the worms bending, but most of my students liked the ease of gluing them flat.  

After we were done with the glue, we painted grass for the worms to hide in, using the tines of a fork.

Find the Inchworms! (Inspiration here):  I can't believe I've never thought of using pipe cleaner and magnets together - great combo!  For this center, I put some grass (green and brown gift bag filler, found a the dollar store) in a container.  I added some inchworms (green pipe cleaner) and magnetic wands. 

My kiddos LOVED this activity.  I'm going to bring it back in a few weeks and add some magnetic alphabet letters to the mix for some review fun. 

Other activities in our classroom:

Nativity Building Center:  I've had a plastic Nativity set mixed with our blocks for the last four weeks and it's still a popular spot to play.  Every once in a while baby Jesus disappears (he's a hot item!) but he is eventually retrieved to place in whatever version of a stable is being constructed. 

Christmas Card Art:  I had a huge bag of Christmas card fronts donated to our school.  I put the cards, construction paper, scissors, glue and markers out at our art table for the kiddos to be creative with.  My smallest students are just getting comfortable with using scissors and glue so it was great practice for them. I love seeing their creativity start to blossom when the use of art tools becomes more familiar.

busy bees

My preschoolers were busy bees in our classroom this last week.  As I watch the students interact with various play areas I marveled at how different the classroom was from the previous weeks.  The kiddos were staying longer at learning centers and interacting much more with each other!

Here are some of our centers:

• "B" is for building: At our regular building center I added in a work bench and tools to go with our blocks.  I believe at one point during the week I overheard a group of students singing "Bob the Builder" - it was a hit! 

• "B" Trace & Erase: (I picked up this idea from a pin on Pinterest and morphed it into my own) I created my own tracing pages on publisher and slipped them into page protectors.  The kiddos then used dry erase crayons to "write" on the pages - just erase and reuse.  (Note: to "super" clean the page protectors I used a magic eraser since the dry erase crayons leave behind a little residue)

 

• Bee/Flower Count & Match:  I found this game in a Mailbox Numbers book.  The pictures are photocopied onto card stock & laminated.  The bees are glued onto clothes pins.   The object; count the flowers and pin to the correct, numbered bee.

• Big & Little: We are working on size sorting so I placed "big" and "little" flash cards on two separate trays.  In the middle I placed a container of big and little beans (lima & pinto respectively).  We sorted the beans onto the correct tray. 

• Sorting Fish, Color & Size:  This game was created by a fellow teacher and I have no idea if the game came from her imagination or from a source - but it's great!  She created game cards with squares that go from small to large.  There are fish cards that match the size and color of the game cards - great sorting activity!

•  Butterfly "B's":  We had a great time making this project, just glue 2 letter "B" cut-outs back to back onto a large piece of construction paper, add a circle cut-out for the butterfly's head, draw on a face, tape a piece of pipe cleaner to the back side of the paper for antennae, and decorate (we used dot painters) - "B"eautiful!

Love the lips!