some september fun

Wow, it's already October!  In my last post (over a month ago - sheesh!) I talked about being flexible.  Well, my flexibility has definitely come in handy this school year.  I'm the director of our two campus program (teach part-time/direct part-time) and as such, I end up being the person who fills in the holes, or goes to the place that makes the most sense with our enrollment and current staff.  Well, with the new school year I had to make a switch to a different class on our smaller campus.  Instead of a class of 15-20 kiddos I'm running a group of 5-10 (so different! - I can actually sit at a table with the students and do art with them instead of running 5 directions at once!).  I'm really enjoying my new class and we've been having a great time together.  

Here are some of the things we did this last month:

For our first week we take time to become familiar with school routines and for our curriculum we focus on colors.  "Curious George's First day of School" was a great story to help introduce both the subject of school and color to the kids.  In the story, George visits a classroom and discovers all the things the kids do at school.  While visiting George also gets into the paints and creates all sorts of colors and, of course, a mess.  We didn't do the mess part, but we did do lots of color activities including color mixing with paint and shaving cream, ice cubes, and eye droppers.  (Sorry no pics - it was indeed the first week of school and my ducks were not in a row!)

The second week of school we focused on shapes.  I LOVE the book "Mouse Shapes" and all of my students loved it too.   

In this story the mice hide in shapes and entertain themselves with creating pictures out of the shapes.  

For some hands on learning I gave each student a piece of black felt (8"x11") for a background and multicolored felt shapes. As I was reading the story the students were able to create their own pictures with the felt shapes.  (This idea is not my own, but a combination from inspiration around the web.)  

We left the book and the felt pieces out for further exploration at a center area.

Make a Square

For this quick activity I gave everyone 4 pipe cleaners.  We lined them up to see if they were all the same length.  Then, we discussed how all the sides of a square are the same length.  Could we make a square out of our pipe cleaners?  Yes, we could!

For more activities with colors and shapes see these posts: "Exploring Color" and "The shape of things".

baby it's cold inside: winter play

Living at a low altitude in the northwest doesn't lend itself to many snow experiences.  About once a year we may have a snow "event" (and trust me - it's ant EVENT when it happens) but generally, to experience "winter" you have to travel to the mountains.  

Some of my preschoolers have not had that experience so I hope I've enlightened them with some pretend winter fun.

Here's what we did:

*housekeeping, winter dress-up:

I found gloves and hats at the $ store, bought matching colored sets, and added them to our housekeeping  (dramatic play) area.  What fun!
I observed:

• pretend snowball fights and snow angel making (too bad the carpet doesn't leave an impression!)
• fingers working hard to fit into the correct holes in the gloves
• color matching; choosing the hats and gloves that were the same color
• hats being worn by my lion-headed chairs (wish I had taken a picture!)

*building, felt snowmen:

(inspired by Frugal fun 4 boys)

I went super simple and used felt I had on hand to make the shapes.  The kiddos played on and off at this center, arranging and rearranging all the pieces.

* sensory/science, ice:
We're blessed to have an ice machine on campus : ) in the morning we filled up a bucket with ice to pour into our sensory table.  I added polar bears and penguins for imaginary play.

*gross motor, snowman toss:

I found this activity at the Little Illuminations blog.  Ayn had covered her pieces in contact paper to stick them to the mesh pop-up hamper.  She ended up stapling the face on because the contact paper didn't stick well to the fabric.  I tried a few sticky alternatives without much luck.  

 

• First, I tried double-stick tape which worked until they were hit with the bean bag.  The students did their best to reapply the face - it was comical to look every once-in-a-while and see the face rearranged.

• Next, I tried velcro on the back of the pieces, but they fell off too.

• I finally put the pieces onto a piece of white paper and taped it onto the hamper.  This worked OK, but I'm still looking for ideas...

One of my students commented that the snowman looked angry... I said "I'd probably look that way too if someone was throwing beanbags at my face!" : )

Any thoughts on how to make the pieces stick better (without being permanent)?

*dollhouse/car table, snow play:

I was planning on making a cute winter village like the one here at Toddler Approved. But, time got away from me so I pulled out our doll house, put it on our car table, and added buffalo snow around the house.  It was a success and I think the snow will stay on our car table through some of our transportation unit too : ).

*play-dough, snow style:
I'm going to start working my way through the Mudworks book - a great resource for all things dough related...

I used their basic, cooked, salt play-dough recipe (it turned out great) and added silver glitter during the kneading process.  We also used these playdough math mats from Prekinders for some counting fun.

*color match, snowman clothes:
I printed and laminated these matching cards from Prek + k sharing- so cute!  Loving the free resources from everyone's blogs - it saves so much time!