more February fun

I realize February is a thing of the past (where does the time go???), but here are some other activities we did while learning about friends, Valentines, and more.

Sensory Fun, Pom-Poms, Tongs, and Muffin Tins:

This is a great activity for all sorts of learning.  At this center I observed:

Dramatic Play:  Lots of pretend baking going on!  The students used the tray under our sensory table for the "oven".

Math: Sorting by color, counting, and one-to-one correspondence

Fine-Motor practice: using the tongs to pick up the pom-poms and place them in the muffin tins

Social Skills: I had three muffin tins (play is limited to 3 students at a time) but one was different (the stars/hearts mold) which led to the students negotiating sharing options.

Math, Mailboxes, Hearts, and Numbers:

(inspired by a post at Teach Preschool): 

On this table I placed mailboxes, small plastic hearts, and magnetic numbers.  The mailboxes and plastic hearts were Target finds (the hearts are table decor, to put in flower arrangements, etc.) 

I would set the center up in the morning with the numbers on the mail boxes and my older students would start by putting the correct amount of hearts in the boxes. 

 By the time my younger students got to this center there was lots of dumping, pouring, sorting, taking lids on and off, etc. 

Later in the week I added construction paper hearts to sort the small plastic hearts onto. 

Magnetic Valentine Bears 

(A Target or $ Store find... I don't remember ):  I've been using my magnetic easel as a one student activity place.  I put it in a place in the room away from the other centers so students can work solo.  It's nice to have a place in the classroom for students to disengage from group play when needed.  It's also a good place to redirect a kiddo who might be having trouble getting along with friends.

Fine Motor, Weaving/Tying:  

Um, ya - I was inspired (again) by Teach Preschool, but this was a center did not work as planned.  Instead of weaving the strings through the dish drainer mat (found at the $ store) my students tied up our table!  This table actually belongs to our Children's Ministry Dpt. at our church - it's a hippo (I think) - and has "eyes"  and "nostrils" on the top with holes through the middle.  It's also slatted so the strings pulled through the spaces in the boards quite nicely.   There was lots of looping and tying fun so I let it happen until it got out of control.  We will definitely have to try weaving again (on a different kind of table - ha!)

Group Game, Heart Alphabet Match:

I'm always on the hunt for ways to play games with preschoolers in a group setting.  This game I came up with on the fly.   

Here's how to play:

*Grab a set of matching cards (I used these alphabet cards I made from dye cut hearts and stickers).

*Students sit, or lay on tummies,  in a circle (I just figured out that laying on tummies is great for keeping bodies from lunging forward into the circle to point or grab).

*The teacher lays  the cards one at a time, face up, in the middle of the circle.  

*The students watch carefully for a match to come up.  If a match is spotted, they say the name of the letter, the first one to say the name gets the match.

*Students collect matches until all the cards are gone!

Note: I helped out students who were not as fast at recognition as others, if someone had a lot of matches we shared our answers and matches with someone who didn't have many.  The goal of games in preschool should not be to win, but to encourage participation and success for the whole group.

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

the wheels on the bus

I'm going to have to post more entries per week to keep up on all the learning going on in our classroom!  Our class is in the midst of our transportation unit: wheels, wings, & water.  

Buses are a good way to learn about wheels in the classroom; in our culture they are a school icon, they are a "community" way to get around - lots of space for everyone!, and they're featured in the coolest preschool song ever (in my estimation) "The Wheels on the Bus."

Dramatic Play: Bus!

One of my few memories of preschool is sitting on a "bus" in our classroom with our teacher and reenacting the "Wheels on the Bus" song.  If that activity made that strong of impression on me as a four year old, there must be something significant to that classroom community experience.  

I have a hand-me-down "house" (of sorts) that I use to make all kinds of dramatic play areas.  It is four, square pieces of plywood hinged together (it folds up zig-zag style) with a window cut out of each square.  Let me tell you, it makes a great bus!  

I cover the outside in yellow paper, add some wheels and lights (that I've laminated so I can whip them out for years to come), I put some chairs inside and we're in business.  We even have a steering wheel (it used to blow up but doesn't any more - no matter).

Inside our bus I added numbers to the chairs, with correlating numbered tickets and dress up from our housekeeping area. 

 The kiddos had lots of fun imagining where they were going, taking turns being the driver, matching their tickets to their seats, helping Miss Eileen sing the song... love it!

Math: Bus Count and Park

To create this game I programmed a large sheet of paper with parking spaces and dots, 1-12.  I made buses with numbers 1-12 on them (the buses were from our Accucut machine, but I just found bus cut-outs at our local dollar store too).  I laminated all the pieces.  

I put this set out as a center area for counting practice, but I also played it as a group game.  I passed out the buses to the students, we counted the dots, team-work style, and if they had the matching bus they were able to drive their bus to the matching parking space.

Art: Bus

I love to use what I have on hand, and this art project was sitting in my file drawer.  The kids were very engaged in counting the windows and wheels, gluing them in place and adding their own colored design to their bus.

Stay tuned for more transportation activities!

Miss Eileen

jaguar prints

"Trendy" is not me, but this project turned out looking like a piece of clothing you'd see hanging in the kids section at a department store.  That was not my intention - but unexpected outcomes are always welcome with a project!

Our animal friend for letter "J" was a jaguar.  Most of my students were already familiar with this animal thanks to pop tv (apparently Diego has a jaguar friend? - I'm not up on current kids shows...).  Anyway, for our large letter "J" I decided to do jaguar prints - jaguars have a specific rosette spot pattern on their body and I thought that might be a fun art element in our project.

I started with pre-cut "J" shapes, I would have preferred orange, but I had a whole stack of purple "J's"cut out from a previous year that I wanted to use up (I'm all about using what I have on hand - actually I'm a little neurotic about it...). 

To create the circular spot print I used the bottom of small plastic pop bottles, dipped in black paint. The bottles worked really well to create spots - and lots of spots quickly.  

We also added a jaguar face to our "J" (I found a jaguar mask printable on Google images) and glued on googly eyes.  They turned out great!

 Another "J" center:

"Jellybeans" - super simple and super popular with the kiddos.  

I placed a handful of colored floral rocks on a tray with sorting bowls and called them "jellybeans".  That's all!

We:

• Sorted...
• Counted...
• Planted magic beans...
• Shared (and fought over them- typically the fighting is first- ha!)...
• Figured out which color had the most, which had the least...
• Put the in the bowls and shook them around...
• Made pictures out of them...

measuring up

One of the math focuses in our curriculum is an introduction to measurement. The following are some activities I've used in our classroom to introduce measurement concepts.

Full & Empty:  To demonstrate the idea of full and empty I put the containers from our balance scale on a tray with corn to pour from container to container.  As the students played we would ask from time to time which container was full or empty.  We would also challenge them to make one full or empty.

Heavy & Light:   We played with our balance scale and sized elephant counters.  While students explored we talked about how the scale worked, showing which container was heavy or light.  I also encouraged my older students to sort the elephants by color to see which group was the heaviest. 

Long & Short: 

Play dough mats.  I drew a long and short rectangle on a piece of paper and put the paper inside a page protector.  I encouraged the students to make the play dough match the lines, to make one piece long and one piece short.  Some of the students used scissors to cut the play dough to size.

Measuring with Yarn:  This is one of my favorite length activities, although it takes some patience on the students part to wait for everyone to be measured.  It might be a good idea to measure everyone with a length of yarn as they come in the door in the morning, but it was fun to watch everyone get measured too.  

I cut a length of yarn to match each students height.  I wrote their name on a piece of tape and attached the yarn to the wall.  After everyone is hanging we compare the different lengths, seeing who is long and who is short!

horse play

This year is galloping by!  We did a little horsing around with letter "H" this last week:

"H" Horses: This project was a little too teacher labor intensive (lots of cutting - I think I'll do something different next year). 

I did like having the kiddos use scissors to cut the yarn and glue onto the horse's mane and tail.   

 Horse Play: I've been seeing all these ideas on blogs about setting up miniature pretend play areas.  I gave it a whirl with our plastic  horses.  (The blue tray was the quickest container that I could come up with that was a good size.  I think a box lid with some 2-3' sides would work well too. ) I taped green construction paper on top, added plastic trees, fence pieces from our farm sets, a little green tinsel (for grass) and our small plastic horses.  

My 3's didn't care much for this activity - they pulled things off the tray and wanted to carry the horses around the room.  My 4's, however, have been playing with the tray for 3 weeks now - it's a hit!

Other games we're playing:

Star Count and Match:   (idea from the Mailbox Numbers for Little Learners book)

• Felt board
• Felt stars
• Number flash cards

For this game we sat in a circle around our felt board.  I had the students close their eyes while I put a certain amount of stars on the board.  Then they opened their eyes and I chose someone to count how many stars.  

After we counted I put two number flash cards out and we chose which number matched the amount of stars.

Bean Toss: (idea from prekinders.com)

• Tray /felt
• Cup 
• Lima beans (painted on one side)

Toss the beans on the tray, sort the white from the red.  Which is more? Which is less?   Which color wins?

 Block Stack, More & Less: (also from prekinders.com)

• Blocks (same size and shape)
• Die

We played a version of a block stack game a few weeks earlier, so the kids were familiar with the concept.  We rolled the die, counted the dots and stacked the corresponding amount of blocks.  Then we rolled the die a second time, made another stack of blocks and compared stacks.

thankful...

Hanging on the Line: Simple turkeys that my students could put together on their own... inspired by this blog

How crazy is it that we do all sorts of cute turkey activities during Thanksgiving season and then try to translate the cute turkeys into what's for dinner?  My kiddos don't get it and I don't get it either...

Here's a look at our cute turkeys (anyway) and  some other Thanksgiving activities...

Hand Turkeys (inspired by this blog):  I had about 15 lined up on my counter at one point, soooo cute!

• Cardstock (to trace hands)
• Feathers
• Markers
• Glue
• Orange triangle cut outs (for beaks)
• clothes pins  (these could be painted or colored with marker too)

My students were able to do most of this project on their own too - I just traced and cut out the hands.

Turkey Math

Magnetic Turkey/ Triangle Count: Give each turkey the correct number of triangles to match their number!  (Our shape focus this month is a triangle.)

Turkey Number Match: This game was passed on to me by a fellow teacher (I'm guessing it's from the internet somewhere...)  The turkey bodies have a number on them and matching numbered tail feathers.  This game can also be used for color sorting.

Our teepee (with a fire blazing underneath)!  I added a few dress-up items too (Native American head bands, fringed t-shirt).  We talked about what kinds of food the Native Americans would have cooked while we played here (no processed food here : ). 

Corncob Sensory Bin: I've seen this activity multiple places on the web.  The kiddos love to pick the corn off of the cob.  When the cobs are clean...

We paint with them! (Note: in past years the kiddos have loved to paint with the cobs - this group of students, HOWEVER, did not - they ran the cob across the paper a few times, set it down, and finger painted instead - you just never know!)

 Turkey Baster Squeeze:  (Inspired by a painting project here.)  I decided not to actually paint, but to use colored water (I mixed a little paint in the water).  We squirted on trays to let the students experiment with the basters a little more.  I don't think a piece of paper could have held up to all the squirting we had going on!  I also added smaller pipettes to experiment with.  

Left-overs:  As my students gain skills in using our classroom tools (glue, scissors, etc.) I like to turn them loose on creative art projects.  One day I put out all our left-over turkey pieces and let them create whatever their hearts desired!

All in all we had a great Thanksgiving season in our preschool.  I'm thankful for great kiddos to spend my days with!

<3 Eileen