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.

wings and water

Here is the promised continuation of our transportation unit.  These are some of the activities that aided us in our exploration of flight and floating.

{Art} Aerial View Collage

Finding interesting preschool art projects that go with airplanes is a was tough.  After a little brainstorming, I came up with this collage idea. We've been working on using scissors and glue so this activity helped us practice those skills as well as give us a view from the air!

First, I created my own cutting pages by using Publisher and Google Images.  On one page I inserted a picture of an airplane (from clip art)and added a thick black border around it.  On the second page, I pasted eight aerial view photos that I copied from Google Images.  I also bordered those with thick black lines to create cutting lines.  I placed the pictures on a table with scissors, glue, and construction paper.  My youngest students just had fun using the scissors to cut the pictures.  My oldest students took the time to create a collage by cutting out all the pictures and gluing them to the construction paper.

{Dramatic Play} Airplane!

My plywood "house" transformed into an airplane for the week.  SUPER simple dramatic play with old keyboards to "fly" the plane and chairs for the passengers.  The students were also able to use dress-up from our housekeeping area to add to their imaginative play.

{Dramatic Play} Boats!

Another super simple dramatic play option... 2 cardboard boxes, a bit of duct tape and viola, boats!  We were rowing all week - the boxes barely made it to Friday!

{Sensory} Boats Float

What better time to add water to the sensory table?  We have the coolest set of toy boats, they have removable sails that match their boat by shape and color.  

This is just a sample of some of our activities.  We also sang songs, read books, and had group discussions about transportation. 

What are your favorite transportation activities?

Miss Eileen

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

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!