Spring Break

I started the week with a lesson plan of ideas including books and activities I had carefully chosen. With the presence of my school-age children, the plan turned into plan C and our time together was rich with conversation, fun and problem-solving. We had lock smiths who worked tirelessly to figure out how to unlock their friends door with a variety of art and kitchen tools. We rewrote Gangnam Style to include "Hey _____ lady" (hairy, party, pretty, crazy and little). I appreciate the imagination and activity that older children bring to our setting and the other children learn so much from their example. Just check out the sculpture made in the clean mud by one of our school-age friends:

A box that arrived this week was turned into a ramp for our cars.

Little bags were tossed into the air and watched as they gracefully floated down.

These bags were quickly turned into parachutes for our military figures and a little stuffed animal thanks to the spark of an idea. There were too many teachable moments and spontaneous activities to list, but I don't doubt the ability of the children in my care to write the curriculum and am looking forward to our summer together.

Here are some of the planned activities from our week. We began the week with Birds by Kevin Henkes. I was introduced to Kevin's books in my Literature Arts course and will use more of his work in future units. I put together a bird nest inspired by this site and included bird photos from a calendar for the home center in the playroom. This was a great sensory experience and many toys and eggs were "buried" in the nest. This does get quite messy but was well worth the mess.

My toddlers had the opportunity to take plastic eggs apart and place items inside of them to shake and play. I also turned some containers into a small-motor activity with our math counters by cutting a slot in the lid.

I also added some foam flower shapes to the sensory table with Easter grass. I did not get a picture of the sensory table, but these are the refrigerator magnets that the children made as they pulled foam pieces from the table. We added magnetic strips to the back.

Here is an activity from Teach Preschool that we completed this week.

For our look at the book Mud, we explored clean mud made from ivory soap, toilet paper and water. I made the consistency a little thicker as this was their first experience with clean mud.

I found this great caterpillar idea from this site and turned it into a story.  In the story, the Easter Bunny had the eggs in a basket when they were knocked out of her/ his basket by a strong wind. As the Easter Bunny collected the egg halves, she/he talked about the color and the signs of spring that were beginning to happen. Our final sign of spring was the caterpillar itself.

We colored our eggs with a baking soda paste and eye droppers with vinegar as inspired by this site.

We also made a paper mache style egg as inspired by this site. These dried beautifully and made a really fun noise when we cut the tip off of the inner balloon.

We painted half of an egg carton for our Easter Egg hunt. We added shredded paper grass before adding our treats. This container also held our real eggs.

Our outside activities included a marble run and fun with Cascarones. We did not break them on each other... this time.

Another large-motor activity we did this week included small balloons, a large balloon and paper towel tube "swatters" made from our foam flower pieces.

We also had an opportunity to work with beads this week. Some of the children worked with pipe cleaners while others used the necklace string.

This was a fun and spontaneous week for us full of laughter, play and creativity. Just check out this balloon painting masterpiece:

Join us next week as we continue to look at spring as we revisit Birds and learn more about plants. Happy Easter!