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!

Beginning our look at Spring

This week we began our look at Spring while we had our very own case of "Spring Fever." The weather did not cooperate in terms of allowing for much outside play, so we did our best to bring the outdoors inside. There was also quite a bit of rich play this week as the children used their imaginations to extend their dramatic play. We had some great problem- solving with our social interactions as well as opportunities to share and help others.

We began working with the book, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick.

I found some great resources to go along with the book including an emergent reader, an activity for retelling the story, clip counting cards and pre-writing worksheets.We will revisit this book next week with an Easter basket sensory table and Easter items in our dramatic play area. We also used our rainbow rice, popcorn and beans to explore sound with plastic egg shakers. We shook our maraca creations to our favorite Spotify play list.

We looked at how the lady's stomach would expand with a fun baking soda and vinegar experiment from this book by Lisa Murphy. We used a funnel to add 1 tablespoon of baking soda in a balloon and placed 1/3 cup of vinegar in the bottle. The children then lifted the balloon to empty the baking soda into the bottle to get the reaction, which in turn blows up the balloon. We then used the balloons to in an art experience.

We also looked at how seasons change with activities that included replicating the Earth's rotation and tilt as it travels around the sun. I had a child hold a yellow paper plate in the center as the rest of us work on rotating and tilting our head toward the sun. We also explored this idea with the globe. Some other activities that dealt with the melting and warming of the Earth included adding liquid watercolor with small droppers to snow, which in turn "painted" our coffee filter and paper plate that was under our snow. We also added snow, fake flower petals and warm water to the sensory table. Eventually, our Polly Pockets went for a swim in the water!

I found another wonderful art idea from Teach Preschool. In looking at rotation, we also completed this "spin art" activity that did not require a spinner. After placing the paint on our plate, we used our hand as we rotated the plate under hour hand. It was fun to rotate the plate and then stamp the color onto our paper.

We took time to look at Spring word wall lists and used our stampers from Melissa and Doug and sheet protectors/ dry erase markers to explore these words. I did not have time this week to capture the finished projects, but the children always enjoy exploring with our stamp pads and stampers.

Other activities we completed this week included exploring play dough with printing tools to create patterns and structures. We also used half of our rainbow cards to match upper case letters this week and a letter W worksheet with our transparent counters.

 

Next week, we will focus on birds and plants/ flowers along with exploring clean mud. Here is a sneak peak at the bird nest I am building for the dramatic play center. Until then, enjoy this song we will be using next week to help with reviewing our seasons. 

 

 

Folk Music and St. Patrick's Day

This week we took time to explore Folk Music along with St. Patrick's Day celebrations. We started the week with the book St. Patrick's Day in the Morning by Eve Bunting. We explored Irish music with selections from The Gathering 2013: 25 Classic Irish Songs and Ballads and The Very Best of the Irish Tenors 1999-2002. We spent time this week with The Peter Yarrow Songbook: Let's Sing Together! We also watched the following selection from Riverdance and worked on dancing our own jig:

For our music activities, we used our instruments as well as our ribbon dancers. These were inspired by this site and were made with Mason jar rings and leftover Christmas ribbon. I had a couple of my girls try them out as crowns this week as well.

Our table activities included a rainbow number tracing activity found here, a gem transfer activity with a worksheet from this site, our bead pattern stacking toy, a tweezer activity with pom-poms and color matching with our folder game from last week.

Our craft activities and art activities were varied this week. We glued a rainbow of dots on a shamrock shape. We also printed shamrocks with bell peppers as found here. We took time to make rainbow crayons as inspired by Confessions of a Homeschooler. One of our favorite activities included coloring the outside of a clear plastic cup and watching it melt down to a disc in the oven. We extended the activity by using our new discs on the light table as well.

We also took time to revisit an art process with shaving cream and green food coloring to marbleize shamrock shapes.

Some of our sensory table activities included sailing green ice boats and containers, finding treasure in the rainbow rice and in the split peas and beans.

Free play at the light table included our colored straws. color paddles and gems.

Some of the highlights of the week included a balloon race inspired by this site, making a rainstick  out of paper towel tubes, tooth picks, duck tape and foam stickers along with cleaning pennies with a vinegar/ salt combination along with ketchup. We also used a graph from this site with Lucky Charms.

We also had a surprise visit from a trickster this week.

Join us next week as we explore Spring. Until then, have a great week!