Book Love: Should I Share My Ice Cream?

I just love Elephant and Piggie books, and really anything written by Mo Willems. So I take any chance I can to fit them into our curriculum. This book was perfect to read during birthday week and helped us talk about what sharing looks like in preschool- something we will continue to address all year long... :) 

Connecting Activity: I can't take credit for this activity, and adapted it from something I found here. We tried it passing or sharing our ice cream with balloons, which was extra tricky, but we had a bunch of balloons out since it was birthday week. There were a lot of smiles, and it was also a great activity to get the kids talking to each other. I loved the chance it gave us to practice asking to share with someone in a fun, no-pressure way.

Dramatic Play Connection: I set out our ice cream cones, pom poms, and scoopers in the dramatic play area, and the students became really engaged in making, "selling," and sharing their ice cream. One group even built an "ice cream house," where they made the ice cream and then scooped it out to give it away. :)

Creative Kids Summer Class: Collage Art Play

Our last project for this session was inspired by two books: Perfect Square and Toy Boat

On the first day I set up an easel with blue and white paint for the kids to explore, and that resulted in beautiful sheets of blue paper.

I cut the pieces up into smaller squares, and later we ripped and cut those up into smaller pieces again, after reading Perfect Square. We layered those pieces onto canvas to be our ocean/water/lake backdrop.

Then we cut up other squares and shapes to create boats. I resisted the urge to jump in and make sure everyone's boat actually looked like a boat, and instead let them freely create and enjoy the process. One student worked very hard to create a true sailboat, and another little guy was beaming at the end because he was so proud of his "boat" that he made all by himself. :)

I just love all of our creative boats! Collage art is my favorite. :)

Book Love: The Black and White Factory

I stumbled upon a new book at the library a few weeks ago, and it inspired this art project for our Creative Kids Art Play class.

The animals in The Black and White Factory have really specific rules about their factory, and that includes no color and no messes! But then one day, some colors start to creep in and they try everything to stop it from ruining their factory. This book is interactive and funny, and I love the way the characters embrace the mess in the end. It's such a perfect story for encouraging creative and exploratory art play.

Connecting Activity
I set out black (dollar store) frames over white paper with some colored glue, and the kids jumped right in to add some color to their "black and white factories."

A few tips for trying this with kids:
#1- When I researched this activity, most tutorials suggested using hot glue to seal the glass frame so that glue doesn't leak out. I would add that you should be very generous with the amount you use, both in front of and behind the glass. I thought I had done enough, but I still had problems with leaking glue and it was messy!

#2- Preschoolers love the process of squeezing and watching the paint fill up the frame. As such, there is a lot of glue that needs to dry. These didn't dry very much overnight, so I tried putting them under a ceiling fan in a bright room, and they dried completely after about a day.

Once they are dry, the colors show up best when you hold them to the light, so they make great light-catchers or sun-catchers. We explored the colors using different kinds of light- windows, ceiling lights, the light table, and flashlights.

Book Love: Touch the Brightest Star

During our exploration of weather we have spent a lot of time thinking about the sky, which eventually brought us to how the sky changes at night. There is so much to explore about the concepts of day and night, but this time around we focused mostly on the sky. 

Touch the Brightest Star was perfect for this focus topic.  

I adore this author, and love this interactive style of books for preschool age students. 

Read-Aloud Experience: Whenever I read interactive books like this in whole group, I think about the number of students I have and how many pages call for some sort of interaction. Depending on how those numbers play out, each student gets a turn to come up and follow the instructions, and I might use multiple children for any leftover pages. Or, I walk around and let each student "touch the brightest star," for example. Some pages also lend themselves to whole group participation, such as blowing a breeze- they can all do that from their seats. 

Connecting Activity: Paint the Night Sky

We used dark watercolors on thick paper to paint the night sky.

Then, after they had dried a bit, we added white stars using tempera paint and q-tips.

 Some papers were still pretty wet when we added the paint, which led to this blended effect, which we thought looked neat.

 Every night sky was unique and beautiful- that's the great thing about process art like this!

Book Love: Cloudette

Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld was a new find for me this year, and it was such a fun read for thinking about clouds and rain.

Read-Aloud Experience: During the read-aloud, I modeled one of my favorite science processes: filling up shaving cream clouds with blue liquid until it "rains."

First we made a little "cloudette," on top of the water.

Then when she gets sad, we added a little blue.

Then we added more so that she could "let it pour!" (You could also add more shaving cream as she grows bigger in the book.)

 This was a fun visual addition to our read-aloud, that also showed the kids how to create their own raining clouds.

Connection Activity: The kids were invited to make their own raining clouds during centers. I seriously just love how visual this activity is- it really can look like streaks of rain coming down from the cloud.