Sleeping Bears

This week we made bear caves out of boxes.

My favorite part of this activity was listening to the fun comments the kids made as they painted:

"I'm doing snow on top."

"Brown can be sticks."

"Sometimes the wind blows snow inside."

"Bears can decorate with flowers or leaves."

"There's a little bit of moss growing on my cave."

The caves were the perfect size for these teddy bears. 

We tucked them in for a long winter's nap.

The bears need to sleep through the winter until it's spring again, so we are going to count down the weeks until it is time to wake them up.

Our classroom might not be the most quiet place for them to sleep, but it will definitely be warm!

(Thanks to Teach Preschool for the inspiration behind this idea!!)

Back from Winter Break!

The preschool took a long break over Thanksgiving and Christmas this year so that we could welcome this little ladybug into our family. It has been such a special time for us!

This week we started up class again after the break, and it has been so fun to add teaching back into my week. I really just love planning lessons, being in the classroom, and interacting with the kids. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to run my own program so that I can balance this passion with my family life as well. 

Anyway- we started off the New Year by exploring winter and snow. Thanks to some great storms over the holidays, we still have a lot of it around! 

Snowflake Art

One favorite activity was using pipettes to squeeze colored water onto the coffee filter snowflakes we made earlier.

This was a great process for using fine motor skills, mixing colors, and just exploring with water.

We discovered that when the snowflakes dried, the color mostly just stayed around the edges. One student was a little disappointed that his snowflake didn't turn out to be all blue like he had colored it. In the future I might experiment with some different mediums to see what saturates the filter with color more effectively. 

Painting Snow Sensory Bin

This activity is so easy to set up, and always a hit with the kids. Just watercolors and snow!

Hot Chocolate Counting

We are working on counting through the teen numbers this month, and I love how these counting mats visually reinforce one-to-one correspondence and the break-down of these numbers into tens and ones. I pulled out some tweezers to add some fine motor challenge to this activity as well.

 Sometimes I've noticed that kids aren't always interested in counting activities like these at first. So often I will initially just set them out for the kids to freely explore, but then I will initiate some sort of simple game that applies the skills. Things like racing a friend or using dice to decide how many to put on at a time can really increase their level of engagement.

When I set up this center, I just scattered the counting mats around and didn't pay attention to number order. But during clean up time, I noticed one student carefully counting and rearranging the cups so they were in the correct order! I love watching kids apply their knowledge independently and interacting with materials in ways that I had not thought of before. :) 

Book Love: Bones

This year multiple kids have expressed an interest in learning a little more about bones, so I included that topic as we've been discussing how to take care of our bodies.

One of my favorite non-fiction authors/illustrators is Steve Jenkins, and his book Bones is a fun and fascinating way to look at different kinds of skeletons.

This is not a book that I read word-for-word outloud to a class of this age group, but the fantastic illustrations are great for exploring what different parts of the body look like as a skeleton. The kids get also get really caught up in guessing and comparing the different animal bones as well.

Read-Aloud Tip: As you move through the pages, invite the kids to try to find and explore the different bones in their body. This works especially well with all the different bones in your hand. This time around I had some kids get really excited when they discovered the bones in their head and face.

Bones Art Extension Activity:  We created our own bones art using glue and q-tips. Some kids also turned their name into bones.

Brush Your Teeth

We've been talking about things that we do with our families, and this week's focus has been learning to take care of our bodies. Here are some of the ways we've been exploring our teeth.

Toothbrush Painting

This art activity is always a hit. We brushed white paint onto yellow paper to make happy smiles.

Although I drew the outline for their first mouth to paint, one student wanted to create his own for a second go around. He kept count of how many teeth he had brushed and cleaned as he painted, which was a fun process to observe. 

Brushing and Flossing Dramatic Play

I painted plastic egg cartons and the bottoms of clear soda bottles to create "teeth" for us to work with this year. The kids could make cavities using play dough or dry erase markers, and then floss and brush the teeth.

Counting and Adding with "The Mouth Game"

I use this activity as both a free play game and a "teacher time" game- meaning I directed the play with small groups or individuals. I played this with individual students, and varied the objectives depending on their level and understanding. The simplest way to play is to roll the dice and add that number of teeth to the mouth. It's a great way to build number sense, and practice counting and creating sets with one-to-one correspondence

I added additional challenges for my pre-K students, such as determining the partners of 10 (each mouth has 10 spaces) or adding their previous number with their new number to determine the new total.

If you play this game like a race, where you take turns and see who can fill up their mouth first, then it lends itself to some great math talk about who has the most, who has the least, how many spaces are left, etc.

Felt Board Singing and Play

I also have some felt board pieces of a mouth and teeth that I use for songs and other activities. I often use this mouth with small black pieces to talk about cavities, and involve the kids in brushing them away as we talk about how to keep our teeth strong and healthy. 

Scissor Skills with Paper Strips

Snipping strips of paper is one way for kids to practice using scissors that is less frustrating or overwhelming than working with a whole piece of paper. Today we made a paper leaf pile by snipping colored strips of paper.

I use colored pom-poms on the top of my scissors to remind kids where to put their thumbs, and to keep their thumb up as they cut. Every time they snip, they are developing the fine motor skills that will enable them to eventually cut more challenging projects with ease and confidence. As their muscle strength and coordination increases, using scissors will become an automatic skill.

We used our snippings to create simple fall tree collages. Picking up the small pieces of paper, pressing them into the glue sponge, and placing them on the collage also requires the use of fine motor skills.

When I plan projects like this, I always try to think beyond my adult-like tendency to focus on the final product. Sure, I want my students to create something that they are proud of. But my learning objectives almost always have to do more with the process than the product. In this case, I saw an opportunity to encourage different kinds of fine motor development with the creation of what some might see as just a simple fall tree.