Family Photo Frames

photographs to come:

These Family Photo Frames are easy, durable, and fun for young kids. It's great to get them talking and learning about their families. A circle time to share their finished frames and pictures with the other children helps speaking and listening skills. This activity is great for introducing and talking about diverse families, extended families, etc.

Supplies for these photo frames are as followed:

Craft Foam Sheets
Contact Paper for laminating
Stickers
Magnets
A family photo for each child

For some classes, you may be able to find Craft Foam Frames already assembled (eliminate the contact paper if this is the case). Other times, if you'd like to do the craft from scratch the directions are as followed...Give the child their own sheet of Craft Foam with the center blocked out in the shape of their photo. Let them decorate, or make a collage with the supplies or stickers you have on hand, buy or gather for the occasion. When they are done decorating, place the child's photo in the center and use the Contact Paper to seal the frame and it's collage in place. Add magnets on the back if desired to make a fun refrigerator frame for Mom and Dad.

Fun things to let the kids glue on their frames can be decided upon based on a theme, season, or just free-play. Some fun ideas include gathering leaves (not dried up ones though! they'll crumble!) or pressed flowers on a nature walk, strips of ribbon, tissue paper, "yarn painting," or anything else you could think of that lays somewhat flat or can be pressed flat.

Dressing Up Baby

The Dressing Up Baby activity was great for a time of day that needs to help wind the kids down, pre-naptime or when the day is winding down seemed to be great.

Each child is asked to pick a babydoll from the play area and sit in a circle or around a table. The teacher leads as the kids practice dressing the baby, naming the clothes and answering the questions the teacher asks them (ie. how many toes does baby have? how many toes do you have? etc.). It's a great way to show them how kids grow, and reinforce body parts since they can see them on the babydoll, then find them on their own body.

Rainbow Stew

photographs to come:

Ingredients for Rainbow Stew:

1 Cup Corn Starch
1/3 Cup Sugar
4 Cups Water
Food Coloring
Med. Saucepan
Mixing Spoon
Ziploc Bags
Heavy Tape or Duct Tape

To make the stew, combine water, cornstarch, and sugar in the saucepan and stir/cook until thickened. When this is done, remove the mixture from the heat an allow it to cool. After cooled, separate the mixture into bowls and add different food coloring drops to each. Depending on the age of your children, you can allow them to spoon and mix their own combination of colors into their Ziplock bags, or you could do it yourself and allow them just to squish and play with it. Once the Ziplock has the mixture in it, help the children work all of the air out of the baggie and tape the edges shut for extra support during the squishing and playing!

Encourage the kids to draw using their fingers (single letter practice is fun in this stew!), mold into different colors, or make a design...then make a new one! They can keep them in their own cubby as a playtoy for any time they want to explore colors or writing.

We're making Rainbow Stew.
Red, Yellow and Blue
We're busy in the kitchen,

We're making Rainbow Stew.
(to the tune of Farmer in the Dell)

Shaving Cream Painting

Shaving cream painting is a great way for kids to explore lots of different motor skills, textures, hand motions, and colors. The shaving cream activity began with 1 pile of plain white cream on their cookie trays for them to get used to the texture, pliability, and feel. Some kids were reluctant and thought they were getting "too messy," and kept asking to wash their hands. After some kids got used to the idea and realized they were allowed to get messy and have fun this time, they loosened up and started squishing, molding, or scooping their cream with a spoon.


After their initial plain painting warm-up, we introduced a color to their shaving cream, and an extra big squirt so they can start building and piling (1 Squirt of a food dye does well, and DOES NOT stain the kids hands, or any other surface). In addition to the food dye we used this time, powdered tempura paint or finger paints can also be used.


There were some kids who were particularly enjoying this activity, so while the other kids cleaned up, I let them experiment with the addition of another color to their pile of cream. These kids had fun guessing what colors it might turn into as they squished. This is a great way for the kids to loosen up, and just be kids, while learning about many different things, depending on the prompt. This will now be a monthly activity with different prompts, as followed, and in this successive order according to skill development:

Cream and Food Color Mixing (making purple, orange, green from red blue and yellow)
Cream and Food Color Mixing (making a pattern or design)
Cream and Finger Paint (Print Making, by laying a sheet of art paper on top of their colorful design)
Cream and Writing (thin layers and writing with their fingers)
Cream and Writing (thin layers and writing with an object/paint brush)
[repeat]

Fill in Shapes

Using the opposite side of our home-made dry erase sleeves for practicing the alphabet, I created hand-outs with dashed circles, creating two different activities. The first of which is a dry erase trace, and writing practice that the children can do anytime. The second of which is, given a canister of play-doh each, the children mold, mush, push and pull the doh to fill the space inside the dotted line. Doing this inside the paper-cover sheet allows for a really easy clean up, and no sticking. The first couple trys may come out a little funny and lumpy, and outside the lines, but as they practice their shapes, and working with the doh, their play-doh turns into colorful shapes! The first time, we were learning about the color red, so we all molded red circles. I have kids ask to do this activity over and over again!

Brown Bag Puppets

Kids of ALL ages have fun making these Brown Bag Puppets. We started this activity after spending the morning with a puppeteer and balloon maker, but any children with active imaginations will love this regardless. Let them make as many as they want, even if they're just scribbles, and ask them to tell you who or what they're puppet is and what he is doing. Make one yourself to join in, especially if they all seem to be making the same type of characters! Soon they'll have a whole cast!

Some of the kid's favorites were:
Dragons (I made a princess and a dragon slayer! They LOVED this.)
Butterflies (make construction or tissue paper wings and fly around outside!)
The Zoo (make your favorite animal and pretend we're in a zoo, others come to visit the zoo. practices making animal sounds, too!)

Sponge Paint

Sponge Painting is a surefire hit any way you do it. I like to start out with shaped sponges, because it makes the children want to see the actual shape of it on their paper rather than just smudging and slopping the paint on. This helps them learn the correct way to press and lift, instead of dragging the sponge.

I use the shape sponges to also introduce or reinforce the concept of a pattern. Each child gets two sponges and they have to try and make one themselves. The more times they do the Sponge Patterns, the better they get. When they master a really great two-sponged pattern, I give them a third.

After the shapes, I try and get them sponging with regular sponges first freestyle, to remind them the right way to use the sponges (down, press, and up!). Then when they've had enough of that, I move them on into sponging in a designated space (fill in the bubble letter "T" for example, or a shape). After they've been doing this for quite some time, another day I try to encourage them to freestyle shapes and letters and see how well they do on their own.

Circles

When learning about circles, a simple activity that makes a child think and work hard was showing them how to make circles with all different sizes of pipe cleaners. After showing each child personally and helping them make a few, they were left to try and figure out how to make the rest of their pipe cleaners to stay in the circle shape. Some kids got frustrated, but when other kids started getting them to wrap around and stick together, they were working together and asking each other for help so they could all wear their new "circle bracelets!"

Dry Erase Trace

The Dry Erase Trace is a low-cost, super kid friendly way to practice writing. The use of a dry erase board around the classroom is beneficial for all the art and writing the kids can practice on their own, but when the children are trying to learn their letters and the basic writing skills, a little more guidance to allow them some more independence is great.

By taking the paper protector sheets from a local office supply store, we created a personal Dry Erase Tracer for them to keep in their cubby.

To make these you need the following:

Paper Sheet Protector
Thin Dry Erase Marker
String
Thin cardboard or thick art paper
Tracing Sheets

Take the Paper Sheet Protector and label it with the child's name. Attach their own personal dry erase marker to one of the three holes along the side with a piece of string (this teaches them responsibility of keeping their marker safe and not letting it dry out!). Insert the cardboard or thick paper (adds sturdiness). To either side of the cardboard, add a lined sheet of paper with dotted line or solid letters, blank lines to try on their own, shapes, words, or pictures! Lots can be done after you make the Tracers, and since they are very versatile and easy to clean, they'll last as long as the kids do!

Shape and Color cards

Having flashcards handy with every-day objects pictured on them are very beneficial. I use mine when talking about a certain theme or reading a book that we can associate with some items; when learning about colors or shapes, etc. It is great to get two categories going at the same time (say, the color red, and the circle shape). Pull all the cards you can that have red items, and all the cards you can that have circles somewhere in them. It's okay to put a few tricky ones that have both categories in there as well (we'll see how observant they are, as well as teach them about the concept of being "both").

The first day I introduce the set of cards we talk about and describe each of them, as well as our two categories by doing lots of different things that apply to both. I then tell the kids we're making two piles of cards but they have to help me figure out which one goes in which pile! I hold them up and let the kids yell out answers. If some of them get the pile wrong, talk it out and ask questions with the whole group. Before putting it in the pile, ask all the children to raise their hands if they think the card is a "___"

Do this a number of times over the week and they'll be great by Friday!

Off to School

Choosing and book, consistent with age-level, class room, and child temperament and pairing it with an school oriented coloring craft, we are able to introduce the children to the idea and concept of school; why we go to school, and more importantly pre-school (to get ready for big kid school).

I chose "Off to Kindergarten" to read to the children, pointing out all the silly things the children in the book think they need to bring to their first day of kindergarten (this was also a good place to interject that children should leave their own toys at home or in their cubby).

We talked about the school bus in the book, looked at the school bus in the parking lot, and described as much as we could about it - color, size, where we go, what happens on a school bus?

Children were then given their own outline of a school bus. Instructions were to color the school bus, a road, the sky, the bus driver, etc.

Start

This blog has been created to document, catalog, and create a visual portfolio of activities, lesson plans, and/or ideas for a pre-school/pre-k environment.

Each entry will include the task, explanation/recipe/directions, and outcome evaluation.