pin the tail on the lion {and the little red bird}

The children in the preschool loved playing Pin the Tail on the Lion after we read The Lion and the Little Red Bird. They spent a lot of time retelling the story, choosing their favorite tail and playing many different versions of their game. My co-teacher painted up the lion on large white paper and I assembled the birdie from paper in our scrap bin. The tails and lion were oh-so-carefully covered in clear adhesive shelf paper so that we could enjoy him again next year with another group of kiddos.

the three billy goats gruff: pet trolls

For our week of The Three Billy Goats Gruff, along with all the bridge building and storytelling, we got to making and painting trolls. This project may look familiar to you as it is one often used by teachers to promote fine motor skills and use up older play dough which is exactly why I decided to do it and it fit right in.

 

The children loved making trolls out of the dough and random scraps of feathers, toothpicks, and pipe cleaners. If you do this project, you can have your children help you prep materials ahead of time by working those scissors skills cutting pipe cleaners and/or straws. Set up the supplies in a muffin tin for a pretty presentation and make sure to use a paper plate underneath for easy transport to a safe place for drying. The plate will also catch any bits and bobs that fall off. If you have a kiddo who really loves glue, place a sheet of wax paper on top of the plate beforehand.

 

The glue was also very popular and was used not only to anchor on googly eyes but to add layers and layers and layers of more dough. They took a few days and the children were ecstatic to take home their pet trolls.

the three billy goats gruff: a playset, some play dough, and bridge building fun

 

I picked up this fantastic wood play set of The Three Billy Goats Gruff from etsy seller Clickity Clack  in anticipation of our week of the brothers Gruff. The children loved this set and I would often come across them reenacting the whole story from trip-trap to trip-trap.

 

 

After a dozen or so readings of the story, we got to bridge building complete with goats. The children worked at all levels of block play. Some Laying out their blocks to create a visual bridge across the water on our rug while others used long planks across shorter blocks to create their bridges. One child even used one of the goats to create her bridge. While building our bridges, I explained the difference between a bridge and a tower. We also worked on building a strong foundation for our advanced tower builders. Some of the vocabulary and terms I used were foundation, vertical, horizontal, and balance. The bridge building was a part of our math time and we spent more than thirty minutes building away.

 

 

Often, out goats would migrate over to the play dough table where the story would once again come to life. The children loved retelling and acting out the story in their play. It reminded me of how much I loved the story when I was a young child.

setting up the classroom for the new year

School has been on break for three weeks now. We return next week for a week of The Mitten. Here is how the room has been set up so far....I also have a basket to fill with wool squares. I'm going to see if the kiddos want to make their own mittens! First up, I added wee mitten erasers to our rice bin.

We pulled all of the fall items from the nature table and my co-teacher prettied it up. We added white stones and jewels and hope to have the children bring in items from around their homes. Our winter so far has been unseasonably summer-like. We'll see what happens.

 Mittens shapes on our chalkboards for fine motor painting. Some of our children will do this for all of their exploration hour. Sometimes they will request we redaw the same shape over and over again. Some want new shapes, some want to draw their own shapes, while others will simply paint the water onto the board over and over again.

 Mitten memory games as sorting fun. The mittens on the right are from Oriental Trading. I only put out half of the game (with their matches), the other half, I punched holes into one end, added a pipe cleaner loop and now we have ornaments for our winter tree. The mittens on the right are also a matching game but these feature numbers and colors. We'll see what the children do with them.

 Mitten shaped paper at the easel for the children to paint their own mittens. I will select a few harmonious colors (pictured here: red, pink, gold, white, and turquoise) for the painting but if the children wish to add any others they will tell me and we do. I have a few children who polish off five or six paintings a day so we have a pile of pre-cut mitten shapes and regular easel paper to choose from.

 I plan on making some snow dough but just in case I do not get to it, our festive cloud dough is set up. If I do not get the play dough made, I'm going to add a squeeze bottle of hair conditioner, a container of baking soda, and a container of cornstarch for the children to mix up to see what they make.

 Th art table is set up with mitten stampers, snowflake stampers, snowflake stickers, and crayons. The art shelves are always open and filled with markers, crayons, scrap construction paper, blank paper, scissors, glue sticks, white glue, and stickers. We also have watercolors and tempera available if the children ask for them.

 The train table has been turned into a winter inspired sensory bin for the children to use for dramatic play. It is full of pom-poms, glass jewels, snowflake shapes, forest animals and more. I am excited to see what the children do here.

Last, but not least, I have hidden mitten shapes around the room for the children to find during group time. There are two of each design and we'll do some mitten math with them. Later in the week we will add ice to the mix for the children to explore. Bring on the mitten!

gingerbread man science

I work at a literature based preschool with emphasis on play. Each week we focus on one title and tie in our math, science, art and sensory areas together using the book. Last week we read Gingerbread Baby and our classroom was all sugar and spice. One of our projects was gingerbread man science. Working with young threes is always interesting and their focus on our gingerbread experiments was really great!

 

We began with a gingerbread man cookie for each child and reflected on the story of the Gingerbread Baby. We discussed what would happen if the gingerbread baby had fallen in the water instead of floating on the ice. After each child made a prediction, he or she could choose to have their gingerbread man jump into the water or not. Observations were made and conclusions were written down. The children used the word melting. I gave them the word dissolved.

The children also made predictions regarding their cookies and a rolling pin. We talked about how the dough is like playdough and is soft and maleable before it is bakes but hard after. The children talked about the textures and sounds their cookies made when crunched with a rolling pin (and with their teeth when they got to eat a cookie).

 

We had been playing with gingerbread spiced cloud dough and the children wanted to introduce into their experiments. We decided that the cloud dough could be pretend snow and made estimates on how many scoops it would take to cover their crunched cookies. Children made guesses and corrected their numbers if they needed more or less scoops. It was really pretty great and we wrote it all out and returned to our findings often.