better than whack-a-mole

 

 

 

The children had as much fun removing the golf tees as they did walloping them with the mallets.

another apple tree (minus the apples)

This tree was a group effort. I cut out the trunk and an assortment of "branches" and popped them onto a tray. After gluing down the trunk onto a large sheet of paper I invited the children over to build an apple tree.


We talked about the trees in our stories (most recently The Seasons of Arnold's Apple Tree) and I asked if this tree needed some branches. One of the children spied the pile of cut brown paper on the tray and hollered "There are some branches!" And so, armed with glue sticks, the children set to adding branches to the tree.

Once they were satisfied with the branches, I brought out paint (they chose green and yellow) and a couple of stubby dish scrubbers (kind of like this but from the dollar store) to use as stampers for the leaves. They stamped away until lunch time and we hung our tree up to dry before adding our apples. We still have yet to add apples and we might not get to it. I have it tacked up to our easel in case anyone wishes to apple-it-up.

the wormy apple game

 

I found this small red colander at the dollar store and thought it looked a bit apple like. Add a construction paper stem and leaf, a handful of pipe cleaners, and some wooden cubes and an invitation to play was made.

 Don't ask me how to play it, they just do and it is fantastic!

our classroom apple tree

 

Back when I was working on my lesson plan for our apple fiesta (three weeks of apple books and play) I spied this awesome pom-pom apple tree on pinterest. I hopped on over to Two Daloo, the original source and found a brand new blog to love.  This was one of those "I have to do this projects"...

And so I did...

I searched and searched for a budget friendly tree to sue but could not find one. Luck happened upon us in the guise of a windy day that dropped a large tree branch on our neighbor's lawn.

After more than a dozen eye-rolls, I convinced the mister that dragging the branch back to the garden and then trimming it down would totally work. It did! We trimmed two portions of the branch and propped them into a clay pot partly filled with soil and gravel. This way the tree is easily "broken-down" and can be re-used over and over again (oh if I had the time I would have made Halloween poms)!

The children loved hanging apples on the tree and then picking them. I keep finding the happy little poms in the play kitchen tucked into pots, cups, and muffin tins. 

The time spent making the poms was totally worth it! Now I need to find small pine cones...

apple printing for our apple unit

Most schools will do some sort of apple for fruit theme during the school year and many will do fruit printing as a part of their art and enrichment in the classroom. It's fun, it's simple and for the most part it is pretty.

Aside from the pretty though there is a lot going on. Firstly there is language. When I set up the activity thechildren often run over and ask questions:

What's that? What's this? What are you doing?

After they ask questions, we cut the apples open and talk about what we see, smell, taste, and feel.  They often tell me they have apples at home or they like green paint or that they have a dog.

The process of dipping the apples into the paint, lifting them and then pressing them to paper is not as easy for a three year old as it is for an adult. The apples are cold and wet, which often surprises the children and many will not wish to continue. In those instances brushes and or sponges are offered up and made available. Other colors are added if the children ask for them but for this particular project we chose red and green to go with the apples we had on our flannel board.

Some children get the hang of it quickly and happily press away while others make a few prints then discover how cool and wet the paint is in their hands discarding the apples and diving in with all fingers squishing and swiping the paint on their paper. Other children are happy to print with the fruit but do not want paint on their hands. I set out a damp sponge for them to wipe their fingers on. Sometimes the sponge becomes the brush and sometimes it is used to wash the paintbrushes.

What I love about setting up any project or center is seeing how the children approach it and what they end up doing with it. It's never dull, that's for certain!

the nature and science table

The preschool class I teach is fairly new to the school I teach in. Our children are three-going-on-four, many of them are new threes and school is a new experience for them. Along with the usual preschool suspects of creamy tempera paint, waxy crayons, and colorful blocks, we like to bring in new objects from home and nature to share with the children.

Our nature table began as a mish-mash of wooden boxes from the thrift store, sea-shells scavenged from our shelves, and rocks selected from our gardens. I purchased the magnifying glasses from a dollar store hoping their sturdiness would withstand the wild abandon of a three or four-year old at play. So far...so good.

As the children move through the various classes held in our room over the course of a week, we teachers gather to brainstorm on new ways to engage the children and to talk about what their interests are. The room is shared between myself, and two other teachers, none of us actually working with the other so our small moments are greedily grabbed and gabbed at whenever possible.

While it would be lovely to be able to all work together all the time, I am always thrilled when I discover something new in the classroom along with the children. The one area that changes the most is our nature and science table.

The rocks and shells are still there. New boxes are added...fall leaves both real and man-made are brought in...acorns make an appearance, new jewel-toned glass jewels spill into the bellies of the large shells that are scattered about along with seed pods pulled from our late summer gardens. It seems there is always something new yet familiar waiting to be explored. Even the children have begun to bring in precious rocks and stones or sticks and leaves.

I discovered the quite nifty laminate tiles at the hardware store sometime last year. They are about four inches square and I picked them up for a coaster project but I think they are quite happy hanging out on the table hosting the various objects the children delight in arranging. The natural colors of the laminate with the faux-woodgrain switch it up a bit. It's something small and budget-friendly (free even) that elevated our hodge-podge of seed pods to small works of art.

glitter and spice

 

Each month we feature a nursery rhyme for the children to learn. September had us chanting, reading, and singing I Had a Little Nut Tree. To give the children a little boost in what I like to call dot-connecting, I whipped up a batch of our autumn play-dough scented with cinnamon and nutmeg with a dash of silver and gold glitter to make it shine.

Along with the play dough, I had set up a scent center with small squares of sand paper, a cinnamon stick, and a nutmeg.

 

 

The children enjoyed rubbing the spices across the sandpaper and then smelling the spice scent that appeared like magic. They noticed that the play dough smelled the same and then enjoyed rubbing the dough on top of the sand paper to see what would happen.

 

Both the cinnamon stick and the nutmeg made an appearance with the dough....many times....

We also painted with silver and gold paint where we used our fine motor skills to remove our cut paper scraps from the green box and then press them onto the sticky-glittery paint.

going with the flow....

I set up some shaving cream and a couple of primary colors for some color mixing fun. The plan was for some shaving cream exploration with the children using their hands and sharing a piece of paper. One of my kiddos did not wish to touch the shaving cream and so the paint brushes came down and everyone was happy.

how's about a little pom-pom play?

what shall we do with all of this?

poms in raccoon colors

first time using tweezers

and so play begins

the daddy and the mommy

partnering up

arranging by size

big to little

and then the kitties came...

doing what a raccoon does...

Well...sort of. The school I teach at is a both play and literature based. We feature a book a week and build our lesson plans around the various themes within. The children I teach of young threes and our first book was The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. We learned about the different habits and traits of raccoons, one of which is the washing of their food. To add a tactile experience to the learning, I created a fruit washing bin.
 

 The children loved this activity and spent much of their free exploration time washing away. A few weeks later when I dropped my apple on the floor and headed over to the sink to wash it, on of my kiddos piped up "You wash it just like a raccoon"!

weave a little house...

 

We had a donated playhouse in our classroom that had a cloth cover in various shades of pink. We couldn't decide if we wanted to keep the house or not. I discovered the cover came off quite easily and so we whipped the cover off and then I found some yarn....

 

My thinking was two-fold. The house was now open but still houselike so that the children could play inside it and turn it into whatever kind of structure they wanted while we could still see them and what they were up to.

So I wrapped the walls of the house in yarn to give it a smidge bit more visual stability...

And added the basket of fabric scraps so that they could weave some magic into the walls.

Some children work carefully weaving the fabric in and out. Some work very hard to hang a length of fabric over a piece of yarn that rises far above their heads.

Lately I have spotted many of our scarves from the scarf basket tucked, tied, and woven into the house. It is always changing and I love it.