Photo provided by rrss.
Want a fun little song that gets the wiggles out while enforcing phonemic awareness skills? I thought you might be, so here it is!
It’s a very simple song, but kids love it! To the tune of “Shortnin’ Bread”:
Whole Child Development
by notjustcute Filed Under: Building Readers, Learning through Play and Experience, Music and Movement, Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Photo provided by rrss.
Want a fun little song that gets the wiggles out while enforcing phonemic awareness skills? I thought you might be, so here it is!
It’s a very simple song, but kids love it! To the tune of “Shortnin’ Bread”:
by notjustcute Filed Under: Building Readers, Learning through Play and Experience, Uncategorized 4 Comments
For a fun rhyming activity with your preschoolers, create a Rhyme-A-Saurus! This dinosaur is not a meat-eater or a plant-eater, he eats rhymes!
Using a set of rhyming cards (you can find printable ones here or purchase a set at a teaching supply store) give your children one card each, and keep the rhyming pair yourself. Explain that this dinosaur is a rhyme-eater and loves rhyme sandwiches. Ask them to help you make a sandwich by putting two rhyming words together and feeding them to the dinosaur!
by notjustcute Filed Under: Building Readers, Celebrate!, Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills Leave a Comment
Bartholomew and the Oobleck is an enthralling story to read with children! It follows a king who wants something new to come from the sky, so he orders his magicians to make “oobleck”. As with many alterations of Mother Nature (Michael Jackson comes to mind) this, of course, turns out to be a disaster! It is only remedied when his page, Bartholomew, convinces him he needs to say the words, “I’m sorry.”
by notjustcute Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience 2 Comments
Try this activity in your sensory table for your dinosaur fans! In containers of various sizes, freeze sand, shells, plastic dinosaurs, and or plastic bones in water. (If your items tend to float, freeze the container half full with the water and the items. Once it’s frozen, and holding the items in place, you can fill the container the rest of the way with water and freeze again.)
Place these prehistoric ice cubes in your sensory bin alone or with sand. You can also bury them in the sand for even more fun! Add containers of warm water with droppers or larger containers with warm water that the ice cubes can be submerged in.
by notjustcute Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience 1 Comment
When you think of graphing, you probably think back to stale worksheets in your third grade class, or to more complicated parabolas in high school calculus. Graphing starts out as a very simple concept, one that can and should be explored with preschool children, particularly the four year-olds. One of my favorite ways to do that is with a Post-it graph.
The easiest way to start with the concept of graphing is to chart the number of boys vs number of girls in a group. It is a clear-cut dichotomy (in preschool anyway :)) . Start by having the children look around. Do they think there are more boys or more girls? In a larger group, this is often harder to do just by looking. We need to organize the information to make it easier to compare. Show your prepared chart, with a grid divided between boys and girls. Explain to the children that you will be using this grid to graph how many boys and how many girls are in your class. Ask each of the girls, one by one, to come up, get a Post-it and place it on the chart above the “Girls” label. Remind them that each person only gets one sticker, and that when we build a graph, we climb up the chart like a ladder: one sticker per square. Next, invite the boys to do the same thing.
by notjustcute Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience Leave a Comment
If you’re looking for a quick, inexpensive, no-sew way to create capes for your super-preschooler, look no further! No super powers are required here, just fabric, self-adhesive Velcro tabs, and scissors!
For your fabric, start with tricot (pronounced “tree-co”). Call your local fabric stores to find one that carries it. It is fabulously shiny and light so that it ripples and flows as the wearer takes flight! As for super powers, it doesn’t fray, so it doesn’t require any hemming to finish the edges. Tricot comes on very wide bolts. You only need about 20 inches, so with the wide width, you can purchase twenty inches and make probably 3 or 4 capes. Once you have the tricot, cut a rectangle about 18 inches by 20 inches. (The size is by no means exact. This is the size that has worked for my 2-5 year olds, but feel free to adjust!)
by notjustcute Filed Under: Create, Learning through Play and Experience 3 Comments
To create a dinosaur mural that involves all of your preschoolers, start with a piece of paper as large as you have room for. This art project on a grand scale gives the children just a taste of how big dinosaurs were. I covered my art table, but you may want to take it outside and use even more space! Draw the outline of a dinosaur with a Sharpie. If you’re not comfortable free-handing, use an overhead projector to transfer an outline you can trace. Provide a variety of painting tools with different textures. I used sponges, combs, texture rollers, brushes, print blocks, and paint brushes in a variety of widths. The children will often use their own fingers and whole hands to paint with as well. To accommodate all the different tools, I poured tempera paint thinly into the lids of plastic containers (sour cream, ice cream, etc.).
by notjustcute Filed Under: Create, Learning through Play and Experience 2 Comments
It seems too simple for many adults to consider, but from a child’s point of view, painting with water is a fascinating activity! Paint cups filled only with water and a brush transfer disappearing patterns on chalkboards or sidewalks. The consistency of the medium causes any excesses to find their own course of least resistance, giving every masterpiece an abstract flair, while also giving the artist a front row seat to the evolving shape created. Combine the water painting with chalk for a unique creative experience as the two media are combined.
I often introduce painting at the easel by having the children paint with water. Together, we can work through the processes of brush control, keeping the paint at easel, and keeping the lids on the containers, without the mess of actual paint. It’s almost like training wheels for little artists!
by notjustcute Filed Under: Learning through Play and Experience, Positive Guidance and Social Skills 1 Comment
Photo courtesy scol22.
Here’s a simple game that children love to play! With a group of children in a large area, have one child stand, at least 10-20 feet back, facing the other children as they stand against a wall, fence, or other object that can serve as the “safe zone”. The children standing against the wall chant, “Dinosaur, dinosaur, what time is it?” The “dinosaur” replies with any “o’clock” time. The time serves as the number of steps forward the children take. So, if the “dinosaur” says, “5 o’clock”, the children take 5 steps forward. The children continue in this pattern until the “dinosaur” says, “Lunchtime!” At that point, the children run back to the safe zone with the “dinosaur” chasing after them. If the “dinosaur” touches one of the children, that child becomes the next “dinosaur”. (Reinforce to the children, that they only need to touch the child they catch, not push or tackle.)
Besides being a lot of fun, this game promotes health and physical development as the children run. Math skills are reinforced as the children realize that time is kept between 1 and 12 o’clock (you may want to have a clock handy to show them the numbers), and as they count their steps, using a one-to-one ratio. Social skills are supported as the children take turns, follow rules to a simple game, and work together with a group. This game can be adapted to meet other animal themes as the “Dinosaur” part of the chant can be changed to another predator type animal, such as “Alligator”, “Grizzly Bear”, or “Papa/Mama Shark”. [Read more…]
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For a great creative art activity in your preschool, consider print-making. You can create these texture print blocks in a matter of minutes. It’s quick and easy!
Take a few wood blocks, about 3 or 4 inches on each side. I used leftover MDF, used for finish trim in our house, but you could use other wood boards as long as they are sanded smooth. MDF is great because it is already smooth. Buy a length of trim from Home Depot, or even better, you can sometimes ask if they have any remnants and they’ll give it to you or sell it to you at a bargain.
In early education, there is too much distance between what we know and what we do. I bridge the gaps that exist between academia, decision-makers, educators, and parents so that together, we can improve the quality of early education while also respecting and protecting the childhood experience.
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