Looking for a tasty treat to make for or with your kiddos on that special day of love? Here are five treats that will make the day memorable!
Heart Biscuits
Valentine Candy Heart Count
Here’s a fun math activity that combines counting, one-to-one ratio, numeral recognition, color recognition, sorting, graphing, number comparison, and well, sugar! That’s a lot to do in one activity, but I promise, your kiddos will enjoy it nonetheless. And it’s only partly because of the sugar part.
Take a Closer Look – Examining Visual Art with Preschoolers
I’m rushing to finish up the posts for the Arts and the Senses unit, so that I can start posting the next unit I’m excited about! Check back on the unit theme page, where I’ve explained several activities in quick notes and links rather than a full post! This activity, however, warranted a little more explanation!
Shaky Egg Sound Match
Here’s a quick, easy, and inexpensive way (music to a teacher’s ears, right?) to create a great tool for incorporating music and auditory discernment. Whoa, back up the truck, what was that? “Auditory discernment” is the ability to hear the differences and similarities between two sounds. It can be as simple as hearing the difference between a bell ringing and a horn honking, but it’s also the groundwork for hearing the difference between the sounds in words, like the short e sound and the short i sound. Phonemic awareness is a critical reading skill, and it is completely auditory. So building auditory skills actually paves the way for reading skills. OK, so back to the project at hand!
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
I try to fit a nursery rhyme, fable, or fairy tale into each unit. As I’ve mentioned before, these are the literary classics of childhood! When talking about the arts and the senses, I like to introduce the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin!
You can check out a book to read out loud, create a flannel board story, or use the coloring pages from this website. Whatever your method, get familiar with the story and bring it to life in your storytelling. After the story, talk about whether or not the children think it could really happen. Probably not….at least not exactly (though the story’s historical roots are actually debated). Nonetheless, listening to music can make us want to move in different ways, depending upon the way it sounds. Play a few samples and have the children suggest what type of movement the music makes them think of. Choose samples that remind you of a lullaby, a dancing tune, a quiet tip-toe song, etc. End with a march and have the children march, parade style, to your next activity!
Fruity Scented Kool-Aid Playdough
I love cinnamon scented playdough, which I listed here, but I also love the fruity scent of Kool-Aid scented playdough! Adding an extra appeal to the senses could hardly be easier! Start with the Classic Playdough Recipe. Add a packet of Kool-Aid to the water before adding it to the pan. Ta-da! Simple, right? Now, if you already have a batch of playdough made up, you can also knead the powder right into the dough. It takes a bit of time to get it mixed through, but because it hasn’t been cooked, the scent may actually be stronger that way. Just be sure that the powder has been worked in completely. You may even want to let it sit overnight to be sure that the powder has been fully absorbed.
Create a Texture Shape Exploration Station
Children love to explore! That is a widely accepted fact! So here’s a little project you can do quickly and inexpensively to create a fun exploration station where they can explore shape, size, and texture, and create designs to their little hearts’ content!
Paint You Can See…Smell…and Feel!
If you’d like to incorporate a few more senses into your painting projects, add some regular salt generously to your tempera paint and use as fingerpaint or with a brush. The resulting project will have a bit more texture and grit that becomes even more visible as it dries. Use side by side with “regular” paint for a great texture comparison. This will spark interest as well as encourage the use of new vocabulary words like bumpy, gritty, sandy, smooth, etc. (If you’re not fingerpainting, you might want to use your older brushes for this one, as the salt tends to get into the bristles a bit.)
Book Activity: My Crayons Talk
My Crayons Talk by Patricia Hubbard is a perfect introduction into the interplay between color and language. The girl in the story explains how her colors talk as she draws. For example, “Yellow chirps, ‘Quick, Baby chick.'” The accompanying picture shows the girl sitting in a straw-colored meadow, surrounded by baby chicks, while wearing a sunny sun dress and funky sunglasses.
Book Activity: Mouse Paint
Mouse Paint
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