Finger-painting is an experience that no preschooler should be denied! Plunging bare fingers right into the mushy, colorful goodness and then spreading color directly from finger to paper is a gratifying experience for both the young and the young at heart! It promotes fine motor development, and is ideal for children for whom manipulating tools is difficult. It is also a fantastic sensory experience, both for touch and also for smell and sound depending on the medium used. There are plenty of different ways to do finger-painting (I’ll try to give you a few to choose from on this site) but perhaps one of the easiest ways is to use shaving cream! Shaving cream is a great medium from an adult perspective because it’s cheap, accessible, and extremely washable. Kids love it because it’s foamy! (OK, I love it because it’s foamy too.)
Behold, the Power of Soap! Getting Preschoolers to Wash Their Hands
Photo by emospada.
I have to admit, I’m a bit of a germophobe. I know that sounds very strange coming from someone who works with young children, often holding little hands that have just been used as Kleenexes, but rest assured, I go through plenty of soap and hand sanitizer! I try, as best I can, to pass on this hand-washing habit (minus the compulsion and phobia) to the youngsters I teach. Teaching young children to wash their hands has always been important. With current flu fears, it becomes more paramount. Simply being vigilant about washing hands goes a long way in promoting good health! So here’s one way I teach children the importance of washing their hands, while interjecting a bit of enthusiasm for the task via a bit of magic (formally referred to as “science“).
Sign In! Practical Name Writing Practice for Preschoolers
Children come to preschool with wide ranging ability levels when it comes to recognizing and writing their names. Some of this is due, quite frankly, to the length of their names and which letters are included in them. Think about it. Who will likely learn to write their name first? Lilly, or Savannah? Some of the difference is due to their different ages. In a mixed-age setting, the one year difference between 3 and 4 is dramatic! Even a six month difference is often pronounced. Varying rates of development in fine motor skills or even interest in writing may also be causes for different skill levels. Here is how I have addressed this challenge with my preschoolers.
Using a basic plastic photo holder, I trim back the plastic on the top layer of each pocket, to make the opening more perceptible. I then write each child’s name at the top of an index card and insert each one into a pocket. Each day as the children arrive, they know that their job is to “sign in”. They find their names in the pockets (which I have hanging on the wall near the writing table), and write their names on the cards. At the end of the day, I remove the cards, write the date on the bottom (you could get a really cool date stamper like this to be really slick *affiliate*), and then make any necessary notes. Each card is then placed in another photo holder, specific to each child, to create a collection of writing samples through the year. At the end of the year (or at shorter intervals if desired) I stack the cards in the pockets so that the child’s first and last samples are visible one above the other. Then I can point out the progress to the child, send the samples home, or use them in parent-teacher conferences. This allows me to track progress on a key skill and also allows the children to work from their individual starting points. Here’s Ella’s one year progress: [Read more…]
Book Activity: If You Give a Pig a Pancake – Syrup Paint!
Laura Numeroff has a good thing going. And it keeps going, around and around as her circular stories charm children every time. As part of her series that began with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Numeroff explores the cause and effect cycle from the obvious to the outlandish as a pancake leads to syrup, then eventually tap shoes and even a tree houses! All coming full circle as the pig is led to ask for another pancake!
As you read this book with children, pause before some of the pig’s requests to see if the children can anticipate what will come next. After reading, you might even pose some hypothetical questions, like, “What if you gave the pig a blanket? What might she ask for next?” Remember that there isn’t a right answer. You might think the logical request would be a pillow, but a child may connect the blanket with something entirely different. Just as a pancake eventually leads to a tree house, your children will have reasons for their connections, so let them explain! This kind of discussion reinforces the concept of cause and effect, while also allowing for creative thinking.
Colored Glue Art!
For a simple spin on a classic medium, try colored glue! Children love glue, in fact, more than once I’ve prepared a collage type activity, only to have some of the children spend the entire time playing with the glue, and never using it to adhere anything to the paper! Well, it’s time to let glue have a well-deserved turn in center stage! Simply add food coloring or water color powder to regular old Elmer’s and mix with a popsicle stick, right inside the bottle. Put the caps back on and you’re ready to fire! (Well, nearly. It’s actually best if you have time to leave them on their sides, and rotate a time or two to get the color mixed in fully. That is, if it didn’t mix completely when you stirred.)
Depending upon their fine motor control and strength, your wee ones can fill their art papers with color straight from the bottle, or with paint brushes (fill baby food jar lids with the colored glue and have them use small “watercolor brushes”). Either way, you will be building fine motor skills while also fostering creativity.
Caramel Popcorn….It's in the bag!
Photo by bgraphic.
Cooking is a great activity to do with kids! There are plenty of ways children can help with almost any recipe, but some recipes just lend themselves to increased interest and participation from your little culinary artists. This is one of them! Caramel popcorn… in a bag… in the microwave! It’s almost magical!
(*As with any recipe be sure to know the limits of your children and your facility’s policies for safety if applicable. Popcorn in particular may not be suitable for certain children or allowed in specific programs.)
Caramel Popcorn….It’s in the bag!
Photo by bgraphic.
Cooking is a great activity to do with kids! There are plenty of ways children can help with almost any recipe, but some recipes just lend themselves to increased interest and participation from your little culinary artists. This is one of them! Caramel popcorn… in a bag… in the microwave! It’s almost magical!
(*As with any recipe be sure to know the limits of your children and your facility’s policies for safety if applicable. Popcorn in particular may not be suitable for certain children or allowed in specific programs.)
Crayon Melting, Dino Style
If you work with preschoolers, you have them. Those partially unwrapped, broken crayons piled up in a box or ice cream bucket. Well here’s a way to use those nubbins up!
Get an old cheese grater (it’s a pain to clean wax, so use one you can devote to the arts) and let your little ones help you grate up those crayon cast-offs into a colorful assortment of shavings. (While you’re doing this, warm up your iron on a medium setting.) Next, fold a piece of wax paper in half, and have the children arrange the shavings inside the “paper sandwich”. Place the paper sandwich into an art towel sandwich (one on the bottom to protect your surface from wax leaks and heat, and a thin one on top to protect your iron from the same). Depending upon the age and maturity of your children, you may point out that they may hold the handle of the iron with you while you rub it across the towel covered wax paper, or, if that’s too risky, just put them in charge of counting. (Your total counting time will depend on the thickness of your top towel, but start with say 10-15 seconds.) Check to see if the wax has been satisfactorily melted. Add more time if needed.
Dinosaur Erosion
After seeing an erosion table at a nearby museum, I decided to implement the same concept on a much smaller scale in my sensory table. There are three vital ingredients here: sand (you can buy a large bag for a little money at Home Depot), water filled spray bottles, and dinosaur figures. After placing the sand in the sensory table, add the dinosaurs and mix well. You want some to be buried, some to sit on top, and a few somewhere in between. Provide spray bottles filled with water so that the children can spray water to erode the sand and unearth the dinosaurs. Inevitably, they will incorporate some dramatic play as they create storylines involving storms, floods, or dinosaurs trapped in quicksand.
This type of activity gives children that time-honored sensory experience of mixing sand and water. That could be reason alone for doing this activity, but there’s more! Using spray bottles takes a great degree of fine motor strength and control, as well as hand-eye coordination for keeping aim while firing! Science and language skills come into play as the children notice and talk about the effects of the water on the sand; not only that it changes the texture and consistency of the sand pile, but that the sand can be moved by the force of water. This can also lead to discussions about the concept of erosion, or about how dinosaur fossils and remains are found as earth is moved, perhaps by erosion, exposing the prehistoric treasures!
Leave Your Mark! Making Fossil Imprints with Preschoolers!
A unit on dinosaurs hardly seems complete without talking a bit about fossils! The common way of using plaster of Paris to make hardened imprints seemed a bit daunting to me, particularly when I read through the warning label, not to mention the mixing, the mess, and a number of excited preschoolers involved in the process. For our dinosaur unit we made fossil imprints using baking soda clay. I simply made the clay the night before and left it in a sealed Ziplock bag. After reading our dinosaur book and talking about fossils in small group, each child was given a paper plate and a small ball of soda clay to flatten. Then they could choose from plastic dinosaurs to make footprints and/or large seashells to press in for a texture print. I also included a note explaining to parents that the clay needed to air dry at least overnight to harden to it’s “fossilized” state. (Hopefully, you can see the imprint in the picture above. If I had been thinking more about photography than preschool, I would have gone for a little more color interest here!)
The children enjoyed making their own fossil imprints, while they also gained science knowledge about dinosaurs, and the formation of the evidence of them that remains today. Language skills increased as they talked about their own creations and incoporated new terms, such as “imprint”, “fossil”, and “trace”. I enjoyed watching them experience all of this without having to chip plaster of Paris out of my carpet, or someone’s beautiful braid! Here’s the recipe so you can try it out for yourself!
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