Mary Ann Hoberman’s The Seven Silly Eaters
Scented Playdough–Cinnamon Spice!
If you want great scented playdough, that smells like an actual, natural food scent, try this one out! It’s probably my favorite scented playdough, in large part because it makes your whole room smell like a bakery! In fact, you’ll have to remind your children that in spite of the great scent, it is still not for eating!
Bubble Paint
For the truly brave preschool teacher or parent, looking for a creative art project, I present bubble painting!! This can be a messy project, but very unique and with many opportunities for developmental growth. Directions first, benefits later.
Gel Molds and Color Mixing
Five Ways to Serve Up a Pumpkin
I mentioned before that a pumpkin’s greatness is in part due to its hollowness. We’ve talked about floating pumpkins, pumpkin drums, and of course, Jack-o-lanterns, but perhaps best of all, a pumpkin can be hollowed out to create a bowl! You can use a cleaned out pumpkin to hold pre-made food, such as soups or a casserole, or you can actually cook in the pumpkin shell as well! Here are five festive ways to turn your gourd into a gourmet dish!
Book Activity: Big Pumpkin
Big Pumpkin
Do Pumpkins Sink or Float?
Sink or float is a classic preschool activity. You gather an assortment of items and have the children guess which will sink or float, and then test their hypotheses. (It made me laugh not too long ago when David Letterman added a gag segment called “Will it Float” with a huge pool of water and random items for the members of the audience to make predictions about. I’m guessing he’d been to his little boy’s preschool the day he came up with that one!)
Pumpkin Scoop
While exploring pumpkins with young children, you can’t miss the opportunity to examine the insides of these fascinating gourds as well as the outsides! Cut open a pumpkin and place it in your sensory table with scoops, spoons, tweezers, and magnifiers. Provide cups as well, for collecting the seeds. You can air dry them and use them to grow pumpkins next year! (Read more about saving seeds here. Pumpkins are really quite easy to grow if you have the space. Saving and reusing seeds also ties in very nicely with the book, Pumpkin Pumpkin by Jeanne Titherington.)
Book Activity: Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf
Have I mentioned yet that I really love Lois Ehlert’s books? Her collage-style illustrations are just so simplistically and realistically appealing. Particularly for fall, they really capture the vibrancy and texture of the season! In Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, Lois Ehlert spotlights one of my favorite trees, Maple, as it is selected and planted while a seedling, then as it grows through every season, highlighting the narrator’s favorite season for the tree, fall! This book is great as a science focus, as well as for an art focus!
Afterward, have the children create their own colorful fall trees. First smock up! Once each child has a piece of paper on an art tray to work with, have each one take a brush, and with brown paint make the trunk and branches of their trees. Talk about the difference between the straight lines of the trunk and the curving, climbing, intertwining branches at the top. [Read more…]
Old-School Leaf Rubbing
I once heard someone say that we have to be careful not to be in such a rush to give our children all the things we never had, that we forget to give them the things we did have. That saying comes to mind as I think about this old-school leaf rubbing activity. I don’t think I even need to give directions, do I? I hope you all had plenty of opportunities to make leaf rubbings as children! I just wanted to remind you to pass on that opportunity! Even today, in the age of the internet and wii, children light up as the leaf seems to magically appear on the page while they feverishly rub their crayons across the paper! This activity increases fine motor skills while also creating awareness of the texture and other characteristics of leaves (science). Combine this with other leaf activities that can be found at the fall favorites page! Enjoy childhood!
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