Preschool Mommy

Well, I'll admit, it's been a while. I have been running around like a crazy person this summer and haven't had much time to blog. Now that the summer is coming to a close, I wanted to write about some of the fun things we did this summer.

This summer, we learned all about nature beginning with one of my favorite subjects: BUGS!

We learned all about these creepy crawlies and what makes them tick. We practiced our drawing skills by drawing pictures of bugs, tried (unsuccessfully) to create an ant farm, and made our own awesome diagrams of the inner workings of an ant mound.

Prior to working on the diagram, I showed the children pictures of the inside of an ant mound and how the different chambers served various functions. I kept it pretty simple: Worker aunts are at the top of the nest bringing in food for the queen and rest of the colony. Just below the workers live the larvae. The queen is in a chamber in the center of the nest, and food storage is at the bottom.

Here is what we did...

Materials:

• Peel and stick shelf liner paper
• Construction paper
• Crayons or markers

Activity:
I took various colored pieces of construction paper and pre-cut them into various sizes of ovals and tunnels. I taped the sticky paper up on the wall with the sticky side out, and organized the children into teams of two. Then, I invited them to stick the construction paper tunnels and ovals onto the paper connecting the tunnels and chambers (i.e. ovals) any way they wished. Finally, we drew in pictures of aunts, larvae, the queen, and food stores. I think they turned out great!

To kick off our space and science theme, we made space bottles. It's sooo simple and so cute.

Here's what you'll need:

• Mini (12 oz) soda bottles
• Faceted colored beads of various sizes
• Silver glitter
• Blue food coloring (optional)
  
• Corn syrup (this is what gives it the floating effect)
  

First, I removed the labels from the bottles, and used Goo Gone (the greatest invention for moms next to the magic eraser) to remove the sticky residue. Next, I filled them about halfway with water, and closed the top for the children to finish up the following day.

I placed out a few bowls of multi-colored beads, and allowed the children to place however many they wanted into the bottle. Next, I helped them pour the glitter in the bottle. I found that if I let them do the food coloring, they made it too dark so I asked them if they wanted one drop or two of food coloring and did it for them. Finally, I placed the corn syrup over the hole and they squeezed it into the bottle until it was full. They put the tops back on and shook the bottles like crazy to mix everything. After class, I hot glued the tops on because I felt it was too dangerous to do with the children around, especially with my 1970's glue gun.

I did help the children more with this project than I usually do. I'm a big proponent of process over product, and although I had the children do as much as possible, I did have to help a lot or they would not have turned out right. Like I said, normally I wouldn't care about it "turning out right" but this was less about artistic process, and more about the children making their sensory bottles that, I hope, they will be able to enjoy for a very long time.

Anyway, I think they turned out great, and it was a really fun way to kick off our space theme!

This is such a fun and easy sensory activity for little ones. Best of all, it's completely non-toxic. The neat thing about goop is that it feels solid when you pick it up, but melts in your hands. The children were so fascinated by this (at least the ones that would get their hands dirty :P) that they kept playing with it for probably 45 or more minutes.

Ingredients

• Cornstarch
• Water

Yes, that's all! You will need a lot of cornstarch. If you can get a big bag of it at a wholesale club - do it. I let my membership slide so I had to get 6 boxes for each class at the supermarket, and it still wasn't quite as much as I would have liked

Directions:

• You will want to start with a little bit of cornstarch in the sensory bin (approximately 2 cups). Ask the children to describe how it feels.
• Next, add and equal amount of water, and have the children mix it until the cornstarch is mostly dissolved.
• Continue adding cornstarch and water until your sensory bin/ table is filled and it is the consistency you like.

Depending on the ratio of water to cornstarch, the goop will behave differently. Play with it and explore how it feels. It's super fun!

***Tip: Do this outside. It gets really messy, but is a breeze to clean up with the hose.***

This was a great activity that I wanted to share. I did it for Halloween, but you could also do it for Thanksgiving.

I got a large carving pumpkin and placed it in my sensory bin (outside - this gets messy). First, I asked the children what was inside the pumpkin (teasing them that it was full of kitty cats or bunnies, etc.). Next, I cut open the pumpkin and we all removed the insides and placed it in the sensory table for them to explore. We talked about how the pumpkin insides felt - wet, slimy, slippery etc. and worked together to separate the seeds from the stringy goop. (I reserved a few seeds for us to plant in the garden.) I explained to the children that we were going to cook the pumpkin seeds, and filled up a pot to boil water on the stove. We boiled our seeds for 10 minutes on high heat. Afterward, the children helped me stir butter into the seeds, spread them on the pan, and sprinkle salt over them. We placed the seeds into the oven (275 degrees) and cooked them until browned.

Later we took the reserved seeds and insides, and planted them in the garden in the backyard. We'll see if they grow. :)

The great thing about this activity is that it was like a million lessons in one:

• We predicted what was inside the pumpkin
• Used our vocabulary to describe how the pumpkins insides felt
• Worked our fine motor skills removing the seeds from the stringy insides
• Discussed how water boils (I asked them questions like: "how do we boil water? and "What does water look like when it's boiling?" I also showed them what the water looked like when it was boiling)
• We talked about stove and oven safety
• Learned about how butter melts when heated up
• Counted the number of minutes to boil the water and cook the seeds
• Saw how the seeds changed when cooked
• Planted the seeds in the garden.
  

***And when we were done with the pumpkin, I got a bunch of tees and we beat them into the pumpkin using plastic hammers - a good gross motor activity. ***

Overall, this was an awesome activity. My only complaint is that the seeds took too long to cook, and they weren't finished before the children went home. My oven is a little strange (gas) and sometimes recipes take longer than they should to cook in it. Next time, I will have to cook them at a higher heat.

This was a wonderful idea, (stolen from Sid the Science Kid) poorly executed. This is definitely one of those activities where YOU can learn from my mistakes. Here's what I did....

The children and I put a bunch of fruit (i.e. grapes and strawberries) in a large Tupperware, filled it with water, covered it, and placed it in the freezer. We talked about what we thought would happen to the water and fruit. Some of the kids said they would turn into popsicles. I thought that was cute. :) The following class, I took the container out of the fridge and dumped the, now, big block of ice into a large bin. Then, the children felt the ice, and gave me ideas of how we could get to the fruit inside. I got ideas like: put it in the pantry, put it in the closet, melt it with cold water, melt it with hot water, etc.

Good so far, right? Here's where things start to fall apart.

We decide to melt it with hot water. So I gave each child a cup of water to pour over top of the ice, and I had a large pitcher. We counted one... two.. three.. and poured. Oops! The ice melted, but not enough to release any fruit. I had to go back to the sink (all the way in the kitchen) about 5 times. Meanwhile, the children were getting bored. Finally, all the ice melted, and we got the fruit. The grapes were wonderful, but the strawberries were mushy - I probably should have anticipated that. I also probably should have anticipated that getting a huge bin full of water out of the room might be difficult. I picked it up, one side gave way and - SPLASH - it went all over the floor. I raced to the sink to dump what was left, spilling much more water in the process, and proceeded to race around the room trying to clean up all of the water before someone fell. In the end, the kids really enjoyed it. I, on the other hand, did not.

However, I can learn from my own mistakes!!!

I did a few things differently with my other class. First of all, I did it outside - MUCH BETTER! Second, I was prepared with a couple pitchers. The strawberries still stunk though. Next time, I will only use grapes.

We are currently learning all about plants, and I wanted to help the children learn about seeds in a way that was fun and hands-on. This was definitely it.

I purchased some fruits and vegetables at the store: tomatoes, green beans, lemons, oranges, cucumbers, and grapes. After talking about how plants grow from seeds, I sat the children down at the table and told them that we would be looking inside all of the fruits and vegetables to see what kinds, and how many, seeds they had. One at a time, I showed them a fruit or vegetable and had them take turns guessing how many seeds were inside it. Then, I cut it open, and we counted the number of seeds to see who was the closest..... then we ate them.

The children had a ton of fun guessing the number of seeds and eating the yummy fruits and vegetables. Not only was it a fun way to learn about seeds, but we got to make predictions and practice counting as well. :)

***A great book that we read to go along with this activity was "A fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds by Jean Richards."***

This is an activity we did to learn to distinguish between living and non-living things.

First, at circle time we talked about the traits of living things: They need air, water, food, and they grow (they also reproduce, but I wasn't sure I wanted to get into this discussion with the kids so I mainly stuck to the other 4. :) ) Next, I held up pre-cut images (with the pictures facing away from the children) and the children each took turns choosing an image, telling the class whether it was living or non-living and placing it on our board under the correct grouping.

The children did surprisingly well distinguishing between the two.



Next, we looked at 3 flowers that I planted, and three rocks I placed in small dishes. I told the children the one flower and rock would get plenty of sun and water, another rock and flower would get no water, and the last flower and rock would get no sunlight. Then, I asked the children to predict what would happen. Now this is where it gets interesting... Most of the children knew that with the proper light and water the flower would grow, and without it the flower would die. However, they thought the same thing would happen to the rocks. Even after I asked them if the rocks were living things and they said "no."
We have been watching these silly flowers and rocks for a week now, and I have to say that those are some pretty darn resilient flowers. They look way too good! I'm hoping they start to wilt a little soon or my lesson may be kaput. :P As soon as I see them start to noticeably wilt, we'll discuss our findings, and I'll have the children plant them outside.

Here is a picture of our science table with the flowers and rocks. The big red thing is the construction paper shielding the one flower from the sun. The other piece of paper is covering the rock.

This is such a cool activity, but I have 2 issues with it:
1. I tried to squeeze this all into one day and it really should have been two. It was a bit too much all at once.

and

2. I'm afraid that by the time these flowers actually start to wilt the children will have completely forgotten why we had them there in the first place. We'll see....

This is a super simple, but fun project, that works really well with a mixed age group like mine. It's simple enough for even toddlers to do, but creating the collage is is an enjoyable challenge for even the oldest preschoolers.

I did this project as part of a study of nature for Earth Day. I gave each child a basket, and asked them to collect natural items found outdoors (i.e. leaves, flowers, pine needles, etc.). I hung contact paper* on the easels outside, and invited the children to stick the items they collected to the paper any way they wanted. The results were beautiful!



*Contact paper is a paper used normally to line the inside of cabinets. It has a printed side and a sticky side. This can be an especially useful material when attempting to do collages with very young children. You can find it in any home improvement store.