Beautiful Blossoms!

 

 It's the little girls' favorite time of year. The cherry trees that come over the playground are sharing their flowers every time there is a little wind. I came up with this project last week when a handful of girls were outside picking up the blossoms and pretending to have a wedding. It was a great opportunity to talk about where the blossoms come from and how they fall from the tree.

My phone evidently didn't like this project, as the pictures aren't the greatest. They do make an adorable board and the kids adored the project. Even the boys got in on it !

Easter - In a Non Religious Form

Part of our job as teachers is so embrace and learn about every culture that every family comes from. Our roll as teachers is also to respect families, while teaching their children that curiosity is important. It's okay to accept another families beliefs, without agreeing with those beliefs. Within this blog I refer to holidays quite often but I purposefully stay away from the religious meanings of those holidays. I firmly believe that is something for a child to learn from their family - it is not my mission in life nor is it my job to instill these beliefs into children... Easter is one of the holidays that is harder to get around when it comes to religious meaning. Admittedly I haven't done much in my room this year for Easter and have focused more on Earth Day... but here are some Easter-ish ideas that i've done in the past...

Eggs in the grass is great for working on small motor skills. Cutting the string is going to help kids gain that small motor control for writing. Work those muscles... but have some fun with them too!
I am a sucker for hand prints. I just think that they are timeless. They're things that parents keep and cherish - I am by far one of those parents. I have so many hand prints from my three year old it's nuts! -- oh oh, and footprints too, in case you were wondering!
Mosaic eggs are a wonderful open ended Easter related project. You can use anything sitting around the classroom. When we made these eggs I raided the kitchen and begged our cook for her leftover foil pieces. The kids LOVED working with this new medium. Plus, preschool kids and shiny things always work out in your favor!

Something else I should mention is an awesome game I learned from a CoWorker a few weeks ago. It's called "Ickle Bickle" and would be perfect to be played with a plastic easter egg. The children all cover their eyes (or face the wall if you have lookie-loos). Take the egg and hide it in the classroom. The kids follow the simple rules of :
 You can not touch the egg
 When you find the egg you say "Ickle Bickle" and head back to your designated meeting spot (we use a star carpet)
 If the child who spots the egg first is able to go for an entire minute without any other child finding the egg they get a prize (we use stickers for the prize chart in our room) The kids quickly figure out some sneaky ways to keep others from finding the egg. It's so much fun to watch how creative they get...

It's a super simple game that is amazing around 5pm when you have some cleaning to do and need the kids to be engaged in something that isn't causing a huge mess. That's "Ickle Bickle" for ya!

As always, have an amazing Easter everyone and thank you for reading!

April Showers....

.... bring cool rain crafts. I know, I know... it's way easier and much more fun to just skip the showers and move on to the showers but we're not going to! We can't forget that important water which helps our flowers grow. Not to mention I live in Washington and really, there is no ignoring the constant rainfall outside.

Most of you have probably noticed that I love things that hang... what a waste of white space a ceiling is, so lets dress it up today with this adorable mobile. This is the perfect time to talk about boots and rain gear too! Just take a hanger, cover it up with blue (or gray if you live in Washington!) construction paper and create away. I've gone as far as to provide the kids with cocktail umbrellas to hang. We've added flowers, glittered rain drops, cotton clouds. The sky is the limit on this one. The project makes for a great class discussion before it gets underway.

... April showers also bring RAINBOWS. I am personally a huge sucker for a hand print rainbow and will completely admit i've made them with the kids and left them up WAY longer than any classroom craft should be left on the wall. My parents were probably thinking that we spent a month doing nothing (okay, they know better...) because this rainbow even moved around the room at some points...
   we also added on to it at one point, we decorated the red parts in color coordinating craft supplies such as feathers, colored wood shapes and sequins. By far one of my favorite projects!

Give a hoot !!

Okay, i'm back -- I know it's been awhile since i've last written about some amazing preschool ideas. I've been in and out of the classroom trying to get my preschool creative groove back. For the first time in awhile I feel like the groove is coming back and those creative juices are starting to flow again.

April is quickly approaching with Earth Day and my school age classroom and I have been doing a lot of work on what we can do to help the earth and the environment. These Owls are one of my favorite projects so far! The children (who are school age) wrote on a sentence strip what they were going to do to help the environment. They said everything from "Save the Owls" to "Put my trash in a bin". It was wonderfully fun to watch them come up with how they were going to help the environment.

  

Next up is some election projects. We will be talking about the current election year and voting for our classroom council. I can't say how excited I am for this election year. We're going to learn all about it!

At the Seaside

Summer has finally (hopefully) decided to stick around. Our family loves to go to the beach and we've come up with some pretty darn cute craft projects to do when we get home. It's a great way to remember our vacation. I always put my son's name and age on the back, just to preserve the memory!

First on the beach craft to-do list are these adorable shell critters. I soak the shells in a little bleach and water solution overnight to get the clean white look. Although we've painted them in our house too, they get a tie dye effect! I used fimo clay (the stuff you bake) because it's already colored which makes it super easy. You could always make your own salt dough, dry it and paint it.

Did you see my past blog about mobiles?
Making mobiles

Here's a great use for those shells! Both my son and hubby love to collect shells and rocks, here's a great way to display those shells!

I seems like there are lots of stores celebrating Christmas in July. Here's a great way to get some Christmas presents done early!

Just take some sand dollars, let your kiddo paint on them (it doesn't have to be a poinsettia) put a little super glue and ribbon on the back and viola you've got an ornament. It'll work with any shell and remind you of your great beach vacations when it's super cold and snowy outside!

It's 80 Degrees in Washington

... and that alone is enough reason to celebrate. While my son plays outside in our over sized toddler pool I figured it would be a great chance to me to sit down and do some writing. I missed the 4th of July for posting but first of all I need to share this super cool popsicle idea. Days later my son is still asking me for popsicles - and he doesn't mean the sugar kind!

I had a picture of my son eating these, but of course I can't find it now. Figures! -- I took watermelon and cut it hamburger style. I then took a star cookie cutter and cut stars out of the watermelon. I set the stars in the freezer for 10 minutes or until they were a little hard & then skewered them! My son is still asking me about the popsicles, we had a friend bring Dilly Pops from Dairy Queen and he doesn't want them. He prefers the watermelon pops.... This is definitely a score one for any mom, healthy & hydrating! I did a little reading & people have done it with pineapple too, I haven't tried it but sounds like something for a later blog.

We enjoy some fab ways to keep cool. We really enjoyed playing in colored ice cubes. The night before I stuck some food coloring (which just happened to be left over red & blue!) in my ice cube trays in the freezer. My son had a friend over and I gave both of them a bowl of water with some added colored cubes. They splashed around for a good 25 minutes while the ice melted. At one point they were splashing each other... kids will be kids, don't forget the towels! To make the project even more fun you can add things to the cubes, I loved to use toy cars or soldiers in my preschool room. We also made some bigger ice chunks out of buckets. These take up quite a bit of room in the freezer but they're well worth it in the morning!

It's ALMOST summertime

My summertime promise to myself is to blog more. I have so many ideas I can't wait to share! Due to a recent separation between my job and I (no worries, it's a good thing) I'm enjoying life as a stay at home mom. It also frees up some time to do the things that I love, like writing and sharing ideas that I'm passionate about. So off to the summer projects....

This first project is such a cool project. I was originally going to post it for Mother's Day ideas, but well - you see how that went.

Creating a Hanging Mobile
Materials:
* Sticks ( 3 sets of two about equally sized)
* Flowers (I used fake so it would last)
* Organic Stuff (leaves, pine cones, rocks...)
* Shells
* Beads
 -- use your imagination, anything & everything can go on this mobile.
* Wire (I used flower wire, but anything would work)
* Wire Cutters

First thing to do is to take your sticks and put them in order biggest to smallest. Take the two biggest and put them together in a cross. Create a loop at the top so you are able to hang your mobile. Use the wire to secure them. Continue with the other two sets of sticks. Now it's time to secure the sticks to each other. I've found the easiest way to do this is to hang the mobile from somewhere. It saves you the headache of balancing it later. Put the largest cross on top and work your way down with wire in between the crosses. Using wire is way easier than things like fishing line, it is just sturdier! Now take all your organic materials, beads and stuff to put on and wrap it with wire. Attach to the crosses - I used my wire cutters and a pencil to make some cute curly cues off of the wire too. I also found it helpful to use a dab of super glue on the things like rocks & shells. If you want to keep this long term it definitely helps! This is definitely a very parent / teacher involved project but is so super cute when it's done!

This is a WAY simplified version made out of a single flower and some Popsicle sticks. I let the kids glue it, but while they were sleeping added a touch of super glue to keep the sticks together. These would look super cute hanging in a window!

Don't forget about sidewalk chalk this summer! It's the best -- I've made it out of eggshells before but this is just plain old Wal Mart $3 Crayola. My son is 2 1/2 and had a great time helping me decorate the cul-de-sac with some fun summer stuff. It was a great opportunity to talk about shapes too!

Eggshell Chalk (i've never had AMAZING luck with this one, it always turns out stinky, but it's worth giving a try again!)

Materials:
12 Egg Shells
2 Tsp Hot Water
2 Tsp Flour

Wash the eggshells well, so they don't have any egg left in them. Dry them and grind them (I stick them in a zip lock & give it to my son to smash). . Grind the eggshells into a fine powder. You'll need two soup spoonfuls of this powder to make a stick of chalk. When you have enough powder to make a stick of chalk, sift or pick out any little bits of eggshell that are still not ground up and throw them away.Dump the powder on to a plate and remove any big clumps.
Stir the flour and hot water together in a small dish to make a paste. Put two soup spoonfuls of eggshell powder into the paste and mix well.. Add a few drops of food coloring if you want colored chalk.
Shape this mixture into a chalk stick. Then roll it up in a strip of paper towel and set aside to dry. (Drying takes about three days.) Then just peel the paper off one end and you're ready for some sidewalk art.
For really big sticks of chalk, try making 3 times this recipe, and stuff the mixture into an old toilet paper tube. When it's dry, you can peel away the cardboard as you use it.

Good Luck -- I made mine with hard boiled eggs on egg salad day at the daycare, that might just be why it was stinky!