Miss Cheyenne’s Little Butterflies

For pre-literate children, the visual arts are a primary means through which they can explore and share their perceptions of their world. The visual arts can help children to communicate ideas that cannot be expressed verbally, which is particularly important for children with English as a second language.

This week’s theme entails all things related to hiking. In order to bring the visual arts to our young ones, Miss Cheyenne came up with this colorful art project! Students used their fingers to add glue and pipe cleaners to paper shapes in order to create a beautiful butterfly!

Our students enjoyed sharing their creations with their friends. Many of them even engaged in some dramatic play!

H(ikers) in the Grass

To start our hiking week off with some fun, we integrated this exciting fine motor language activity. At our preschool, we understand that children process information using more senses than just their sight and sound. It is for this reason that we post many sensory activities that focus on the three year olds’ favorite sense: touch! Instead of using a pencil and becoming frustrated, many of our twos and threes use a combination of different fingers to create symbols, such as letters and numbers. What more fun than to accomplish this by tracing the letter H into “grass” aka rice.

Bumble Bee Small World Play

Engaging in small world play is so important for young children.

Not only does it nurture their imagination, it also enables them to explore new materials, act out scenarios from real life, build language, practice social skills and gain an understanding of the world around them.

For this activity, students participated in this kind of play within the scope of our bee theme!

Using several different materials, your little ones enjoyed creating their own environments for their bees.

Many developed stories for their creatures, using their imaginations to concoct various scenarios.

Butterfly Roll and Count

For this activity, students learned how to use a dice!

To do this, they lined up a number of flowers, 1-10.

They were then given a butterfly figurine. Following this, they were given two dice.

They were instructed to roll their dice to call out the number that was face up. After this, they moved their butterfly (starting at 1) to this number, counting as they did so.

Butterfly Magnets

Preschool students are some of the most curious beings on the planet.

The problem, however, is that they don’t understand complex answers if you only use words.

“Magnetic fields” and “positive/negative terminals” mean little a preschoolers. It is for this reason that we are constantly having our students experiment with different kinds of magnets.

By exposing them to items, they are able to understand complex concepts through concrete knowledge.

To align this with our butterfly week, we decided to play with these fun butterfly magnets! In addition to manipulating the magnets, students also created patterns out of them.

Beetle Letter Roll

For this activity, many of our students got to manipulate a dice for the first time!

With the aid of colorful illustrations, students learned how to spin a dice, recognize a letter, and then match that letter with an item! To tie this in with Beetle Week, we used a beetle-themed dice.

Firstly, students learned about four kinds of beetles.

Secondly, they learned about the letter that each beetle starts with.

Thirdly, they rolled the dice. Following this, the matched the letter with the correct beetle.

They completed this until each letter was rolled. Lastly, they traced each letter in the glitter.

Beetles in a Jar

Beetles are a type of insect characterized by front wings that serve as protective covers for their membranous hind wings.

These protective sheaths are often brightly colored, making them a fun subject for preschool counting! At our school, we are always engaging in play-based math activities.

This includes counting, sorting, measuring, and having fun!

We try to use an many three-dimensional items as possible so that our activities are as concrete as possible.

For this activity, students counted a variety of beetles of different quantities.

Following this, they sorted their bugs according to number.

Beetle Sensory Bin

Beetles, or Coleoptera, are the largest group of insects.

There are around 400,000 species of beetles that are known to scientists.

They can be found in all regions, from mountaintops to wetlands to scorching deserts.

For this activity, we decided to create our very own beetle habitats.

Using colored rice, plants, tweezers, and toy beetles, students created the perfect homes for their critters!

This activity targeted multiple developmental domains, including fine motor skills, science, and social science!

Fish Manipulatives

For this fun activity, we tied in two developmental domains with our fish theme!

These include language and literacy and fine motor skills!

Using a few materials students of all ages learned how to write the letter F!

They were each provided with toy fish and a cut-out of the letter F.

Finally, they were directed to place each fish onto the letter!

Sorting Fish by Number

Sorting activities often appeal to children and many will naturally sort according to qualities and characteristics they visually notice without every being taught.

This fundamental pre-requisite to further mathematical understanding can often be disregarded or ignored as a purely play-based activity that children instinctively engage with.

However, it is important and essential part of beginning mathematical skills and an important part of every child’s developmental journey.

For this activity, we sorted fish according to number.

Students were given six different paper bowls in order to accomplish this.

They were then directed to count different quantities of fish and place them into the match fish bowl.