Expanding Monsters

Halloween Leave a comment

Activities that stimulate curiosity, teach science concepts, and avoid overwhelming or boring children with lessons are developmentally appropriate for the preschool classroom. When done well, preschool science is exciting and intellectually meaningful.

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The right preschool science activities can nurture your child’s natural sense of adventure and curiosity, help your child develop his own understanding of the natural world, encourage your child to be a persistent problem solver, and introduce your child to basic elements of scientific reasoning (seeking evidence; testing predictions). Because we are learning about monsters this week, we decided to combine vinegar and baking soda to create monster faces!

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We first poured 1/2 cup of vinegar into an empty water bottle. Then, we drew a face on the balloons while they were deflated. After that, we placed the funnel into the open end of the deflated balloon and poured in the baking soda. Following, we secured the open end of the balloon onto the top of the bottle being careful not to dump the contents of the balloon into the bottle quite yet.

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Finally, we held the balloon upright, allowing the baking soda to fall into the bottle and mix with the vinegar! So, why does this work? Your little one learned that the product of the vinegar and baking soda is carbon dioxide, a gas present when we breathe out. The carbon dioxide inflates the balloon. It’s that simple!

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Spider Web – Visual Discrimination Activity

Bugs, Halloween Leave a comment

Although most children develop the ability to focus visually and to make fine discriminations in visual images as they grow, some children will take longer to develop these skills and may need some additional help, or additional practice.

Good visual perception is an important skill, especially for school success.

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Children need good visual perception to discriminate, copy text accurately, develop visual memory of things observed, develop good eye-hand coordination and integrate visual information while using other senses in order to perform tasks like recognizing the source of a sound, etc.

This activity accessed these pertinent skills.

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Using a variety of different colanders, your little ones weaved spiders into a web of string, which targeted their ability to perceive spatial relations.

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Spider Web Collaborative

Halloween Leave a comment

Using yarn and clothespins (with pictures of spiders on them), we created our very own spider web!

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This was a collaborative group project, and your little one enjoyed making our back yard a little more festive by attaching clothespins onto white yarn that represented the silk of a spider’s web!

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This activity incorporated the developmental domain of fine motor movement.  When attaching the clothespins to the yarn, your little one was practicing fine motor control and hand eye coordination.

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The importance of hand eye coordination lies in your child’s ability to manipulate their environment.  Simple hand-eye coordination techniques, such as weaving, beading, and manipulating small objects, are a great way to help your little one learn how to control their mind and their hands. 

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These skills are transferable to literacy, and when your little student is then exposed to holding a pencil, crayon or pair of scissors, the coordination will be in place.

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Name Books

Literacy Leave a comment

During our first two months of school, we are learning how to write our name in new and creative ways!

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To help with this, I have created Name Books, which enable your little one to recognize and spell their name.

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Although we are still working on them, here is a glimpse into some of what we are doing!

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Bobbing for Vegetables

Farm Theme, Nutrition, Plants and Gardening Leave a comment

Visual-perceptual motor skills are an area of emphasis in our preschool classroom. These skills refer to children’s physical responses to visual stimulation.

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Such skills are later used for activities such as reading from left to right or copying from the blackboard.

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During our projects, I try to introduce activities that begin to challenge your little ones’ visual-perceptual performance skills.

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Activities such as finding hidden pictures (figure/ground), bingo and lotto (visual scanning), concentration or memory card games (visual memory and matching), and block design replication (visual-spatial relations) address different aspects within the area of visual-perceptual motor skills.

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As part of our week of gardening, students used their visual-perceptual skills to bob for vegetables. Using their hands, they practiced retrieving toy vegetables from bowls of water with tongs.

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Flower Farms

Farm Theme Leave a comment

For this activity, we created our very own flower farms!

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Using a few choice materials, students arranged groups of flowers into their very own bouquets.

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They first started with green play dough, manipulating it so it formed a flat shape. Next they prodded art wires into the dough.

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Lastly, they added fabric flowers to their wires.

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This activity enabled your little one to learn some new words, such as “bouquet” “stem” and “bundle.”

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Combine Harvesters

Farm Theme, Fruits and Vegtables Leave a comment

A combine harvester, or combine, is the tool of choice for harvesting corn and other grains.

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The reason this piece of equipment is called a combine is simply because it combines several jobs into a single machine.

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Combines cut the crop and separate the grain from the plant while processing and spreading the remaining material over the field.

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The invention of the combine was a major moment in human history (with some debate about who really invented it!) that revolutionized the way grain crops were harvested.

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To help us understand this amazing machine, we combine tractors and corn kernels to harvest corn!

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With their friends, your little one moved corn around sensory tubs, laughing as they planted their “crops.”

 

Miniature Tractors and Barns

Farm Theme Leave a comment

Small world play involves acting out scenarios (scenes from real life, stories and/or imagination) in a miniature play scene, created with small figures and objects. Anything from your own home or garden will do, there is no limitation to your creativity which is why it’s a truly inexhaustible subject!

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Small worlds are often set up in a certain theme (construction area, pirates at sea, dinosaur world, … you name it) that are relevant and meaningful to the child at the time and they usually include a sensory element (water, sand, dry pasta, leaves, …) which adds more layers to the play.

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As with any kind of play, there are numerous ways in which small world play supports your child in it’s development. By providing children with opportunities to re-enact certain experiences, you are helping then to reflect on feelings and events in life in a safe way. While engaged in small world play, children can explore and experiment with different emotions and act out these scenes in their play.

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Small world play invites children to be creative, and boosts confidence when children are able to experiment with different (both new and familiar) materials and build something they think is awesome.

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It is also an excellent way to practice social skills (when for instance building a small world on a play date) where children can connect with each other and learn to take turns, listen to someone else’s ideas, compromise and so on.

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There are always many problems to solve in small worlds (“Not all the dinosaurs fit in my cave!”) and children learn how to work through these by reasoning and experimenting.

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Small world play helps to develop numeracy by giving lots of opportunities for grouping or sorting items and counting them (“How may small dinosaurs do you have? How many do go in your cave?” “Now, how many are left?”)

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To help us with our tractor theme, we played with miniature tractors. Using dyed rice as our “grass”, students manipulated their tractors, parking them in their “barns”.

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The Great Celery Experiment

Farm Theme, Plants and Gardening Leave a comment

Young children are naturally curious and passionate about learning. In their pursuit of knowledge, they’re prone to poking, pulling, tasting, pounding, shaking, and experimenting.  From birth, children want to learn and they naturally seek out problems to solvecelery1

Young children should learn science (and all other areas of study) through active involvement – that is, through first-hand, investigative experiences.

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For this activity, we learned about the how plants absorb water out of the ground.

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Through our Great Celery experiment, your little ones observed, predicted, and explored the physical properties of these fascinating plants.

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We began by pouring water into an empty cup. Next, we added food coloring.

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Then we placed the celery stalks inside the cups. In addition to this, we drew pictures of what we thought would happen to the celery. Following this, we checked on them the next day.

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Not much happened, so we check on them again 48 hours later. We saw that the color had been sucked up and distributed among the leaves.

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It was so much fun that we decided to draw again what we saw.

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Carrot Tops

Farm Theme, Plants and Gardening Leave a comment

No gardening unit would be complete without a section on vegetables! In the course of our gardening/harvest week, we learned all about carrots. We learned that carrots are usually orange in color although purple, red, white, and yellow varieties also exist.

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We also learned that carrots are cooked and eaten in various different ways. The vegetable is often pulped, mashed, boiled, puréed, grated, fried, steamed, stewed, baked, juiced or eaten raw.

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We talked about how carrots are typically used in stir-fries and salads but also in soups and added to baby foods or pet foods. And then we learned that they can be dehydrated or deep-fried to make chips, flakes, and powder.

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To help us further understand this exciting vegetable, we grew our very own carrot plants in bottles! To begin with, students were asked to scoop soil into a water bottle. Next, they were encouraged to place carrot tops on top of the soil.

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Following, they were directed to add a little water to their plants. Lastly, they placed the top of the bottle on. At the end of the week, we tried the same species of carrots that we planted. We ate them with celery and dipped them in cream cheese!

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