Sink or Float

Last week, we did a sink or float activity for science. I had everyone gather around the table and I had ten items. Before putting each item in the water, we went around the table asking each child if the particular item would sink or float. We created a chart showing how many children thought each item would sink or float and the real results. The items were:

A cotton ball,

A pompom,

A smaller black rock,

A larger gray rock,

A clam shell,

A leggo,

A cork,

A golf ball,

A plastic turtle shell

And an apple.

I asked the children what sink meant and one child said that it meant where you wash your hands. That was right, but I explained that in this case, it meant that the object would go to the bottom of the bucket. When I asked what float meant, one girl said that it would stay on top of the water. So as the experiment went on, we talked about concepts such as the weight of the different items and heavy vs. light. The children were surprised that the cotton ball appeared to float at first, but then sank to the bottom as it absorbed water. We were all surprised to see the apple stayed afloat. The children really enjoyed this activity so at the end, I let them drop each item in a second time and then help me dry everything off. I'm sure we'll experiment again with different items in the near future. Here is the chart that we made.

Our Pizza Parlor

We've recently been rearranging our classroom and redoing our learning centers. We have redone our dramatic play corner. It is now a pizza parlor. It has everything to make and serve pizzas. We have pretend pizzas, vegetables, plates, measuring cups, mixing bowls, pizza boxes, a timer, a cash register, pretend money, books showing pizzas and even phones for ordering. The kids really seem to like it so far! My favorite thing is the pizza that zips together! You unzip it and the slices come apart. It's great! I've attached some pictures so you can see the whole area.1

Our Science Area

I'm back. I don't know how often I will write. I will explain where I have been in another entry, but I will start by writing about things we are doing in our classroom. Today, I'm posting about our science area. We have recently updated it to match our fall theme. Recently, we've switched from having materials in plastic bins to using open wooden bowls or baskets. In our science area, we have included pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn, pinecones, acorns, leaves, magnifying glasses a scale and the world globe is always there. On some of the shelves, we have books and water play materials. We have a water table and rice table near by. Next to the shelf pictured is a small table with a box of animals. The children are really enjoying our new set up. We have these objects out simply for the children to explore. The children just noticed the scale today so tomorrow, we will show them how to use it. It should be interesting to see what they will do with the items.

I will keep these entries short and I will be posting pictures of other areas in the classroom as well as the activities we've been doing. I hope to blog regularly again.

Bugs & Beans Sensory Tub

For spring, we set up a bugs and beans sensory bin in the toddler classroom.
Here’s what’s inside.



I found these Melissa and Doug Sunny Patch Bugs
On Amazon. The kids liked the bright colors and I liked that they were big enough for them to safely play with.
My co-teacher found these bugs from Oriental Trading Company. The kids did okay with them, but I thought they were a bit small for toddlers.
For filler, we added a variety of beans, scoops and cups for scooping and pouring.
The children loved this sensory tub and asked us to open it everyday. Their favorite parts were scooping and pouring the beans and finding the hidden bugs.

The Sticky Bucket

I got this idea from Deborah Teachpreschool. She has done various activities with a sticky table so I decided to create one of my own. Since I knew it wouldn't be possible to keep the contact paper on the table for more than an hour, I decided to make sticky boxes. I covered two small boxes with the contact paper sticky side up. some of the children didn't understand and ripped the contact paper off so we ended up adding the sticky paper to this bucket. When I introduced this activity, I started by putting out a basket of ribbons, pipe cleaners and feathers to see what the children would do. Some decided to make letters, shapes and elaborate constructions. Two girls sat down at the table and made a boat. They told me about diving boards, motors and wheels. They used every single piece in the basket. As time went on, I added different materials to the basket like felt and yarn. On the day when I was finally able to take a picture of the sticky bucket, I had set out sponge shapes for them to try. I imagined that it would be like building with blocks accept it would be 2d because the sponges wouldn't stay stacked. However we discovered that the contact paper wasn't sticky enough for the sponges to stay in place, but we tried.



This was the last time I was able to add to the sticky bucket with this class, but later I tried it with the toddlers. I covered a small table with clear contact paper sticky side up. The toddlers noticed the texture above everything else. They kept touching it over and over and saying, "Sticky." When they started to put their pretend foods on it, they noticed that some of them actually stuck and they were able to keep things in place. I am hoping to do more texture activities like these with my future classes.

Additional links:

• From Seed to Flower at the Sticky Table

 

• Playing With Nature at the Sticky table

 

• Exploring Everything Sticky in Preschool

Pink Raspberry Play-dough

I am behind on my blog posts, but am hoping to post some of the activities I’ve done over these past couple of months. During the month of February, I made raspberry play-dough for Valentines. The more obvious choice was chocolate, but I had already done that for the month of January. The raspberry smelled good and came out a pinkish reddish color.

Here is the recipe that I used.

• 2 cups flour,
• 1 cup salt,
• 2 table spoons vegetable oil,
• 2 table spoons cream of tartar,
• 1.5 cups boiling water
• A few drops of raspberry extract,
• A couple drops of red food coloring.
• A few drops glycerin.

• 1. Mix dry ingredients.
• 2. Stir in oil.
• 3. Add water and mix until lumps are gone and it comes together.
• 4. Then kneed. Add scent, food coloring and or glycerin for shininess at kneading stage.

Store in an air tight container.

Hot Coco Activities

Here are some of the other hot coco related activities we did this week that I don’t have photos for.
We made marshmallow sculptures using different sized marshmallows and toothpicks.
The kids made snowmen, sharks, flowers, houses, towers etc. The kids took them all home before I could get pictures.

We did pretend marshmallow counting. Cups were labeled with numbers one through ten. The children had to put the right number of cotton balls into each cup. Since we have kids of different ages, this is simply set out as a center and those who are able to complete this activity do it and those who have no interest or aren’t ready don’t.

We did the sensory coco powder and flour mixture. The children used spoons and measuring cups for pouring.

Some of the kids decorated their own hot chocolate mugs. We had a few different coloring pages for them to choose from.
They colored with markers or crayons and then glued cotton balls for marshmallows.

We did a hot coco taste test with hot chocolate, marshmallows or whipped cream and then made a chart showing how many liked marshmallows and how many liked whipped cream. Only one child liked whipped cream while everyone else liked marshmallows.

To end our week, we had frozen coco popsicles. Some had marshmallows frozen inside and others were plain. The problem was that we forgot to put the popsicle sticks in them so they were ice cubes instead, but the kids said they were good. Next time, we will definitely add the sticks.

Hot Coco Puff Paint

I made coco puff paint, but I didn’t exactly measure my ingredients. Actually, I don’t know if it will turn out like puff paint, but I thought it would be interesting for the kids.
First, I used probably about a cup of glue.
Next, I added two or three squirts of shaving cream.
I mixed well and added three t-spoons of coco powder and mixed again until the whole mixture was brown.
It was the consistency of pudding.




We used the paint in the afternoon. Here are some of the paintings. Some of them were sharks, snowmen, houses etc. The kids were involved in painting their creations for at least fifteen minutes. Some kids did more than one.




Update: When the paint dried, it wasn't very puffy, but it had a smooth texture.

Hot Coco Activity Box

This activity was inspired by the hot coco activity box created by Deborah Teachpreschool.
I used three small brown paper bags which I shredded for hot chocolate, cotton balls for marshmallows and spoons and paper cups for scooping and pouring.
The next day, we added measuring cups and spoons for a slightly different experience.






The kids enjoyed scooping and pouring the pretend coco and marshmallows. We had the activity available to them for most of the week. We also had a bucket of coco and flour mixed together as a sensory activity, but our younger kids decided that the pretend coco and the real coco should be mixed together. Needless to say, we ended up with a big mess, but they had a lot of fun!

Hot Coco Play-dough

This week, our theme is hot chocolate. I have a few posts planned for showing what we have done. The first thing is I made hot coco play-dough. The recipe I used can be found here. It smelled like brownies while it was cooking and it still has a strong coco scent. The only thing I did differently was add a few drops of glycerin and another spoon full of coco powder.


I added a special surprise inside. I found marble sized white beads to use as marshmallows.



The kids have really liked playing with these. The challenge is not losing them. The play-dough was a success! I’m sure we’ll be using it until it dries out.

Wintery Vanilla Play-dough

I finally had the chance to make homemade play-dough. It came out pretty well I think, but we’ll see how the kids like it. I got inspiration and the recipe from the Imagination Tree. She has so many great ideas and the recipe works well. The only things I added for this batch of play-dough were some glitter for sparkle and vanilla extract for scent. This will be apart of our snow and snowmen theme. I wanted the play-dough to stay mostly white plus the sparkles, but the vanilla discolored the play-dough a bit. It’s okay though because I wanted the scent there. It will be something different for the kids since all they’ve had for a while are the tiny tubs of play-dough from Walmart. I have so many more play-dough ideas that I want to share throughout the upcoming months.

Teaching Youngsters to Share

Dan Gilbert from Primrose Schools expressed interest in guest posting on my blog. This article is the first of several that he'd like me to share with my readers.

Train Youngsters to Share:
Using Beginning Instruction on Collaboration

Submitted by Dan Gilbert on behalf of Primrose Schools. For over 25 years, they have helped individuals achieve higher levels of success by providing them with an AdvancED® accredited, early child care services and education. Through an accelerated Balanced Learning® curriculum, Primrose Schools students are exposed to a widely diverse range of subject matter giving them a much greater opportunity to develop mentally, physically and socially. Dan has written a number of articles on topics varying from bilingual learning to teaching the importance of volunteering.
People who learn to cooperate as a child experience better chances for success later in life. Making a friend or working in a group setting as an adult comes naturally to those who learned this fundamental skill as a child. The willingness to share comes from the interactions a child has with a parent or a caregiver. Children especially start picking up on sharing and cooperation before age four, says Dr. Mary Zurn (Dr. Z), vice president of education for Primrose Schools. Primrose offers a safe, nurturing preschool environment for children to play, learn and grow. By following role models in play and playing with other children their own age, children can learn to take turns and share before they enter school.

“Cooperation and sharing are key character traits that teach children how to get along with others,” said Dr. Z. Collaboration skills do not come with instinct; they are learned. Success in our world comes more often than not to team players. Children who have mastered these abilities find they can enjoy relationships characterized by respect and congeniality. People are called upon to share every day, so those who learn to be generous, to care for others and to cooperate display the good character that makes good citizens.

Examples in Cooperation: Parents teach their children before anyone else, so they should make sure that they demonstrate a proper example of sharing and cooperation for them to follow. By helping others and working respectfully with other, parents send a signal telling children that these are desirable traits. Parents can reinforce cooperation by asking them to help out with the cleaning in exchange for sharing some fun time together afterwards.

Goals Families Achieve Together: Families are great units to use for the development of sharing and collaboration in youth. By choosing an activity and assigning each family member a role, children can learn how people who work together can achieve more than they can separately. When they see it’s fun to combine efforts, they will develop a habit that lasts a lifetime.

Cook to Cooperate: Preparing a meal makes a great educational environment for a child. They can see that they play a meaningful role in the effort and take pride once the meal is on the table. A Story called Stone Soup illustrates the positive role cooking can have in developing team values.

Reading Books: Parents can choose books that illustrate cooperative attitudes such as the story called Little Red Hen. These stories open opportunities for parents to extol the virtues and benefits of working together.

Musical Lessons: Another great way to teach children these crucial values of cooperation and sharing is to listen to music. After playing a clip from a band, children can help identify all the distinct instruments and sounds they hear. The independent contribution of each musician combines to make a symphony.

After learning about bands, parents can join with children to create a rudimentary band where each person plays a role in creating music. Just for fun, record the final rendition on video or audio and play it back. The masterpiece will live on for years as part of family lore.

A Picture

Over the past couple months, the preschoolers and toddlers have been playing on the playground at the same time. Before, they went out separately. Anyway, since last Thursday, a few of the preschoolers have started to like me. It started when Crawling Baby’s sister wanted me to help her up on the swinging bar on the swing set. We talked about Crawling Baby, preschool and other things. Then a girl who I’ll call T came over. I saw her before during one of my observations. There are a few issues going on with her. Most of which surround her bullying other kids. She also wanted a turn on the swinging bar and while she was up there, she started to be mean to Crawling Baby’s sister and ended up kicking her in the face. Later that day, she came back over to me because she wanted me to push her on the regular swings. I notice that T gets mad when I need to play with the toddlers or if I’m busy with another preschooler especially Crawling Baby’s sister. Those two always seem to argue. There is also a boy who I’ll call G who likes to talk to me when I push him on the swing. The other day he told me how he got past being in the baby room, the toddler room and how now he’s a preschooler. He tells me about his favorite books and the favorite books of his classmates. He talks about watching Sponge Bob and how he can’t pump on the swing yet, but he’s trying. I tried to listen to his stories the other day, but I kept getting interrupted by the girls arguing or one of the toddlers who needed my help.

I’ve been going in every day since last Thursday, so the preschool girls have started finding me every day on the playground. Two of them asked me why I always have to work with those toddlers and why don’t I work in their classroom? Today, I finally did for a little while, but T wasn’t there. I say that because she was the main one who kept asking me that. Since my bad experience at the previous preschool, I was hesitant to work with these preschoolers which is why I’ve mostly insisted on working with only infants and toddlers. I did miss working with them though and the conversations we used to have. It’s been fun working with the three different groups because they’re all good for different reasons. Here’s a picture that Crawling Baby’s sister drew for me today. She filled in the whole paper and there are some little designs in there. The important part is that she made it for me and worked on it for a while. While everyone else was arguing or going a little crazy, she was focused on coloring her entire paper.

Pond Sensory Tub

Here’s a simple pond sensory tub.



What’s in it?

Water,
Stones of different shapes and sizes,
Rubber duckies,
A frog,
A turtle,
Plastic aquarium plants,
Different sized cups for pouring
And pieces of foil supposed to be Lilly pads.




I tried to make Lilly pads from foil or at least something shaped kind of round or oval, but it wasn’t working. I couldn’t get anything close to a circle, oval and certainly not anything shaped like a Lilly pad. Plus I was rushing to get the tub done and didn’t want to keep messing with foil. I kept the pieces in there anyway because it was something that floats. The kids can pretend they are whatever they want them to be. I like the stones though and the duckies are fun too! If you squeeze the ducks, water comes out of the mouth. I’m sure water would be all over the place when the kids discover that.






For next time, I’d include more plants, more plastic frogs and turtles and maybe I could find some fish that look more like fresh water fish. The plastic fish I have are all sharks, seals etc. I need to take another trip to the dollar store soon. You could also include larger stones or pieces of wood and if you are really adventurous, put a little dirt on the bottom.

Egg Shaking Listening and Matching Activity

I keep seeing different versions of this game around on the blogs so I figured I’d try making one of my own. I started with a dozen plastic eggs and made six matching pairs. I made sure that each pair wasn’t the same color so they had to depend on the sound to match them. I used pennies, round stones, googley eyes, rice, popcorn kernels and pompoms. I started by putting them all in the basket. That way they can use the egg carton to help them keep track of their matches.







Another way to do the activity is if there are enough kids, give each one an egg and see who else has the egg that makes the same sound. That might be a good circle time activity.

Finally, a third way to do this activity is to make a key like I did below. I taped each object to the piece of paper. You can start with the six eggs that correspond to the object. See if the child can match the object with the sound. You can add the other six eggs to make it a little harder or do 12 objects instead of six. You can do any number of eggs you want. I chose twelve because I had an egg carton to put them in.

Easter Match

Here are pictures for an Easter memory game. You can cut the pictures out, put them on card stock and laminate them to make them last.

 

All images found from: Google Images.
For specific image websites, click on the Image Credits page in the sidebar.

Bunny Care Sensory Tub

Here’s a bunny sensory tub I put together a while ago. There are a lot of textures and objects for kids to explore. Most of these objects, you can use to care for a real bunny. They can learn to feed and care for these plush bunnies.



What’s in the tub?
Three bunnies,
Bunny food,
Hand full of hay,
Bowl,
Measuring cup,
Water bottle,
ABC blocks,
Yogurt treats,
Chewable ice cream cone,
Plush carrot,
Shavings,
And a paper bag.



Since some children will get a real bunny this Easter, Click here for a rabbit care guide.
Kids Bunny Fun

The Project Approach and Other Resources

I thought I’d share some things I’ve found recently. During the past couple of weeks, I’ve been learning more about The Project Approach which is based on projects instead of themes. I learned about it from a classmate. Basically, you take something that your class is interested in and turn it into a long-term project. I thought this approach was interesting because it expands on things that are meaningful for the kids and it shows that kids really can have longer attention spans if they are allowed time to focus on a project or using different materials. Some examples of projects that I thought were interesting are Baby Project and this project about lunch. there are many more examples of projects on this page if you are interested in looking at them. There is also an adapted version of the project approach that you can use with toddlers called Project Practice. Obviously the projects for toddlers won't be as advanced and they mostly focus on experimenting with project materials and the basic skills of working on projects. I’m not sure that completely switching over to the project approach would’ve went well at places where I’ve worked, but I think including some of the concepts would have been helpful especially for the kids that became very interested in some of the themes.

Another interesting resource I’ve found is Early Childhood News which has links to lots of articles and other things. This will be useful for me with my classes.

Finally, while looking at another blog and I can’t remember who’s it was now, I came across the Eric Carle Blog. I didn’t know he had one. It doesn’t look like he posts often, but I thought it was interesting that he has a blog. Another related link is to a recent news article I read about The Very Hungry Caterpillar. It’s being used to fight early childhood obesity. There are a lot of food related activities you can do connected to this book so I think it’s a good choice. It’s really important for kids to learn about healthy foods. Click here to read the article.

That’s all I have for now, but later this week, I’ll be posting another sensory tub and how my volunteering goes with the babies tomorrow. I know I haven’t been posting as often as I used to either because I’ve been busy or haven’t had any inspiration to write. I’ll try to post more activities in the upcoming months. I’ve recently gotten a few more followers and I wanted to thank you for reading my blog.

What I Miss About Preschoolers

Since I started volunteering with the infants and young toddlers, I’ve realized I really miss the conversations that I had with the preschoolers. During my internship, Shy and I would usually have a conversation before her nap. Here’s some of one that I had with her before nap time.

Shy: “Is somebody sleeping in here?”
Me: No. David is usually here, but he’s sick today. So he’ll be back tomorrow.
Shy: Why?
Me: Well, he’s sick so he had to go home early.
Shy: “He need to go to doctor.”
Me: “He does. He has a doctors appointment.”
Shy: “Then he can come back here.”
Me: Yeah. He’ll come back here when he’s better. He’ll take some medicine and get better.”
Shy: “Yeah. I also go to doctor when I get all better.”
Me: “What do they do at the doctors?”
Shy: They check on my throat and my elbows and my hands and my hand.”

Here’s another conversation we had on the same day.
Shy: “I had to pee-pee on the potty.”
Me: “You’re getting to be a big girl.”
Shy: “Yeah!”
Me: Are you going to be big, big, big?” (She liked to say that things were going to grow big big big.)
Shy: Yeah! I’m going to just be more than you.”
Me: “You’re going to be more than me?”
Shy: “Yeah!! I’m gonna be bigger too when I come next time. I’ll come back in that door and I will see you.”
Me: “You’ll come back and see me when you’re big?”
Shy: “Yeah.”
Me: “I hope so.”
Shy: “You’ll stay here till you get back in your car.”
Me: “Yeah.”
Shy: My mommy’s coming after nap.”
Me: “I know.”


I enjoy working with babies and toddlers, but they can’t really talk to me and I miss hearing some of their thoughts. With the preschoolers, there was at least one conversation or something I heard as they were playing that would make me laugh every day. I also miss doing some of the activities you can do with preschoolers that you can’t do with younger kids. With infants and toddlers, you worry about a lot of safety issues. Not that you wouldn’t worry about a preschooler’s safety, but the younger the children, the more you worry. There is a bigger variety of activities they can do and toys that they can play with. However, you don’t get as much individual time with older toddlers and preschoolers because there are more of them. It’s also easier to manage a group of younger kids at least in my experience. I like that you have more time to work with the younger kids individually, the group size is smaller and they do other things that are cute and funny. Some of this balances out and makes the extra worries worth it. There is much more hands on work with toddlers and infants which I don’t mind. Of course, there are a lot of laughs with babies and young toddlers too. I feel that I’m better at working with them, but sometimes I miss the way things were with the preschoolers.

Pots of Gold and Lessons Learned

This is a St. Patrick’s Day project I attempted to do last year.

To make this pot of gold, you’ll need:

Paper cup,
Gold stickers,
A whole punch,
A gold pipe cleaner,
Gold materials such as ribbon, candy wrappers, Easter grass, yarn, shiny paper etc.
Glitter.
You could even use sparkly crayons or gold paint.



I punched a hole on each side of the cup and put the pipe cleaner through. On each side, I bent the pipe cleaner to make a little knot on the inside of the cup to make it stay in place and to hide the sharp ends.

In the pictures, you’ll see I’ve used a Styrofoam cup, but I don’t recommend it. One of the lessons I learned from trying to do this project was that the ribbon, Easter grass and gold lace don’t stick to Styrofoam. These would have come out a lot better with paper cups or bowls. The kids kept trying and trying, but the glue wouldn’t keep any of these materials on the cups. They enjoyed trying though. They also enjoyed the glitter and foam stickers. The glitter ended up everywhere, but that was the most fun part of the project for them since the rest of it wasn’t working. They ended up with sparkly cups on the inside and out. They had at least one gold star and a couple of other gold foam stickers. Since I didn’t have enough, they could each only have one letter. Usually, they picked the first letter of their name. They could also have one or two gold numbers if they wanted. The second lesson that I learned is to double the amount of materials that you’ll think you’ll need especially for projects like this. The third lesson was to try the project yourself first to see if all the materials work as planned. If I would have done this, I would’ve realized that most of the gold materials wouldn’t stick to the cup. Only a few of the children did this project because I got overwhelmed with the amount of children who wanted to try and with the materials not working as planned, I packed it up early. Maybe I should’ve left it out longer to see what the remaining children could do. In my own frustration, I thought it was a failed project, but maybe the kids could’ve turned it into something else by exploring the materials.



The previous year, I had an idea to do a two day project with pots of gold and rainbows. We had a rainbow printable and the kids could either draw or paint their rainbow. At the last minute, the head teacher made painting the only option. The kids liked painting their rainbows. The next day, the kids were supposed to cut out their rainbows and attach them to a small pot of gold. The pot of gold was a print out, but the kids were going to decorate them with gold materials or by drawing on them with sparkly crayons. Ahead of time, I gave them the smaller pot of gold template that I found and at the last minute, they decide to change the project altogether. They had cut out the rainbows for the kids and put them in their cubbies. Then they had printed out a regular larger coloring sheet with a pot of gold on it and then expected them to color in the whole thing. I was disappointed because my plans for the project were ruined. Not only was the creativity taken out of it, but so were the kids choices. They couldn’t choose how to decorate their rainbows, they no longer had a choice of how to make their pots of gold and an opportunity for them to work on a longer project that they would put together themselves was lost.

I learned some lessons from this project too. If you plan something, make all the preparations yourself unless you know that you and whoever you are working with are definitely on the same page.
I learned that too many people take the lazy way out. How do you expect the kids to learn to take initiative or to complete a task if you can’t yourself?
How do you expect attention spans to develop if you constantly change everything at the last minute to the quickest thing possible? I’m not saying that things shouldn’t be changed to meet the kids needs or if you are short on time. I’m talking about those classrooms that are so chaotic on a daily basis that the children can’t focus on anything. Also, how do you expect teachers to take time and pride in planning when you are constantly changing their plans and ideas without talking to them about it first? These are some questions and thoughts I’ve had over these past two years.
For this St. Patrick’s Day, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for me will be to watch toddlers make shamrocks. I won’t have to worry about planning or the final product. After all, my plans have been for the kids enjoyment and to allow them to express creativity.