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Monthly Archives: October 2020

SUNSHINE ☀️ ART – A GREAT AND SIMPLE OPEN-ENDED ACTIVITY FOR A WEATHER UNIT

Yesterday we started our weather unit with talking and learning about the sun. These 3-year-olds can now tell you that when it’s daytime ☀️ on one side of the Earth 🌎, it’s nighttime 🌙 on the other side. It’s never too early to teach science to small children. They may not grasp everything, and you may need to simplify it, but they are far more capable than most…

WIND PAINTING: A LESSON IN COMING UP WITH A PLAN B

So today we learned about “wind” to go along with this month’s weather unit. The materials and idea were simple, but it appears that the @melissaanddougtoys washable paint 🎨 we used may have been too thick. The adults in the room tried to use the straws to blow the paint, sequins, and flowers 🌸 across the paper to no avail. Finally, one of the children decided to use his straw as…

LEARNING LINKS: A MANIPULATIVE WITH ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

If you have an infant, you have probably used similar links to hang their toys off of a stroller, for example. BUT, they can also be used for preschoolers. These 3-year-olds sorted these links by color and shape, made patterns with them, and used a large “pocket cube” to work on their turn-taking skills while playing a game whose goal was to have them complete a pattern…

STRINGING BEADS 💎 WITH PIPE CLEANERS VS. STRING – A DISCOVERY MADE FOR TODDLERS! 🙌🏻

It’s possible that I’m late to the party and that everyone else knew this but me. But, in case you didn’t, pipe cleaner necklaces and bracelets are all the rage in my house right about now. 💎 For months I have given B every thickness of string I could find and have added tape to the tip to help her lace it through the hole (this method helps…

WATER 💦 BEAD LOVE! 💕

If you haven’t discovered water beads yet, welcome to my obsession. Up until this week, I had only bought the multicolored packs (some with fine motor tools included), but there’s a cloud and weather activity I want to do later this week that will require only blue beads (pictured here). I may have also purchased Halloween 🎃 👻 colored water beads for Saturday night’s sensory station. 🙈 But seriously, they…

MAGIC NOODLE MODELS: OUR SKULL & BRAIN

I first learned about #magicnoodles in my 20s while teaching preschool, thanks to one of my favorite teacher friends, Cheryl Pinckney. Until just recently, I had forgotten about them but wow 😮 have I been missing out. What’s so special about them? You dab them with a damp cloth and they stick together, like magic, making any structure possible. In this case, we used the noodles to represent the brain…