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…
A picture of an open mouth, white beads as teeth, a 🦷 toothbrush, and a pair if plastic tweezers…it really doesn’t get too much more simple. If you have a die laying around, you can roll it and have them remove or pull the corresponding number of teeth. We tried it with our 3-year-olds, but they’re just not there yet, and that’s ok. They still…
We got our fine motor play on through lacing while talking about spiders and counting how many legs they actually have. It’s math, it’s science, it’s just plain fun (and adorable)! MATERIALS:• Paper plate• Single hole puncher• Paint 🎨• Glue• Tape• Yarn 🧶• Scissors ✂️• Construction Paper• Pom poms• Goggly eyes 👀 STEPS:• Punch holes in a circular pattern around a paper plate• Paint the plate 🎨• Allow paint to dry• Cut…
Young children (and sometimes their parents 🙋🏻♀️) are fascinated by the simplest things. So while asking them to use a white crayon to draw on white paper didn’t seem all to exciting, using watercolors to reveal the magic beneath was. We wrote their names, drew ghosts, pumpkins, hearts, suns, a dog, and pretty much anything their hearts desired. They couldn’t see any of it until they used the watercolors…
My 3rd grade art teacher, Mrs. Josie Pinkcombe, introduced me to Vincent van Gogh and Starry Night when I was just 8 or 9 years old, and I was instantly enamored. Decades later, this is still my favorite painting. I remember being in Amsterdam with my dad in my early 20s and insisting on seeing 2 sites: 1) The Anne Frank Museum and 2) The van Gogh museum. He may…
Our “Staying Healthy” unit today included the importance of sleep. We discussed what sleep looks like, what we take to bed with us, and later read Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. We drew pictures of our animal friends sleeping and acted out a bedtime routine during dramatic play time. They even each decided to read their animal friends a bedtime story, and one got swaddled like Hud’s baby…