Preschool

What’s in the Box? Growing Gardens Preschool Theme

April 19, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

It sure doesn’t feel like spring here in Wisconsin but next month we’re going to start our Growing Gardens preschool theme whether or not the weather decides to cooperate! There’s still snow on the ground but next week it’s supposed to be in the 60’s so hopefully, we can start planting soon.

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Growing Gardens

Plant a seed and watch it grow. Your children will wiggle like worms with excitement as they greet garden visitors like rabbits and moles. They will sing along with buzzing bees and pull out a carrot to make their own tasty garden soup. Watch your children’s curiosities grow throughout this springtime study.

Growing Gardens Preschool Theme

Teacher’s Tool Bag

Growing Gardens Theme Web

Growing Gardens Theme Poster

April Calendar, Family Newsletter and Week One My Creative Mind Daily Notes

Weekly Teacher’s Guides

Week one Learning Objectives and Overview

Week One STEAM Stations

Mother’s Day Celebration Kit

Lesson 1: Soil

Lesson 2: Seeds

Lesson 3: Sun & Water

Lesson 4: Roots

Lesson 5: Worms

Lesson 6: Sprouts & Stems

Week 2: My Creative Mind Daily Notes

Lesson 7: Leaves

Lesson 8: Flowers

Lesson 9: Produce

Lesson 1o: Weeds

Lesson 11: Moles

Lesson 12: Crows

Lesson 13: Rabbits

Lesson 14: Toads

Lesson 15: Bees

Lesson 16: Carrots

Lesson 17: Potatoes

Lesson 18: Beans

Lesson 19: Peas

Lesson 20: Tomatoes

Growing Gardens is definitely one of my favorite themes! Now if the weather would just cooperate!

More garden-themed activities:

Another month of fun is coming up in June! Don’t miss The Alphabet House.

I received curriculum from Mother Goose Time for honest and authentic stories resulting from my daily experiences using the curriculum. After using Mother Goose Time for about 10 years, I am pleased to promote quality educational learning experiences through play with Mother Goose Time! #sponsored #MGTblogger

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Pink Bubble Gum Slime

April 17, 2018 by Stacy 1 Comment

Loving this fun Pink Bubble Gum Slime of slime version – the texture and scent of bubble gum! Little hands won’t be able to get enough! It’s not edible, sadly, so please supervise while your kids are playing with it. The fluffy texture comes from Insta-Snow, a really fun science activity in itself. Add some bubble gum scent and coloring, and you’re all set! This Pink Bubble Gum Slime recipe will be one you will want to keep around for summer. School-age kids will love making and playing with it.

Pink Bubble Gum Slime

Supplies:

3 cups white glue
⅓ cup Insta-Snow Powder
⅔ cup Sta-Flo
⅔ cup water, hot
2 containers
Pink Craft Coloring
Bubble Gum Scent

Instructions:

Pour three cups of white glue into a container. Sta-Flo will be your activator. Slowly add the Sta-Flo one teaspoon at a time, mixing between each. If needed, you can use a little more or less to your liking.

Knead your slime. It will be sticky right now – that’s ok!

In a second bowl, pour the instant snow and add hot water. It will expand and ‘puff’. (Don’t be discouraged when you see the container of Insta-snow. It looks small, but it is plenty for several batches of slime! It really expands!)

Add the Insta-Snow to the white slime and knead well. I like to add in my snow in smaller batches kneading in between until you get the texture you want.

Add the coloring. We used to use food coloring, but recently we switched to these soap dyes.

Knead well.

Add a few drops of bubblegum scent.

Store in an airtight container.

MORE SENSORY PLAY IDEAS

Ocean Commotion Sand Foam Sensory Experience

April 14, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

I set out the shaving cream… and the blue sand… Everyone wanted to know “What are we going to do?” They just wanted their little hands on the cream and the sand! So that’s what we did! Sand Foam requires just two ingredients and cleans up easy but it’s all about how it feels! Sand foam makes a wonderful sensory experience for children for any time, but it fits in very well with our Ocean Commotion theme this month.

Ocean Commotion Sand Foam Sensory Experience

Just to be clear, this is not a slime or a dough. It’s simply shaving cream with sand. You can add a little sand or a lot of sand. Experiment! We used blue sand since that’s what I have and it works well with our Ocean Commotion theme.

Squirt shaving cream on a tray. Pour on a scoop of blue sand.

Getting the sand mixed into the shaving cream! Shaving cream alone is a wonderful sensory experience, but adding sand is interesting. How does it feel? Different kinds of sand will likely give you different results. Ours is very fine craft sand so it feels soft!

One of my little ones was not happy with this messy play. Usually, she doesn’t seem to mind but this time, nope, didn’t like it! That’s okay too, she’s learning. She didn’t want to be dirty. It can be stressful and be concerning to children when they get dirty even when that’s exactly what we were planning to do.

Maybe next time she will be interested in participating but not today. She watched her brother though and saw that he was having a good time.

But, we don’t tears! Everyone else was all smiles! It was a short but messy sensory play experience. We’ll do it again, it was fun.

The shaving cream and sand rinse away but I would advise wiping it off the trays (and children’s hands before washing) with a paper towel into the trash rather than putting it down the drain. A lot of sand can accumulate in the pipes otherwise! This would also make a good outdoor activity so you can rinse clean with a hose and leave the sand outdoors. The mess cleans off of clothing easily but you probably want to wear paint smocks.

I don’t use shaving cream often in my childcare because, honestly, licensing doesn’t like it. That’s because the can says, “Keep out of reach of children”. I am very diligent about following licensing rules (it doesn’t actually say in the regulations we can’t but licensing will say it isn’t allowed) but a little common sense goes a long way. Shaving cream has been used for years in early childhood and I choose to use it on occasion. If you are concerned about using shaving cream in the classroom:

READ THIS: the infamous “shaving cream” article
Don’t do the activity.
Use Cool Whip (edible but sticky).
Try White Foam Paint (I haven’t).

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Coral Collages and STEAM Station

April 14, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

I have some awesome Coral Collages and STEAM Station activities to share with you today from our Mother Goose Time Ocean Commotion theme. We loved these activities this week! It’s been so fun to discover the coral reef colors, explore plants and animals on the ocean floor and see what is inside an ocean cave.

Coral Collages and STEAM Station Ocean

One thing we noticed about coral reefs is how colorful they are! It’s kind of hard to describe a coral reef to a child when we can’t see them in our environment or interact with it, but the beautiful photos and videos on YouTube really help. I explained coral reefs as like an underwater garden. The coral is alive and other creatures hide and feed in there.

The bright colored cornstarch noodles and straws against the blue paper made a wonderful representation of a coral reef!

Cutting, fine motor skills, planning art, using visual and tactile senses, and squeezing glue were all involved in creating our coral collages.

It’s exciting for young children to use different art materials like the cornstarch noodles and straws! They always want more. I try to disperse the colors so everyone has a variety.

Coral Matching Card Game

Using familiar materials in a new way creates interest and encourages participation. This time, we sorted the matching cards into envelopes that I taped to the wall.

This makes good use of our space and allows the activity remain up for the day or two to give children an opportunity to revisit it and try again.

Coral Reefs STEAM Station

How about this super fun hands-on way to learn about coral reefs?! This STEAM Station uses simple materials you already have like:

Play Dough
Pipe cleaners
Buttons
Beads
Pasta or Cereal

I like divider trays like this to encourage each child to select colors and materials they are interested in using.

We used the coral photo as inspiration while creating our coral.

Even our littlest lady (2 years old) was able to participate – she watched me and then divided up her dough and started sticking in pipe cleaners. I showed her that it might be helpful to use a larger lump of play dough so the pipe cleaner had more to stick into, but she had the right idea!

Love this big colorful coral!

There all different kinds of coral that grow in the ocean so this one was interesting too. Love the colors!

Our amazing coral STEAM Station coral creations!

There are so many interesting and unique finds in the ocean.

Colorful coral

These can be taken apart and the materials can be used again.

Respect the Reef Block Activity

Recently we replaced our flooring which led to some reorganization of our space. Now I have room for a complete block center! This month we are learning about the meaning of being respectful.

We want to be respectful in the way we live and treat others. We also need to be respectful of our environment. Coral reefs are fragile and we don’t want to damage them because they are beautiful. Ocean animals live there and find food as well as safety in the coral reefs. Pollution and boats can damage the coral, ruining it for everyone. We want to be respectful. But what does respectful mean to a child? I explained it as “careful” and “kind”.

A lot of words like this do not mean much to young children but I believe this activity really was meaningful! First, we used our blocks to build a coral reef, topping it with our colorful blocks. Then we carefully walked around the block coral reef, being careful and kind to our friends and the block structure so it wouldn’t topple over. Of course, it became fun to jump and watch it fall, but everyone earned their “I am respectful.” bracelet.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the Coral Collages and STEAM Station as well as the other fabulous coral related activities as much as we did! More Ocean Commotion fun coming up!

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Ocean Plants

April 13, 2018 by Stacy Leave a Comment

This week, in our Ocean Commotion theme, we are wondering about the seascape which includes ocean water, the ocean floor, ocean caves, ocean plants and coral reefs. This post will focus on ocean plants.

Mother Goose Time sure goes above and beyond even with their teacher guides. I love the beautiful photos throughout the pages and the text that highlights what’s inside each one.

Below is the theme web for the Ocean Commotion activities we’ll be doing this month. Isn’t that little kiddo adorable?

Ocean Plants

Our Ocean Plants Daily Topic poster. We learned that ocean plants sometimes attach themselves to the ocean floor and other plants just float in the water.

Community Kelp Activity

Love, love, love these Community Challenges we participate in during circle time. The Community Kelp activity involved tearing (or cutting) green paper into strips to make seaweed, kelp or algae plans that grow in the ocean. The children worked together with my guidance, to tape together the strips of paper. Instead of making one long piece of kelp as suggested, we taped ours together. The suggested idea was to give the children prompts to “jump over”, “walk around” or “stand on” the kelp, but instead, we used it for a display in our room.

Here’s our “community kelp”! Most of the tape is on the back side. We may add more to this display later. I love the idea of working together on projects.

Seaweed Chips Recipe

I haven’t received my order of seaweed paper from Amazon yet, so we didn’t try this fun activity but plan to when it arrives! How fun is this, trying seaweed!

Ocean Zones Creative Art

We created ocean zones art using colored paper, green festoon for plants and ocean creature foam stickers. Plants live in the top layer of the ocean because the sun provides warmth and light for it to grow. Now, our artists used some liberties so not all the oceans perhaps show the correct order of ocean layers!