W is for Watercolor

I tried out a tip from Pinterest for the letter W: diy watercolors. I'd noticed in our supply room that we had a huge bucket of markers just sitting in the corner, waiting to be thrown out. When it came time to plan for our "W" week, I was scrolling through Pinterest for ideas and came across Artopotamus' (via Apartment Therapy) idea to use dried out markers to make watercolors. We had the usual watercolor trays but as usual, the colors were all mixed together and there was more brown than anything else. So I grabbed a few handfuls of old markers, put them top-down in plastic cups filled with water, and let them sit for an hour.

By the time we were ready for our "W is for watercolor" page, the water had become really bright-- except for red, which I forgot to fill up, so it was more pink than red. Once dry, the colors were really pretty pastels. It worked so well that after the W page, I let them create another watercolor. But first I gave them white crayons and let them draw whatever they wanted on the page. Then we used the watercolors to bring out the "magic" drawing, which they thoroughly enjoyed. The kids had fun layering the colors and making oranges, greens, and purples. Surprisingly, no one ended up with an entirely brown picture!

Mind Your P's and Q's

I love teaching preschool. It's so easy to create steal from Pinterest activities to go with each letter/ holiday/season/theme you could think of. Even better, learning is still fun when you're three and four. We spend entire afternoons outside on the playground, running, climbing, and searching for bugs. And there's no guilt in that-- it's the best learning environment around.

Last week was the letter P. We were a happy bunch of paper plate pirates (a la Pinterest) minus this guy, who refused to draw a smile, saying "Piwates aw mad guys!"

This week was the letter Q, which is trickier than P. We made crowns since Q is for Queen, but the boys were kings 'cause only girls are queens (and princesses), but 'queen' is what starts with 'Q'...so we'll see if any of them actually understood this one.

Next week, rainbows and rabbits! Much easier to explain than gender-specific royal titles. ;)

Love According to Preschoolers

Every month, I find some sort of themed handprint or fingerprint art to send home to parents. This month, of course, was Valentine-related.

We read a book about all the reasons a little boy loves his mom and then started thinking about why we love our moms and dads. 

Some of the answers:

I love my mommy because she eats with me.

I love my daddy because he plays Star Wars with me.

I love my mommy because she does homework with me.

I love my daddy because he rides bikes with me.

I love my mommy because she buys umbrellas. 

This Valentine was probably my favorite. I snickered while writing it, wondering what Mom and Dad would think. 

(In case you can't read it: "Sophia loves Mommy because she's the best hotdog maker. She loves Daddy because he's a good exerciser.")

Cute, no?


Happy Valentine's Day!

Christmas in the Classroom

One of my favorite things about teaching young kids is the sheer amount of themed projects you can do around the holidays. Literally every concept you could teach can be tied into Christmas in some shape or form. I love it!

Here's a glimpse of some of the Christmas projects we did throughout the month of December, all from Pinterest (of course).

Handprint Christmas trees given to moms and dads. Every month I try to do something with handprints or fingerprints as mementos for parents.

from here

A felt Christmas tree and felt shape ornaments to decorate over and over again. The tree was a big hit all month.

from here

I found this super cute font at dafont.com and had to use it for name practice. I cut out the ornaments and the kids worked hard to color them and spell their names.

ornament font found here

I found the motherload of all printable units from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Twenty plus pages of prewriting practice, coloring, sequencing shapes, and so on. I promptly printed the packet out and slipped them into our "marker pages" for handwriting practice.

 from here

We also did candy cane patterns, colored nativity scenes and read plenty of Christmas books. One of my favorite Santa + Jesus books is Santa's Favorite Story by Hisako Aoki and Ivan Gantschev.

I've gotten quite a few non-Christmas activities from Pinterest as well, and all of them have been pretty popular.

These are what the kids call our "counting flags". They're not the most popular activity, but the kids come over, play with them for a few minutes, then leave for something else. (Since they're only three, I rarely make them do an activity once their interest wanes. Learning should still be fun at this age.) They all quickly picked up that zero means "nothing" all thanks to the flags. I told them its a trick number because it doesn't get any beads.

 from here

This next counting activity is another one from Confessions of a Homeschooler. Its very simple-- place one object on each square, then count.

from here

This clothespin ABC activity has been used for the longest amount of time and is still going strong. I don't bring out each activity every day, but the clothespins appear pretty consistently. We have name cards that all the kids use and this ABC strip for the ones who know more of their letters and are more willing to sit still for longer. :)

 from here

 Last but not least, I've gotten a few ideas for file folder games. I had a ton of paint strips at home that I've accumulated from various projects, so I cut them up and attached velcro and a color matching activity was born.

 idea from here

I've got plenty more activities pinned and waiting for January, most around the theme of 'snow'. We'll be lucky if we get any actual snow, but at least inside we'll be seeing plenty! 

See my Pinterest board here.