Our classroom became the firehouse and the children were firefighters and rescue personnel. We, the teachers , were the poor victims in need of rescue. Art smocks became fire coats and backpacks became air tanks. They used pool noodles as fire hoses and rest mats as their bunks.  They even took the play into the housekeeping area to serve meals for the firefighters.

It is so much fun to watch children use their imaginations and create their own play setting. As teachers we sometimes lose track of how important this type of play is to children. Their imagination needs to be encouraged as it develops so that they can grow into thinking individuals that can problem solve and think outside of the box.

So as teachers we need to look at the ordinary things we bring into the classroom and not only allow but encourage the children to look at those ordinary things in a new way and then let them take control of their play. You won’t be sorry but you will probably be amazed at what they can come up with.

Just be ready to join in the search for something just right to be whatever their little imaginations have dreamed up.

What imaginative play have your students/children come up with recently?

As spring time unfolds and the weather warms we all want to get outside. If you are the parent of a preschooler , or any aged child, you can take the learning right outside in the yard or the park or anywhere you happen to be. Being observant is a skill that is important to develop in young children. You don’t need to be prepared with a lesson or an activity. Just go outside and see what you can see.

The younger your child is the closer to the ground you will be searching for something to observe. Start by talking about what you see, hear and smell. Find something to focus on and talk about what you see. Describe in detail what you are looking at and then ask your child to look for the same things . If you see a flower ready to bud, talk about the color and what is going to happen next. Ask them to find more, even if its right next to the one you found. Watching a worm inch through the dirt can be fascinating when done through the eyes of a child. Don’t forget to look up too. You can watch the clouds, birds in the sky and squirrels in the trees.

Collections are fun for children to start and they give them a lot of learning opportunities. Starting to collect rocks is free and easy. When the collection gets big enough the play can revolve around counting and sorting the rocks by size or color. They can plan a way to display their rocks, they can label their rocks and use their early writing skills (aka sribble writing!)

Using a camera is a great way to bring the discoveries home to continue studying. Digital cameras make it so easy to grab an image and use it in many different ways. Include your child in the picture to make it more personal for them. Create a nature album with your photos and write captions for the pictures. It could become a favorite bedtime book.

Interacting with nature can be a lot of fun too with a good dose of learning to boot. In the spring, birds are getting ready to build their nests so gather some yarn, string or dryer lint and place it out in the yard in a bush or tree limb. When the birds find it they will gather what they need to line their nest. It is always fun to watch animals eat, so find some place to place a feeder . My favorite is planting seeds. I love to grow vegetables and flowers. While I have a big garden you can grow things in a very small space, even a big flower pot. Watching a tiny seed grow into a beautiful flower is so much fun and watching the delight on your child’s face as their flowers blooms is even better.

As you may have gathered I am a nature lover. My own children spent many wonderful hours on walks in the woods near our house. We have observed deer and rabbits, wild turkeys and foxes, baby skunks and raccoon families. They had collections of rocks, pine cones, feathers and more. Now they are teaching their own children to love nature.

All these activities are learning experiences. They expand vocabulary and develop a sense of curiosity in the child. They improve observation skills which can really be helpful in school.

I saved the best part for last. You are spending precious time with your child. Some day down the road the memory of a trip to McDonald’s will fade but they will long remember the time you spent with them getting their hands dirty in the soil or grass stains on their knees from following some critter through the grass. It is spring get out there and enjoy it with your children.

-Miss Margaret

Books of interest:

Don’t they look cool?  These are sooo easy to make and even better…CHEAP to make!  We all have boxes lying around or know someone who does.  All you need to start is a few boxes.  Get an arrangement of different sizes and shapes.  You don’t need to go buying boxes, but use what you have or will have (from online shopping, shoe boxes, paper ream boxes, etc.).  Regular items that you may have around the house that you can save the box after use would be cereal boxes, rice boxes, sweetener boxes, paperclip boxes, etc.  If it’s made of cardboard and can be closed on all sides, it’s fair game! You also don’t need a lot, you are going to build your collection of blocks over time.  The boxes don’t need to be overly sturdy but you don’t want something that is easily squeezed either.

The next item you will need is tape.  If you have a box with a side that can be opened, just add a little tape to it so it will stay closed.  The final item you will need is contact paper.  We used wood grain contact paper so we could make the blocks look like wood blocks.  We got ours from Walmart, but Amazon has so many more choices here. We even used some stone colored contact paper to look like we had stones.

After the boxes are taped, all you do is wrap them in the contact paper of your choice.  That’s it…sooooo simple!  Your end result is LOTs of fun and creative play!

And when a block gets too dented, you just get rid of it and add another.

The kids enjoyed a variety of art activities.  We learned that the simplest of art projects were the most liked!

For the above activity, we put out brown and green paint and told the children to make a coconut tree from the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.  We love to see the variability in the abilities of the different ages.  This next activity we clipped paper to both sides of the easel and left strips of dot stickers in the tray.  We gave the children no directions, just that they could put as many stickers on the paper wherever they would like.

Notice the stickers in the corner in the picture on the right?  The little boy who made who placed those stickers said they were his Chicka Chicka Boom Boom trees.

During circle, we explored a real coconut and charted what we saw, what it felt like, sounded like and smelt like.  After we played a modification of the games Hot Potato and musical chairs.

The kids passed around the coconut while music played.

When the music stopped, the child holding the coconut shook it hear what was inside.

The next day, we opened the coconut to find out what was inside and to taste the coconut.

We went outside since we forgot a hammer and had to drop it on the ground to open it.

First we drained all the milk…which the kids were shocked when we told them it was coconut milk…and it wasn’t white!

After it was open, we went inside for snack.  We had a ‘regular’ snack, but each kid tried a piece of coconut and took a sip of coconut milk.  Even our pickiest eater tried!  Only one child liked not only the coconut, but also the milk.

For snack one day we made coconut trees.  This was a great following directions activity while eating a nutritious snack.

We lined up the fruits in bowls and the kids came through in assembly line fashion to make their ‘trees.’  We used the following visual supports:

We weren’t shocked that everyone loved the bananas and oranges as we have these often, but we were pleasantly surprised at how many children tried and liked the kiwi.

We really had a great time with this theme.  We hope you will like our ideas and incorporate them the next time you do Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.

Here are some book suggestions to go along with the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Theme:

This is such a simple activity that takes all of 10 minutes to make and the kids will just love!  All you do is take some ziplock bags, put a little paint inside and use duck tape on the top.  Give the kids a Q-tip and let them draw, write letters, numbers, shapes, let their imaginations go wild.

This is a great wait to target writing skills without using paper and pencils.

We played a game that we made with templates from the Making Learning Fun website.  The directions had ‘boom’ cards which, when drawn, the child lost a turn.  We took these out as they were already waiting long enough for a turn.

We simply printed out the number cards in color and laminated and printed out one number tree for each child.

We started with a nice neat pile with the numbers upside down, but they didn’t stay that way long.  Each child had a turn  picking a number, they told us what it was than used a bingo dauber to mark it on their tree.  You can see my notes in the above picture-we also used this as an assessment and noted which children could label which numbers, who could match numbers, etc.

The kids seemed to really enjoy this game and we were quite surprised how long they played it for.  We will definitely do games like this again!

Unfortunately we only remembered to take one picture of this next activity, also from the Making Learning Fun website.  It was a great alternative from typical pattern blocks and something we are keeping for their portfolios.  We print the tree template from the MLF website as well as the patterns (we printed on color paper).  The MLF site has this as a game, but we made it an individual activity but cutting the shapes and putting them in a cup for each child.  We were so glad we did this as we did a similar activity in the beginning of the year and it was great to see how far each child has come!

We are always assessing children, but since we will be doing parent-teacher conferences in May, we wanted to do some more activities that are for assessment where we make note of how the kids do and where we can add items to portfolios.  This next activity we did with each child individually.

Since it was Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Week we did ‘coconut’ sorting.  We cut out green and brown ‘coconuts’, each in 3 different sizes.  We used these to assess the ability to sort by color and size.

Here are some book suggestions to go along with the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Theme:

We are teachers who believe there is no need to use worksheets to learn until about first grade.  Here is a great article on this very topic.  Young children need fun, hands on activities to learn, and that is what we do here at Bright Starts.  It saddens us that so many teachers think their job is to spend hours sifting through books and standing at the copy machine while they could be making fun learning experiences that can be used over and over again. Sure, it takes time to make some of these activities, but many can be used repeatedly over years.  Here are some examples:

Shapes

• Have children lay down in different shapes like circle, square and triangle-also targets motor planning and problem solving
• Use Bendaroos to make shapes instead of having children draw them-also targets fine motor skills
• Laminate shape printouts and use as playdoh mats-also sensory play

• Shape puzzles-also targets fine motor skills and problem solving

Colors

• Paint, let kids mix colors together to make new colors-also targets cause and effect, sensory and science skills
• Play matching games such as matching the paintbrush to the same color paint can-also targets visual processing
• Pattern with color blocks, stickers or anything color-also targets fine motor skills, problem solving

• Use tongs to sort color pom-poms-also targets fine motor skills, motor planning

Numbers

• Trace numbers made out of sandpaper, dried glue, yarn or anything else tactile with your finger.  Use the same items to make number rubbings.-also targets sensory, science and possibly literacy depending on how done
• Count objects to match a corresponding magnet number.-enforces that numbers have meaning
• During regular play (i.e. block building, baby dolls, etc.) ask for X amount of objects-i.e. Can I have 2 shoes for my doll?  Can you put 3 blocks on my tower?  I have 4 pom-poms but need 6 for my picture, how many more do I need?-also targets cooperative play
• Put paint in Ziploc’s and tape shut.  Use a Q-tip to practice writing numbers.-also targets writing, sensory

It’s Dr. Seuss week so this week is filled with fun and imagination.  The books we plan on reading this week are The Cat in the Hat, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham and The Foot Book.  So far, the kids are having a great time listening for all the rhyming words in these great stories.  The kids have had so much fun with the activities we have been doing that we haven’t had time to finish all that we planned.  We anticipated this though and made Friday our Dr. Seuss’s brithday party day with all the leftover activities from the week.

Back to Monday…

We had a great time during centers:

One center had Dr. Seuss hat patterning. 

We set out laminated red hats and laminated strips of paper.  Some kids were thrown off by the fact there were other colors besides just red and white while others used all the colors in their patterns.

For literacy, we worked on the letter “C”.  We turned this into a literacy/fine motor activity as the children cut red strips of paper and glued them onto their letters.

During circle, we played a fun game that matched our multi-level group perfectly:

Our younger kiddos counted the hats on the hat cards

while our ‘middle’ level kiddos matched the number cards to the hat cards.

And our older kiddos matched word cards to the number and hat cards.  They had fun!

During goodbye circle, we worked on identifying, writing and learning the sound of the letter “C”.  We adapted this idea from Teach Preschool, one of our favorite blogs.  We get many of our activities from this blog.

We had each child circle a letter “c” .  They only had “c’s” to choose from.  Since this was a letter introduction, this helps everyone to feel successful and to gain extra exposure to the letter.  Next, the children trace inside the bubble letter and they attempt to write one on their own.  After, we came up with words that start with the letter ‘C’.  We didn’t have the words pre-written so that the older kiddos could work on this skill. We were pleasantly surprised when one of our youngest kiddos came up with the last word!

I hope to play catch-up tomorrow and do two posts…Dr. Seuss day 2 and Dr. Seuss day 3!

Gak…oh what fun!  I’m actually serious, it looks icky, but it’s a lot of fun and GREAT for those kiddos with sensory needs!  This is very easy to make.  We mad each child their own and they took it home in a plastic baggy.  Here is what you will need:

• 4 oz. glue
• 1 tsp. Borax
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup warm water
• food coloring (optional)

Mix 1 tsp. Borax in 1 cup warm water in one container.  In a separate container, mix 4 oz. glue with 1/2 cup water.  You can add a couple drops of food coloring if you wish.  If you don’t have food coloring, you can use a drop or two of tempera paint. Combine the water and Borax mixture into the water and glue mixture.  The texture will change instantly.  Let kids put their hands in now and mix it together.

Mix till it’s the consistency you want and take out of the container.  You can dump any liquid that is left.  Kids will enjoy watching the gak flatten out on the table, hiding and finding little objects in the gak and making different prints with it.  Seal in a bag to save for later or send home.

Here is what you will need:

• paint
• heart cut outs (2 per child)
• strings of yarn

First, dip yarn strings in paint.  Use a paintbrush or something else to make sure the string gets full of paint.  Leave ends paint free.

Next, have kid place a string for each color they desire on the heart cut out.  They can zig-zag the string, pile it up all in one spot, however they choose.  Just make sure that an end of each string is sticking out as it will need to be pulled at the end.

The final step is the cool part.  Take a second heart and place on top of the first, with the strings in between.  Gently place your hand on top so not to squish too hard but so the paper won’t move.  Have the child pull out each string at one time.  This will be your final result:

We sent one heart home and used the other to decorate our window.