Spring Theme!

We had fun talking about spring last week in our preschool class.  Here is what we did for our art activities.

COFFEE FILTER FLOWERS:

Supplies: coffee filters, food coloring, eye droppers, newspaper, pipe cleaners

I filled some old muffin tins with food coloring and water.  The children used eye droppers to suck up the color and then drop it onto the coffee filter. Make sure to have one eye dropper for each color so the colors don't get mixed.  The kids love using the eye droppers, so have lots of coffee filters available for them to decorate! 

Also make sure to have lot of news paper and also a paper towel under the coffee filter. The kids sometimes squeeze out too much color and if you do not have enough layers to soak it up, it may stain your table.  So the more paper the better!  I had to put new papers for each coffee filter made.

Below is what one of the filters will look like when completed. It is pastel in color, if you want brighter colors, just use more food coloring and less water.

When the filter is dry (it doesn't take long) just fold it up together, and twist the bottom.  I cut pipe cleaners in half to use for the stems.  Just twist the top of the pipe cleaner around the bottom of the twisted coffee filter.  It turns into a great flower.  The kids each took home 3 and I am told they look great as a boquet in a vase.

BUTTERFLIES:

Another great spring activity is making butterflies.  We read the story - The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and then we made these easy and beautiful butterflies:

First take a white piece of construction paper and have the kids squirt paint all over one side.  The more paint, the better.

 

Next I folded the paper in half and let the children press, press, press down on the paper which makes the paint smear all around.

Once the kids feel like they have pressed the paint enough, open up the paper and...

 A beautiful symmetrical painting.  Once it dried I folded it back up and cut around the outside in the shape of a butterfly.  The kids were so excited to fly their butterflies around I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!  Oh well, you get the idea.

Community Helpers

There is so much you can do with the theme of Community Helpers.  Here are a couple things that we did last week in our preschool class:

FIREFIGHTERS:

BOOKS:
Fire Safety by Lisa Herington
Fire, Fire said Mrs. McGuire by Bill Martin Jr.
Fire Fighter! by Angela Royston

SONGS/MOVEMENT:
Hurry, Hurry!
(act it out as sing it)
hurry, hurry, drive the firetruck
hurry, hurry, drive the firetruck
hurry, hurry, drive the firetruck
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

hurry, hurry, climb the ladder
hurry, hurry, climb the ladder
hurry, hurry, climb the ladder
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

hurry, hurry, squirt the water
hurry, hurry, squirt the water
hurry, hurry, squirt the water
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

(you can add, ..put on your helmet, slide down the poll, climb on the truck, etc.)


Talk about fire safety, especially being careful around the house in the kitchen and near the fireplaces.  We talked about how to stop, drop, and roll if needed. 

ART:
We did some good old finger painting with red and yellow paint to create flames.  I had the children do it on a plain piece of white paper and we cut it out to look like flames when it dried.  One of the children really loved the feel of the paint and kept painting until the paper actually ripped.  But we found the ripped paper looked like great flames!  The "flames" were glued onto black construction paper (it may look purple in the picture, but it was black!).

This is the one that ripped

The artist of this one wanted it cut instead of ripped

 

 

BAKERS:

Another community helper we talked about was bakers! 

 

BOOKS:

Little Bitty Baker by Leslie Muir

 

BAKING ACTIVITY:

We read the book about a baker who had no time to make their own birthday cake.  Then we baked muffins as gifts for our families.  The kids loved cracking eggs, pouring in ingredients and stirring.

 

ART:
We made chef's hats.  I took a long strip of white poster board, measured to their head.  They decorated it with markers.  Then I stapled a white plastic bag (from the grocery store) around on the inside of the circle strip.  It creates a natural "poof" and the kids loved them. This was a nice simple art activity to go along side the baking.

 



Healthy Foods, Healthy Bodies

Healthy Foods, Healthy Bodies

This week I talked with the kids about making good food choices so that our bodies stay strong and healthy.

SONG:

A fun song/game at circle time is "Betty Balloon".  I learned this from a teacher years ago and am not sure if I have the correct name for the song, but for me I call it Betty Balloon.  I have a pink balloon that I drew a face on with sharpy.  This is Betty.  Then I sing a song to the children about her (they sing along too, it is very catchy).

Sitting on the park bench, 

chewing my bubblegum (pretend to chew gum loudly),

playing with my yoyo (pretend to release yoyo down and up with sound affect)

when along comes Betty Balloon.

(use balloon like a puppet)

Betty says "hello, I'm so hungry, do you have anything good to eat?"

I don't, but lets ask my friends...

(Now this is when I ask one of the children if they have any food to share. Whatever the child says talk about if it is a food that will give Betty lots of good energy and help her grow, then blow a little air into Betty to represent the food she has eaten.  Have Betty "run off" behind your back.  Then start from the beginning of the song and continue to sing the song again and again until each child has gotten a turn to give Betty some food.  Fill her up just a little each time so that she will be almost full when you get to the last child.  After the last child Betty will need to "burp", you let go of the balloon it flies over the children's heads and everyone gets a big laugh)

BOOKS:

The Gulps - by Rosemary Wells and Marc Brown

Eating the Alphabet - by Lois Ehlert

ART:

We made a watermelon shaker.  A neat art project and the kids can use it for a musical instrument when they are done.  Each child painted red in the middle circle of their paper plate and then green around the outside.  

When it dried we turned it over and place dried kidney beans in the middle (you don't need too many and any dried bean will do, just not too small. If it is too small they may fall out).

 Fold the plate in half over the dried beans and staple shut (teacher should do the stapling, but older children may be able to with assistance).

 Then have the children put the black "seeds" on the red part of the watermelon.  Usually I have them dip their finger in black paint and use their fingerprint dot as the seeds (the top one in the picture below).  But I was out of black paint the day we made these so we used black marker.  I liked the creativity this allowed.  Some children used the marker in an up and down up and down method to created dots.  Other children wanted large seeds and drew larger circles.

I think I like the marker method better as I always enjoy the children getting the most creativity they can out of their art projects!

MORE ART:
Another thing we talked about was keeping our teeth healthy and clean.  We took a picture of a mouth with teeth (done on cream colored paper so the teeth look dirty) and they used toothbrushes dipped in white paint to scrub and brush them until they were "clean" and white!  Easy and fun project that gives them good practice at using small circles on each tooth when they brush.

 

TABLE TOYS:

Fruit and Vegetable sorters:  Talk about the difference between vegetables and fruit (fruits have seeds, so tomatoes are fruits!) and have lots of pictures of them cut out (or draw some and cut them out).  Have them sort onto 2 different paper plates, one says Vegetables and has different examples drawn on it already, and the other says Fruits also with examples drawn on it.