Here is a great way to work on fine motor skills. Picking up water beads with tongs. They have to squeeze the tongs just hard enough to pick up the bead, but not too hard or the bead will break apart. They really loved the challenge, although I did have some that just wanted to squish the beads. So, you kinda have to know your kids to know if this activity will be a good fit.
I had them transfer the beads from the tray into the small container. For even more of a challenge, you could have them transfer the beads into something with a smaller hole, such as an empty plastic water bottle.
This really took a lot of concentration. Sometimes children want to use both hands, so make sure you let them know if you want them to use only one hand or both.
What do you do to practice fine motor coordination with your kids?
Sorry all! I posted Thinky Linky Thursday this morning, but did have the link-up open. Well, now it is open, so please feel free to link up! Sorry again. Have a wonderful Friday!
For this activity, we placed laminated alphabet cards (printed side down) all around the ground on the soccer field.
Then, we passed out small foam letters to each child.
Then, the kids were off searching for their letter! Since they were face down, the children had to turn each one over until they found their match.
They had an awesome time! This is a great way to take your literacy outside and get some exercise in the process. Learning to read and write doesn't have to happen sitting at a table.
The kids did a great job and helped the others who were having a little bit of trouble. This can also be a good cooperative activity. Maybe you could pair the children up and give one the upper case and the other the lower case of the same letter. Please share your results if you try this activity!
As you may have noticed, I have concluded my Wishlist Wednesday feature. But, I miss guest bloggers, so I am working on coming up with something new for Tuesdays. You can help me decide. The 3 ideas I came up with are Tutorial Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesday, and Teaching Tip Tuesday. Please take a moment to vote in the poll at the top of my right sidebar.Your input will be very useful to me. Also, if you are interested in guest blogging when I get this all up and running, please e-mail me: cacheymama@gmail.com Thanks for your participation!
We just wrapped up our plant study that lasted about a month. Some of the topics we covered included:
Where can plants grow?
What are the parts of a plant?
Does a plant need soil to grow?
What do you need to do to plant a garden?
Here is my original post about our garden center. We have done so much since then! Here are 10 of our favorite activities.
1. Tracking the growth of our plants.
The different seeds we planted included pinto beans, sunflowers, marigolds, and forget-me-nots. As you can see, some starting growing much faster than others. Each day the children looked to see if their plant was coming up yet and we made a list.
Here is a closeup of what they looked like toward the end of the study when we sent them home.
2. Writing nature words.
3. Nature walk at our living habitat.
The children pointed out lots of things they saw growing. This was also one of the ways we investigated our study question: Where can plants grow?
They documented what they saw on mini clipboards.
We discussed different environments including wetlands.
4. We used the felt board to sort some laminated photos of plants growing in different types of habitats.
5. We talked about how fruits grow on plants and graphed our favorite one by writing names.
6. We did a chart of different questions relating to our previous experiences such as:
Have you ever made a bouquet of flowers?
Have you ever seen a plant growing in snow?
Have you ever been to a greenhouse?
Then we counted the amount of each answer to see which was the most and which was the least.
7. We filled our sensory table with water beads.
8. We filled our sensory table with sand and soil.
9. Gluing seeds in the center of a sunflower. I can't honestly take credit for this one, it's my nephew's artwork from preschool. But it is a great idea and if I would've seen this sooner, we would have done it as well.
10. We read some great picture books about plants and gardens which you will definitely want to check out if you are doing a plant study.
I bought all the items needed to make this gift at Dollar Tree. These bags came in a pack of 3 for $1! Which turned out perfect as my son has 3 teachers.
L painted the bags with a sponge brush and then I wrote each teacher's name with glitter glue.
Inside is a decorative notepad set and some mints in a million dollar wrapper. So, for the note I attached, I just wrote "You are worth a million dollars to me."
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week to all you wonderful teachers and parents!!!
quan·ti·fy [verb] to determine, indicate, or express the quantity of.
Good old quantifying, one of our friendly math objectives. How do we teach this to preschoolers? Well, we started out with having the children put a button on each flower (to go along with our plant study). As they put each one on, they counted it. So, not only are they counting, but they are counting objects (1:1 correspondence), quantifying (indicating the quantity), and representing the amount with a number symbol. And they just thought they were playing a game!
We had more of these cards all the way up to the number 20.
Then to reinforce the number symbols, we had the children use number sponges and paint to make prints on their paper. We asked them to identify the numbers as they were stamping. Here are some photos of what we did.
The kids had lots of fun with this and made a much smaller mess than I had anticipated!
Here are some books about numbers and counting (and one about comparing sizes: The Best Bug Parade) that might also be helpful.
So, I happened to be visiting over at Little Wonders' Days and found this cool linky of Summer Bucket Lists. I just knew I had to come up with one for me and L since we will both be off for the Summer and I have been trying to come up with so many things for us to do. Here is what I've got so far, but I'm sure I will add more as the Summer gets nearer.
Join the library's Summer Reading Program
Go to the lake (Lakeside)
Visit the zoo
Visit parks with gardens (Inniswood, Whetstone Park of Roses)
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