Tin Foil Art

One of my personal goals this year was to put out more invitations - especially in the Art Center.  I am not an "Artsy" person myself, so this is a personal struggle for me.  I love that I have Pinterest to help me out, though, because I think otherwise I may be lost . . .  So this idea involved Tin Foil.  It also had some wonderful small motor practicing involved as well.  Learning how to cut and learning how to glue - two fundamentals of preschool! 
One thing that I am finding about the Art Center - and all invitations in general - is that the concept is not that hard and less time consuming than the traditional way of teaching.  I just needed to make the frames.  I cut the tinfoil a little bit smaller than the construction paper (of each child's individual choice) and then stapled them together. 

It was the children's job to come up with what they would put on the tinfoil.  The majority cut out shapes from other construction paper and then finished off their masterpieces with glitter.  A simple project, but boy did they look pretty!

Counting Sticks

In the fall it's always fun to go on walks around your house and collect leaves, sticks, pincones and any other nature that you can.  You can make some beautiful artwork out of it.  We did this with our preschoolers again this year and they made some wonderful collages.  The children did not use all of their items for the collages, so there were some sticks left over.  I bought some paper cups from the Dollar Store and wrote the numerals 1-5 on each of the cups.  I put the extra sticks with the cups on the table and let the children figure out what to do.  Some of the children looked at the numeral and could recognize and count out the sticks.  Others would ask myself or their friends what the numeral was - and THEN count out the sticks.  And other would just put the sticks in the cups until it would fall over.  A little bit of physics/science learning to see just how much weight a cup can take before it topples over.

Drinking Station

Water.  It's so important, yet not a lot of schools have water fountains in the classrooms - or even nearby!  If it were possible, all of our children would have water bottles that they could carry around with them throughout the day, but that's not possible because of spills (you KNOW they would open them) and sharing of the dreaded germs.
So this year, I wanted the children to be able to get the water themselves and feel that they could have some independence.  You know I love independence!
So we went to the Dollar Store and bought a simple tray, two jugs and we already had some small cups at the school.  Simple.  We refill the water jugs (only about 1/4 full) every morning and the kids can help themselves when they are thirsty.
Are there spills?  YEP!
Do the teachers clean it up?  NOPE!
Do the children learn to be independent in getting their own water AND cleaning up spills?  YOU BET!

Classroom Calendar

We have always had a classroom calendar in our preschool room, the traditional one that is in every single preschool, Kindergarten and Grade One classroom . . .
In our preschool there is very little plastic and plenty of kid made, nature found creations.  Our calendar shouldn't be any different.  This is where I found the original idea.  So one day during playtime, I got some of our little writers to help me make the new calendar.  I had two helpers and they wrote out all 31 numbers, 12 months and drew some pictures for some very special days that would happen throughout the months (music, field trips, art, swim days, etc.)  They were very proud of their creation, as was I!  They did such a great job helping fill our classroom space with their little hands.

Name Cards

We have a Light Center in our room and it is used for many things.  There are blocks that are meant specifically for the Light Table, but it is also located right beside our writing center and the kids often take paper and pencils to the light table so that they can trace.

We have always made name cards, but this year we tried something a little bit different.  I had found a few ideas on Pinterest about name cards.  When I went back to the link, they again just went to the home page and I don't have time to look.  Here is the one link that I DID find.

There were three different pins that I loved for different reasons:
1. They were smaller than our original ones.
2. They have the children's pictures on them so the children know which name is theirs.
3. An awesome way to store them.

What do you need?
Index Cards (I used blank ones, no lines)
Marker
Individual Pictures of the children
Laminater
Photo Album (Dollar Store!)

On each card we put the child's name, their picture and their symbol.  In our classroom, each child has a symbol.  This symbol helps them to learn how to recognize their name.  Every time our three year olds see their symbol, they know that THAT piece of artwork is theirs.  Or THAT's their locker.  We label everything with their symbols.  By the end of the child's time with us - when they are four or five - they now recognize the letters that ALWAYS come before their symbol as their name.  It is a great learning tool and it also helps the children to recognize their friends names as well.

Because of privacy, I didn't want to share any of our name cards, but here is a pretend one for you to take a look at . . .

Once the cards are finished, we put them in the laminater and then popped them into the photo albums.  Voila!

Rainbow Rice

There are two parts to this post.  It's all about introducing in small steps with 3 & 4 year olds.  This was my end goal (of course found on Pinterest) - but how would I get there?

Step One: Get the rice from a Wholesale Club of some kind.  Cheapest and easiest.  Don't worry about quality, you won't be eating it, it's just to play with.

Step Two: Colour the rice.  We used baggies.  Put in a 3 or 4 cups of rice, added a few squirts of hand sanitizer and a few drops of food colouring.  Mix it all together.  Depending on how dark you want the rice, you will have to play with the amounts. Then we dumped it out to dry.  It doesn't take that long to dry.

Step Three: Let the children play with JUST the rice for a few days (or weeks).  The kids loved playing with the rice.  We gave them small shovels, strainers and we made some larger funnels out of construction paper.

Step Four: Add the letters.  We actually had to add more rice to the table because A. Lots was dropped on the ground in two weeks and B. We wanted the letters to be hidden and LITTLE harder to find.  I used the ABC Foam Puzzles that we have in the classroom and just put the puzzle base on the table beside the rice table.  My daughters Kindergarten class also had this in their classroom and she put the rice table right beside the whiteboard and used magnetic ABC's to match under the hand written ABC's on the whiteboard.  Two different possibilities!

New Listening Center

In the four years that I have been in this classroom, we never had a listening center.  We borrowed a listening center from another classroom in my first year, but we only had it for a couple months.  We needed something high tech - yet cheap - and we knew that was going to be tough.
I found this idea on Pinterest and thought it would be a great starting point.  It was small . . . but would it be cheap?
An I-POD Touch is not cheap.  It's not horribly expensive, either, but it was too much money for me.  So I gave my husband a mission.  I told him what I wanted and told him to flyer shop for me (he's great at saving pennies!) . . . and he completed his mission wonderfully!
XSCargo had everything we needed!  An MP3 Player that had two head set outputs and two headsets . . . for just around $50! 

Where do you find the stories?  Online!  There are stories to download everywhere online, I actually downloaded a compilation of some kind with about 300 stories on it.  But we only put between 3-5 stories on the MP3 player so that it's easier for the kids.  We find the books that go with those stories, put them in the box and the kids now have a listening center that's portable and fun!

Felt Story Storage

So now we have these two new fancy dancy felt boards - we need somewhere to store all of the felt stories.  Previously, they have been stored in baggies and stuffed into a rubbermaid.  Problem is, I never remember they are in there and they are hard and a hassle to get to.  But I LOVED this idea!

It's really simple.  I tried the baggie method that she talks about and just put duck tape on the baggies so that they wouldn't rip as easily.  Then I hole punched them and put them in the binder.  We have two binders: 1. Seasonal Rhymes  2. Stories and Nursery Rhymes
In each baggie I put the felt pieces and the story/words that go WITH that story just in case I'm having a rough day and don't remember the words to Itsy Bitsy Spider!

The other option that she talks about in the blog post is putting the felt pieces into page protectors.  When my baggies start ripping, I will try that method as well, but I do see problems arising when the felt pieces start falling out . . .

Felt Boards

Storytime!  I love story time, but reading a story every day can/will get really boring.  So I like to switch it up!  Depending on the day, I choose one or two of the following activities.  Songs, reading a story, doing nursery rhymes, felt board stories/rhymes and youtube storytime (there will be a post on that later!).
We have some really old felt stories in our classroom, but they work for now until I can find the time to make some new ones.  Storage was one problem that I had but the boards . . . they were another one.  We had two boards.  They were just felt glue gunned onto cardboard.  They were starting to bend and they just were not sturdy. 
This summer when we were on holidays, one of the places that we went was a Children's Museum.  That was where I got the idea for a new felt board.

What you need:
a large poster frame (Walmart)
felt (I reused the fabric from our current felt boards)

1. Take the glass/plastic out of the frame.  DON'T THROW IT IN THE GARBAGE!  REUSE IT!  THEY MAKE FOR A GREAT PAINTING SURFACE AT THE EASLE!

2. Measure and cut the felt so that it fits nicely on the backing of the frame.

3. Use a glue gun and glue the felt onto the backing of the frame.  Once on, you may have to trim it again because the felt will be too thick and it won't allow the backing to fit into the frame properly.

3. VOILA!  You now have a sturdy felt board that will stand the test of time!

I made two for our classroom.  One for the teacher to use and then I put the other one on the wall so that the kids can make up stories and use their own felt board.  They LOVE it!

Glitter Dispensers

In our classroom - as every other classroom/daycare SHOULD - we have an Art Center.  We focus on open ended art projects, not a "I'll cut this circle out for you and then show you where to glue it so that it looks like all the others when I hang it on your wall." 
However, with open-ended art projects comes a lot of mess.  This year we wanted to allow the children to have more choices when being the little artists that they are.  Glitter is something that they LOVE to use, but more often than not it is spilt all over the table and the bottle you thought would last for the year has been used up in one day.  Sorry, one hour.
I found this idea on Pinterest and I thought we could give it a try.  When I went back to find the original link, I was just brought to a home page.  I tried using the search engine, but I didn't have much time.  So back to my story . . . We went to the Dollar Store and bought 4 salt shakers and then filled them each with a different colour of glitter (yes, one is empty in the picture.  Red was back ordered).  At first I was scared that the glitter wouldn't come out.  But it comes out perfect.  Not a lot, so that kids have to be patient, but it's the perfect amount that it does not make a big mess.  I haven't had to clean up glitter once yet and they have been using these for a couple months now.  They are even learning how to problem solve because they have found it easier to get out the glitter if you tap on the bottom of the shaker while you shake out the glitter.  Smart cookies!