i love to honor the birthday child in the classroom.
we bring the knitted cupcakes from katie to the housekeeping corner and bring out the birthday puzzle to the puzzle corner.
at circle time before snack, we make a little cake out of playdoh (and joke that if they don’t watch out their mamas and daddies might eat it) and figure out how many candles to put in. according to the rules of our building, though, we can’t light the candles til we get home.
happy birthday, dear ones…
so during animal week we make tails. i could have thrifted knee high pantyhose, but that gave me the willies. and at 49 cents a pair, i was okay with it…plus, i got 18 little plastic egg holders too!
i have never had to remind kids as often as this year to keep them in the back…we’re trying to show people that we are animals, so let’s be realistic…if the tail is in the front people won’t know for sure what we are doing…hmmmm, how can i help you keep that from moving to the front?
wow.
oh, my remaining 12 year old self is giggling on the inside…rejoicing in the humor of our creation…after all, we are funny looking creatures. so if you, too, want to have a tail, grab yourself the needed supplies and stuff away.
oh, good times in the ‘room…
i love to offer preschoolers real items to use (the montessori influence). starting early in the school year, i bring out phone books for preschoolers to use as they like. when i use current phone books, we can usually find each preschooler’s family…what fun that is.
and yes, the fuzzy blue hat will make this work feel even more important.
using some thrifted rope-like-crinkly paper (i’m sure there is a name for it), we unrolled and unrolled to make a classroom-size tornado. it took a couple of tries to make it strong enough for little ones to handle, but we got it. hot glue and a couple of old rulers to wrap the top around made it work.
with this tornado hanging in our block corner, there were many farms, zoos, cities and spaceships that had to escape the powerful wind.
this is a great example of when the process is more important than the product…though the product was spectacular. instead of trying to “make a flower” or “make a cloud” we focused on using as much paint as we wanted…most preschoolers had the clear goal of no white showing.
we could also make these different shades of yellow, egg shape, shamrock shape, leaf shape, heart shape, apple shape, dinosaur shape, beach ball shape, umbrella shape, the landscape for a paper zebra to be glued on to, pumpkin shape, a bunch of grapes shape, igloo shape, jewel shape, kite shape, nut shape, octagon shape, violet shape, whale shape, x shape, money shape, quilt block shape, tree top shape, rain drop shape, etc. : )
we used industrial-size coffee filters (and i mean industrial: these things are at least 18″ in diameter) cut in cloud/flower shape, folded 4 times in pie fashion, then used plastic pipettes and food coloring containers to drop liquid watercolor paint.
oh, the excitement would brew as a preschoolers suspected they put enough paint on to have no white showing when they unfolded it…and if not, we could easily refold and add more paint.
these were sopping wet, but dried easily when we draped them over chairs, gates, etc.
newcreationpreschool.com 