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r is for rice bottles

my kids were glad to help drink 26 bottles of gatorade and vitamin water so i could have wider-mouth bottles.

the preschoolers help me fill bottles with rice and then i hide something inside correlated to a letter. i tape the lid on with colored duct tape and write the letter on the lid.

so far there is one little apple hidden in the A bottle

a plastic baby, a bird and a button hidden in the B bottle

plastic cows hidden in the C bottle

dice hidden in the D bottle

an egg and an elephant hidden in the E bottle

i’m thinking feathers in the F bottle, blades of grass in the G bottle, horses in the H bottle, ivy in the I bottle, jacks in the J bottle…on and on.

a little guy told me today that the A bottle was his favorite thing at preschool. wow.

s is for suitcase

thanks to a friend, our preschool was given this sweet suitcase. while i am sure i will share it for some vacation play, i am using it daily as a “project suitcase.”

i load it with the supplies we will need for our project of the day.

the anticipation on the part of the preschoolers is worth it. then i close up my suitcase, pick it up and lead them to the project table.

this is likely one of the most classic activities…so satisfying. so many connections to the world of nature and science. we’ve been working with apples all week. tasting them, sorting them, graphing them, digging out the seeds, and then i deemed some apples “too yucky to eat so we can use them for painting.”

this is simply cutting the apple in half so that the star can be seen, then dipping in paint, then pressing.

and oh, joy when a seed actually comes out with the print!

we do this printing with celery, green peppers, potatoes, corn, okra, oranges, carrots too. i really like to get food that is genuinely expired or being thrown away.

i is for ice

i did this for micah’s birthday once with a dinosaur theme. at preschool we use this for any letter of the alphabet since we can hide anything in the ice (except maybe u or x things…ideas, anyone?)! appleseeds, counter bears, coins, dinosaurs, elephants, fake flower petals, green things, horses, jewels, keys, lace, money, nuts, o ring shapes, paper clips, quills, red things, snakes, turtles, valentines (plastic hearts), white things, yellow things, zoo animals.

but i like to use it during i week since that’s kind of a tricky letter to find things for.

ahead of time the teacher fills containers of any kind with water, then drops in some objects that won’t break when hit, then freezes.

preschoolers are offered tools for excavating the treasures…wooden blocks work the best in my experience.

take this as an opportunity to discuss the wonder that our eyes will blink or squint to protect themselves. encourage this against the flying ice. : )

and if it is warm outside, take it all out! when i week falls in a cooler month, we wear our mittens and break the ice chunks on art trays.

s is for symmetry…or same : )

what i like about these projects is the versatility…this can be done with many colors of paint as b is for butterfly or white paint for e is for egg.

quite simply the preschooler gets to squirt or spoon blobs of paint on a paper, then the teacher helps fold it carefully in half, then please let the preschooler help open their amazing creation.

it’s also a great connection to cloud gazing…to look at these random shapes and find familiar images in them. the whole project could be done outdoors. imagine white paint on sky blue paper. ahhhh!

all i can see in the largest print above is a monkey.