this was mother’s day 2007’s project.
we had non-mamas come in to help preschoolers by using hot glue guns (a pin back was added to the pre-cut foam flower shape). preschoolers placed items where they wanted them and the grownups glued them in place. with encouragement to add as much as they liked in “collage” fashion, mother’s day pins were created, wrapped, and taken home. pretty fancy!
we make “super ears” with empty toilet paper rolls and colored masking tape (really we could have used anything to decorate these, though i wouldn’t use markers because i h.a.t.e. how markers smear). what makes these super ears is that when you put the tube over your ear, everything sounds louder. of course we have to remember not to be close to someone’s super ear when we are talking (or yelling) or else we could hurt their ear.
this led us to discussions of bats, playing guessing games of whose voice is whose when we had our eyes closed, to conversations on blindness, to a request to visit grandpa bill upstairs who can’t see us but knows we are there when we sing to him or rub his arm.
oh yes, super ears…the catalyst for wonderful learning moments.
i want to do a s is for super hero theme someday (on the goodness of superheros, on the wonder of every human being having some super quality that we can find if we look, etc.)…these would be good for that week.
what i love about these kind of projects is when we see it extended. so yes, this was squares of newspaper glued on a block n form, but what you can’t see are the dictations of what it really is:
“the top of one side is a volcano”
“the top of the other side is blasting out hot lava”
“the bottom of the other side is the hot lava that cools off and rolls down”
one technique we use is having a teacher put down dots of glue for a child to hide…this changes the focus of the project for some…it becomes a one-to-one correspondence activity rather than a making-pools-of-glue project (because glue sticks usually irritate me).
or z is for zebra stripes on a carboard z.
q-tips as brushes and black liquid watercolor paint after a discussion of why zebras might have stripes…
oh, joy. we made a HUGE spider web, working on it for a week.
we used donated/thrifted yarn and with four points tied to furniture, we wove and wove. under and over. sometimes the balls of yarn would be thrown to a friend across the web. only one did a supporting shelf get pulled over (and thankfully no injuries).
when i explained to the class that we would have the fun job of cutting it apart once we finished, one little friend got wide eyes and said, “but i am making a rug!” and another said, “i’m making a balnket!” so thanks to these resourceful minds, we will not cut apart the web rug blanket, we will keep it. : )
s is for spider and w is for web too : )
newcreationpreschool.com