Using Ice for Pre-Writing Skills

I am always amazed how the simplest things can keep children engaged for so long.  The kids in my care love, love, love to use the pipettes (or those little medicine droppers).  It is so great for strengthening those little muscles needed for writing, cutting and all those other fine motor skills they will use so much in Kindergarten.  All I did was put out some ice trays, colored water, and a tub of ice cubes.  They mixed colors, learned about volume, cause and effect, sharing, and loads of language!  So simple and so many skills being used!

 



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Mail Call



We have been discussing Community Helpers in class. Here is a simple, easy, and fun way to let the kids practice their organizing, counting, and number recognition skills.  I have saved these cool boxes that single paper towels come in (by Kleenex).  I knew they would make a great mailbox.  I wrote numbers on cards and taped them to the front of the box.  Then I used foam numbers and drew dots to correspond to the numbers on the boxes.  The kids came to the table and sorted the mail into the correct boxes.  They loved it is an understatement.  They sorted, emptied and sorted again! 

 

 

 

We continued our unit on Mail Carriers by writing cards to ourselves and taking a walk to the mailbox.  The kids were very excited to come back to school with their delivered card!

 

 

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Let Them Roll, Easy Marble Run

This is about as easy as it gets and occupied my kids for a very long time.  They get this out a lot!

All you need it a pool noodle, some marbles and something to catch them in (or not).  I used a roasting pan because the kids were able to hear the marble "ting" at the bottom.  My two created marble races, and discovered which marbles fit down the noodle, which ones got stuck and which ones went fast!  So fun, cheap, easy and all sorts of skills being used.   Some of the skills are cause and effect, small motor, cooperation, language development, comparing and contrasting, hand/eye coordination, sensory, shapes, oh so many skills!

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5 Little Speckled Frogs

Let me preface this post with....I am no artist!  I actually am not very crafty either.  I can come up with ideas and they look great in my head, but when they come to life, ummm, not exactly like it was in my head.  Anyway, we love singing the song "5 Green and Speckled Frogs". So I thought it would be fun to have a little visual to go along with it.  I created these little frogs on a log

puppets for the kids to use. It was super simple and made with what I had on hand. 

I cut a egg carton up into 10 cups, then painted them green.  I added some speckles with green marker.  Then I cut out red tongues and glued them in.  I glued the cups together and added some goggle eyes.  I cut out a "log" from the egg carton and painted it brown. Voila!  Done.

Here is a video of the song in case you have no idea what I'm talking about....

5 Little Speckled Frogs

Check out the adorable frogs that they created over at Rainy Day Mum with egg cartons and a paper towel roll!  So cute!

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Colored Rice (The Easiest Way)

One of my kids most favorite sensory materials is colored rice.  It feels nice and makes a pleasant, soothing noise when dumping, measuring and pouring.  Playing with these types of materials help build math skills, small motor skills, color recognition, sensory awareness and language development.
 When I first began coloring rice, I use to put it in a ziplock baggie, add the color, add rubbing alcohol, zip it up, shake it, dump it out on paper towels to dry and try to keep the fumes from burning my eyeballs!  One day, I didn't have any rubbing alcohol, so I just added the color.  Much easier!

First, gather your colors.  We used THESE watercolors from Discount School Supply.  The process is super simple.  Pour some white rice (we bought a medium size bag at the grocery store for about $4), into a bowl.  We didn't measure, just poured in a good amount. 

Squeeze in some color

Stir it up (no need to add alcohol)  If you want it darker, just add more watercolor

Dump it into your tub and add the next color, no need to even rinse the bowl out, and the rice is instantly dry!

The colors come out beautiful and no stinky alcohol smell. 

Just a quick note, this batch of rice got caught outside in a rain storm  We let it dry out and it is perfect again.  It will last indefinitely, so this is a great little investment that goes a loooonnnngggg way

P.S.  This method works for coloring any pasta too!  You know for all those noodle collages and necklaces! 

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Stringing Eggs

I saw this idea on Pinterest.  I was thinking this would be a fabulously fun, fine motor and math activity for my snake happy son.  We used plastic eggs and a pipe cleaner for ours, but you can see the original idea HERE.  I made a small knot at the end of the pipe cleaner so the egg ends wouldn't slip through.

I was thinking they looked a little like caterpillars, but Tayler saw his as a cobra snake.  So he stuck one of the eggs on the opposite way to create it's "hood".  Then he added eyes and left the pipe cleaner sticking out for the tongue.  Pretty dang cute cobra to me!

Another great fine motor skill.  You could incorporate patterning and counting into this as well.

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Silly Bands DIY Puzzles

We have tons of these Silly Bands. Since my kids don't really wear them, I am always looking for ways to use them.  We have stuck them to sticky paper and extracted them from ice (click on the underlined words to see how).  Today I thought we could use them to make puzzles.  My two love puzzles and puzzles are great for problem solving, using math/matching skills and using our fine motor skills.  So, we took our silly bands, put them on the copier, made a copy, then matched our silly bands to the shape on the paper.  So easy peasy and my kids loved making their own.  Lots of options too!

 

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DIY Circle Sorter

This is another activity that the kids did all on their own.  I had these shower curtain holders in our play area and the kids have been using them as braclets.  We also have paper towel holders and empty containers in our play area for whatever the kids find to do with them.  Well, put all those together and you have a very cool way to practice hand eye coordination and problem solving.  I love it!! They put the paper towel holder in the can and then just began placing the circles on it.  Super cool!

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Q Tip Snow Flakes

I saw these in the December issue of Family Fun Magazine, and knew they were something we would have fun doing.  All we needed was some q-tips, glue and wax paper.  You could embellish these any way you wanted really, but we used plastic fake snow.  All we did was make our design on the wax paper, squeeze the glue on the points where they meet, sprinkle some "snow" on the points and let them dry.  Once dry, we simply peeled the snowflakes off the wax paper and there you go! 

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Spiky Pumpkin Turkeys

I saw some adorable apple turkeys on Pinterest.  That led to me to set this up for the kiddos.  We had several pumpkins that we have been collecting and I couldn't bring myself to just throw them away.  So, I  bought some wooden skewers in the baking aisle at the grocery store.  They were less than 2.00.  I also bought a box of Fruit Loops cereal,  but any cereal with holes in the middle would work too.  We sorted the cereal into colors first (great math, matching, color experience), then the kids pushed the skewers into the pumpkin.  Took quite a bit of muscle to get them pushed in.  Then the kids went to work putting the cereal onto the skewers.  We used some googly eyes and wooden  pieces to make the faces.  So cute....and spiky too!

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Felt Turkey Finger Puppets

We made these really cute, no-sew finger puppet turkeys to go along with one of our favorite songs

"5 Little Turkeys are We".

They are so simple and the kids really enjoyed personalizing them.  I cut all the pieces out from felt because it is difficult for little hands to do. I cut triangles for feathers and beaks, red waddles, and used brown half ovals (not sure what to call that shape) for the bodies.  Then, the kids glued the feathers onto one side of the brown bodies and then we glued the top body, leaving an opening to put our fingers in.  Then we used googly eyes and the other felt pieces to add faces.  Then we just needed to wait for all the glue to dry.

Here is the words to the song we use them with, but really any song about turkeys would work.

Five little turkeys are we,

We hid all night in the tree,

when the cook came around we couldn't be found,

that's why we're here you see!

Then we take one away and keep going...

Four little turkeys are we,

and so on...

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