marble painting

This activity was nice because we had the opportunity to make individual marble painting and group marble paintings.I gathered up some cardboard beverage trays from our recycle room and the children added their paper. They used spoons to fish out the marbles from the paint trays. In retrospect I think I added too much paint to the trays. Regardless they had a lot of fun with this activity.

The group marble tray was made of wood and it required some gross motor skill and steep tipping:

The final group product:

The end! 

ice in the mortars

A while ago I posted about our new mortar and pestles. 

We've been crushing various natural items like dried leaves and seeds but a little extra left over ice from the kitchen got me to thinking about switching it up a little bit. So I added to ice to the center and the children began to grind away.

The end result looked like slushy! Hmmmm homemade slushies?


The end!

tube and funnel peg board

We definitely have some 'water babies' this year. You can always tell who needs more water play by observing the children who spend copious amounts of time 'washing' their hands and anything else that might be near the sink. Normally I am content to keep water in our atrium which has a lot of natural surfaces for water to drain on (it is essentially an outdoor space that is glassed in like a green house). But this year I thought it might be best to exchange the sand for water in our sensory table to free up the sink.

To everyone's delight, my colleague Kelly brought this beauty into the classroom and placed it in the atrium (both our classrooms open onto this atrium so we share everything out there). 

She assembled it by using a zip tie to fasten the tubes topped with funnels to a peg board. She added a low tub at the base for the water to drain into. At first we used plain water but the children had a hard time seeing which tube the water was flowing down. Once we added purple watercolor they could see that the tubes crisscrossed over each other.

They are totally engaged while learning about the effects of gravity on water, flow, measurement, and developing fine motor coordination.  Cool, huh?

The end!

the pendulum, AKA the wrecking ball

My dad built this pendulum for me over the summer using instructions by Bev Bos.  As you can see it is quite large so I had it in storage until I could find space for it. I dug this platform out of storage and placed it in our atrium (it was built by a former coworker and donated to the center when she left).

I showed the children how to build towers and use the 'wrecking balls' to knock them down. This is a nice outlet for children with a need to see things tumble! There is just something so inherently attractive about the creative and destructive processes. The foam blocks are light enough to be knocked over and can be built quickly for my friends with shorter attention spans.

For the older children who needed a greater challenge, I showed them how to make pyramids:

The end!

blueberry play-dough dye

I got the recipe for blueberry colored play-dough from mini-eco. As in our last experiment with turmeric, I multiplied it out for mass classroom-quantity.

The room smelled delicious as the blueberries reduced. The children predicted what color the the dye would make the dough: blue, purple, and red. 

All the adults came by and smelled it expecting a sweet smell (I kept thinking grape bubble gum), but alas it just smelled like plain dough. To tie it all together we read Blueberries for Sal (they were totally engrossed in the story) and practiced wringing the letter B. 

The End!

our 'beautiful stuff'ed envelopes

A few years ago our center collected items from home. They were sorted by color and displayed in the hallway until the university's education students dismantled them to display their educational projects. The beautiful jars of found objects lived in a box in the closet until I dragged them back out and set them out on the table, uncapped.

This year, a parent was generous enough to drop off a case of outdated software CDs that came in little envelopes with round windows. We used the CDs to create 'light catchers' and decided to use the envelopes to display some of the 'stuff'. The children had a blast going through the containers choosing their favorite items. I had a hard time convincing them to leave the envelopes here at school for me to display.

 

Since we don't have a lot of wall space due to a copious amount of windows, I've been trying to use our vertical space to display our work: 

The end!

fence weaving

After seeing how cheerful our playground fence looked after hanging up our coffee filter art, I wondered if the children would be interested in weaving fabric into the gate.

I organized this activity a little differently this time. Normally I have strips ready for them and they manipulate the fabric from start to finish. However, it's extremely challenging for the younger ones who tend to give up easily.

This time, I had the children rip the strips first (I gave them fabric that was pre-snipped at the top). 

Then I tied the strips to the fence at regular intervals and had the children partner up. One child would put the fabric through the fence and the other would pull it through and vice-versa.

Older children preferred to work alone:

When they got to the end of the fabric I tied a knot or they tied one themselves.

At the end of the day:

With our coffee filters: