Easter Fun

I had fun making some cute nature inspired birds for our front door at home. 

Last week the children painted Easter Eggs using dye and fine paint brushes. They did an amazing job creating patterns and pictures on their eggs.

This week we did some threading around our amazing eggs.

I got given some plastic egg cake toppers which I thought would be fabulous on the light table with the playdough.

See you soon...

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Like Mama ~ Like Daughter

Paper Bag Nests

I think I love the lead up to Easter as much as Christmas as it is soo much more relaxed and usually means a cool change in the weather. This week, as I had brown paper bags left over from last week I made some little nests. I think they are so cute I thought I would share. They would be great to put little Easter Eggs or biscuits in as well. Here is how I made them...

Roll the top of the bag down and then glue twigs and string around the opening.

I attached some leaves to pegs so that they could be pegged onto the nests. 

The table looked soo beautiful - the children could explore a variety of materials such as nests, grass, chicks, eggs, rice and green shredded paper.

I encouraged the children to count the chicks and put them in the corresponding nests but that was only one aspect of this activity. This Easter activity promoted all sorts of learning from colour recognition, matching colours, recognising the shape 'oval' and the fine motor skill of correcty assembling the egg. Of course there was counting and number recognition as well as lots and lots of language. Not only maths language like 'full' and 'empty', 'half' and 'whole' but language in all the various role playing scenarios.

I loved hearing the children talking, sharing and helping each other. Apart from quite a bit of rice on the floor it was a great activity loved by all!!

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Paper Bag Shark

One of the simplest sea themed craft activities I do, is a paper bag shark puppet. It is an all time favourite every year with the 3 year olds. I don't usually like to repeat activities but this one is always soo popular that I don't mind.

The children painted a paper bag with black and white paint which mixes together to give shades of grey. (I like to do this because it provides a mini lesson on mixing paint) You could paint or print with anything but we used our kitchen sponges on handles. The children need to paint both sides of the bag.

When it is dry cut out the mouth and use the triangle and use the triangle for it's fin. Staple around the mouth so that when you put your hand in the bag, your fingers don't come through the opening for the mouth. Add rows of sharp teeth, paint the eye and the shark puppet is complete and ready to play with.

Sand playdough

Add 1 cup of white sand to the usual playdough recipe to give a lovely texture to the playdough. The children used different shells to make prints and mini beach scenes.

Pirates and Mermaids

Weekly readers of An Idea on Tuesday would know that we have had a long hot summer here in Australia and that many of the activities recently have revolved around the theme of summer. At school I have been looking at summer, sun safe behaviour, the beach, sea creatures, summer activities and the list goes on... 

We read the book 'Magic Beach' by Alison Lester and I decided to set up a pirate and mermaid discovery scene on the light table. You can set this scene anywhere of course, but the light table is my favourite resource. 

As usual, I made these peg people last night and fortunately they took no time at all. I just used whatever I had (It would have been better if the mermaids hair matched the clothes for colour sorting and extending the activity). The children loved them and it was very popular in the classroom however EVERY girl wanted the pink mermaid!!

Have a go at making some peg pirates and mermaids!

Niccola

Fun with Fish

Last night I bought some inexpensive fresh fish from the fishmonger for the children to touch, hold, poke, feel, examine and smell of course! The children then painted the fish and made prints. They looked amazing! They LOVED this experience and all were very keen to participate. A fabulous hands-on activity that provided soo much great learning and language.

 I covered the light table with a cheap green plastic semi-transparent table cloth to create and underwater backdrop which was extremely effective. I then placed a small tray with tiny shells and some larger shells with the numbers 1 to 10 written on them. Small plastic cups with numbers were included on the tray so the children could put the correct shell in the corresponding cup. (I saw the alphabet written on shells on The Imagination Tree and thought that numbers would also be a great idea.)

LIGHT ON

 LIGHT OFF

I really appreciate your comments. Thanks soo much and have a super Tuesday!! 

Summer Sensory Tray

Our Summer sensory tray was extremely popular today. Partly because we are having an extreme heat wave at the moment and putting our hands in the blue water was nice and cool but more importantly it provided a huge variety of play opportunities. Children were pretending to be the tiny people swimming, lying under the umbrellas and playing in the sand. It provided a wonderful platform for language development.

Two trays were used to create the Summer scene. A drop of blue dye added to the water made a crystal clear ocean. Pebbles, shells, cocktail umbrellas and little felt towels were used to set the scene.

Before long the children had collected pebbles and sea creatures from the water trolley and incorporated them in the play scene. It was really great to see the children sharing the resources, listening to each other and putting up the cocktail umbrellas (this was a great fine motor skill!) 

*Before giving children the cocktail umbrellas snip the sharp point off.

Continuing the sea theme we added turtles to the playdough and let the children make prints with the turtles. We also provided a variety of materials to print patterns on their playdough turtles.

Happy Pancake Tuesday!!

Sunny Tuesday

As it is very hot here and the first week back at school, we filled two water trolleys today. One outside with coloured boats and one inside to provide a home for our lovely floating fish. 

I cut plastic lids, foam lids and kitchen sponges into simple fish shapes. Alongside that was the water trolley containing rocks and shells. Within minutes the children were putting the sponge fish in the water and squeezing them out. 

A sample sponge fish.

The water trolley filled with shells and blue glass pebbles.

The children loved this activity and helped them keep cool. Simple activities like this provide great learning experiences for young children. This promotes language development, creativity, fine motor skills and even maths skills like counting and size.

The children were excited about taking home the fish to play with in their bath tonight!

They look fantastic don't they?