- Eye color sorting
- The dollar store has plastic eye balls, usually during Halloween time. Stock up! Try to get different colored eyes if possible!
- Using paper craft rolls (or TP rolls) paint or color them colors to match the eyeball colors. AKA ‘sorting tubes’.
- Tape them to a container, or wall, or other place that your preschooler can drop the eyes in and have them fall through. *we used a big plastic tub.
- Make sorting a fun moving game.
- Put all the unsorted eyes in a bag, bowl or lay them on the floor on one side of the room and the sorting tubes on the other side. Have your preschooler/s run back and forth sorting.
- Put the different sorting tubes in different places in the room, and the eyes in the middle. Have them pick one eyeball, run to that colored sorting tub and drop the eye in. Run back and get another.
- Lay out the different colored eyeballs and tell your preschooler a color. They will find one eyeball that color and put it in the matching sorting tube. Come back and do it again.
- Play I Spy
- Using our eyes, we played a game of I spy!
- 1 round – only spy a color
- 2 round – only spy shapes
- 3 round – only spy high or low
- etc.
- Circles & Eyeball drawing
- With my Silhouette machine, I cut out TONS of different sized circles on different colored paper.
- I laid them out on the table with some markers and let the kids get creative drawing eyeballs.
- show them different kinds of eyes. Ie: cat eyes, human eyes, scary eyes, sad eyes, sleepy eyes, spider eyes, etc.
- If your “E is for Eyes” preschool is during Halloween season, tape them all over as a decoration (we put ours on the garage door!)
**For more Eye preschool activities, click HERE**
My daughter came out of her nursery class at church yesterday with this little “I Spy” shaker that they had made. I thought it was such a great idea and when her older brothers both wanted a turn, I decided to try to make one. SO SIMPLE! My daughter’s class was using it to talk about EYES but I love it because you can use it for any letter week, any theme, any holiday. Just change up what you put inside to spy!
You can probably figure out how to make them, but here’s a quick tutorial and a couple of tips…
You’ll need:
- a clear plastic water bottle
- about 2 cups of rice (or small pasta noodles or popcorn kernels)
- glue
- several small objects to “SPY” inside
*this is where you can get creative … ex: all buttons of different colors for B week, everything red, white & blue for the 4th of July, all things starting with R for R week. You get the idea 
- Empty the water bottle.
- Remove the label.
- Let it dry completely inside.
4. Use a small funnel. Or if you don’t have one like me, roll up a scrap piece of paper into a cone and tape it!
5. Fill the bottle 1/4 full with rice.
6. Drop several of the small objects inside
7. Fill about 1/2 full and add more of the small objects.
8. Fill about 3/4 full and add the rest of the small objects.
TIP! I found that it’s easier to shake and find the objects if it’s not completely full to the top with rice. Leave an inch or two of empty space at the top.
9. Seal the lid on by putting a thin ring of glue around the inside of the lid, then screw it on the bottle tightly. You don’t want the kids opening it and dumping the rice out!
10. Make a label for your “I SPY” shaker and include a list of everything to look for inside. It would look even better printed out, but I was in a hurry with this one.
TIP! Make a list of all the items going inside before you put them inside
TIP! Take a picture of the items before putting them inside and put that on the label to make it a picture list for younger kids to “read” themselves.
11. Tape the label around the bottle and secure with a long strip of packing tape all the way around (kind of laminates the label)
YOU’RE DONE!
It was easy enough for me to make so I’m excited to let my preschooler help make a few others to go along with our different letter themes throughout the year! Usually the making part is the most fun and the best learning experience
