Glue Designs

We made designs using colored glue (Literally glue just colored with food coloring).  After the glue was dried we watercolored them.  These are really cool to look at and to touch! 

Umbrella Art

These turn out seriously beautiful every year! They are made by using shaving cream and food coloring. This is similar to what we did HERE.

S is for Salt Watercoloring

We first painted pictures using watercolors and then I let the kids sprinkle on some salt to see what kind of a reaction it made and how it changed the art.  I really love this experiment! The other picture is a random picture of one of our cute students practicing using a ten frame at toy time. 

More Letter P

We made Pizza paintings using Pizza toppings (Mushrooms, Peppers, Pepperoni, Onions).  We also got to enjoy a St. Patrick's Day Themed Sensory Tub.  

Stampers

This was great for so many reasons!  It was an open ended art project that combined fine motor skills, with letter and number recognition, make-believe play, group social skills, sharing, and sensory.  I'm positive there are more, but you get the idea!  

Celebrating Fall

Making a leaf "pin poke picture".  These are great for fine motor control and when the kids are finished, it is so rewarding for them to hold them up to the window and see the leaf shape with light shining through the holes. 

Exploring Fall with our senses!  Lots of fun fall objects to discover and observe.  This one included beans, fake leaves, fake apples, acorns, pine cones, and scoops for pouring skills and mathematical connections.

Pumpkin pie art with real pumpkin spices to make them smell good and help enhance sensory learning!

Some of our Weekly Activities

Playing Bean Bag Toss with a friend was a huge hit! As you can see from the smiles below, the kids loved taking turns passing their bags back and forth with a friend.  This weeks theme was being a nice friend and I think this game was a great way to reinforce what we learned during class! We also played with pink play dough for pink day and had a rainbow/water themed sensory tub for the kids to explore different colors and to play in.  Good Times! 

Bean Bag Toss with Friend (Social Skills/Gross Motor Development)

Playdough (Color Pink Reinforcement/Creativity/Fine Motor Development)

Sensory Play-Water tools (Colors, Social Skills, Sensory Development, Fine Motor Skills/ Math/Measurement/Volume,  Transferring, Dramatic Play)

Sense of Taste-Yucky or Yummy?

I taught the kids a bit about the way our taste buds work and where the tongue detects certain tastes on our tongues.  We looked at our taste buds in the mirror and found the different parts on our own tongue.  

Y is for Yucky & Yummy

 To help reenforce our learning about the letter Y I thought we could do a unit on the sense of taste. Since we learned a little about our taste buds I thought we could do some experimentation on the different tastes our tongue detects. We tasted some salty, sweet, sour and bitter foods and tried to sort them into the appropriate section on their tasting cards. We used sour gummy worms for sour, sea salted pita chips for salty, marshmallows for sweet and grapefruit for bitter.  The pita chips and grapefruit were the least popular with the kids, although some really liked them.  It's hard to compete with marshmallows and gummy worms!

G is for Goop

Well we couldn't really have a G is for Goop day without playing with some actual goop!  So....I whipped up some DIY finger paints (edible) and they were pretty gooptastic!!! Most of the kids tried it out and loved it, one didn't want to touch it so he used a brush, and a few tried fingers but preferred painting with brushes.  Either way, in the end the art turned out beautifully goopy and it was an engaging activity. 

Christmas Learning Fun

Christmas is in the air at Morning Light Preschool and so we are having so much fun learning and playing and getting festive!  We have done some size comparisons for math, a Christmas Themed Sensory Tub (One of my very favorites), lots of Christmas play dough with Christmas colors, Gingerbread house play mats, and Christmas themed cutters, we also made some Santa patterns. 

Thanksgiving Party

Happy Thanksgiving!  We had a terrific celebration at Morning Light Preschool.   I had some great mom helpers!  One mom sent in fun Native American hats for us to make for our potluck Thanksgiving Feast and another one came in and helped out and did a gumdrop turkey craft with the kids.  They love having mom's come to preschool!  Also this week we did lots of turkey & Thanksgiving learning games, had a fall sensory themed tub, played Stuff the Turkey toss, Don't eat Tom,  Ring the Turkey, The turkey strut and more!  

Field trip to the Bakery

For our field trip we went to one of my favorite stores around Harmon's Bakery and got a little tour.  I was mesmerized by how many different kinds of cheeses they have! We got to sample some cheese that had fancy names I can't remember that started with the letter B.  They were so great to accommodate us and to go along with the requested B theme.  They also let us all sample some gelato and then we went and learned a bit about the bakery from a real french baker.  He gave us all bread and the kids a cookie, then we learned a little about the produce department and they gave the kids some fresh blueberries.  Lots of tasting fun for the senses! 

Apple Playdough

So I love play dough...like really LOVE play dough, like seriously LoOoOvEEE it!  I always have and I'm pretty sure I always will.  Whenever my kids or preschoolers are playing, I can't resist joining in...  every stinking time!  It's just really fun to me and it's pretty popular with the preschool kiddos too!  I thought since we were learning about apples I could include some apple themed items.  I have pie tins, rolling pins, red, green and white dough, green & reddish glass beads, and I also threw in a variety of apple/apple pie type cookie cutters they could explore with.  Oh and a letter A and number 1 to help reenforce the letter and number of the week, just for fun! 

Apple Math & More

We used apples to teach us several math skills including apple/fall leaf patterns, counting and graphing.  For our graph we SAMPLED (Mmmmmm!!) apples.  We tried red delicious apples, yellow delicious apples, granny smith apples, and of course cinnamon applesauce.  From our class results you can see that applesauce was the most popular item.  

Halloween Sensory & Science

 We did our usual Halloween sensory tub for a fun experience for the kids along with some real pumpkin exploration.  I cut open the pumpkin and allowed the kids to get in and discover the insides of the pumpkin to the level they were comfortable.  Some kids can't wait to get in and squish, smell & play with the "slime".  Then there's always a few who are pretty horrified by that idea.  For those I used the genius idea I found on Pinterest to provide "gut bags" for exploration.  This is just a ziplock bag filled with pumpkin insides.  The kids can squish to their hearts content without getting messy.  ALL of the kids tried this out which made me very happy!  I love hands on learning!

Edible Pumpkin Dough

This stuff is so great!  Smells like pumpkin pie, great texture and you can even taste it.  I wouldn't say it tastes great, but it was fun to try (reactions with the little ones are funny too).  We used lots of  Halloween tools to make it festive.  I didn't know how great it would hold up so I sent it home in ziplock bags with the kids to play with at home.   It got a bit mushy in the bags I noticed, but if you add a little cornstarch to it, it firms right back up.  Great sensory play!