Preschool Painting With Celery

Welcome Back Friends from your Thanksgiving vacation. I hope you all had a fabulous holiday. I spent a few hours in the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning preparing a big dinner for my family. One of my tasks was to dice the vegetables for the stuffing. When I got to the celery I notice what a beautiful flower it made inside once the stalks were removed. Of course I couldn't wait to see what it would look like covered in paint. This project is perfect for younger preschoolers whose fine motor skills aren't fully developed.

 This is how the celery looked when I cut the stalks off. Isn't that pretty? 

I put orange paint in the bottom of a plastic bowl, and dip the celery inside. 

Celery is usually inexpensive especially around the holidays. You could use the stalks for some yummy snacks dipped in Ranch dressing or make Ants On A Log. 

       

Preschool Native American Vests

It's always a great idea to get acquainted with the neighborhood grocery store. One of my favorite places is my local Winn Dixie Supermarket. I make regular visits and the manager is never surprised when I ask for classroom help. I went in and asked for brown grocery bags for each of my students to create indian vests for our Thanksgiving Feast. As usual, they were more than happy to help. 

Here's what we did. I carefully opened each bag from the top and along the side seam. I opened them up and laid them flat. Then, I turned the Winn-Dixie logo on the inside. 

I made a u-shape for the neck and openings for the arms. My assistant taped each shoulder strap, and wrote the child's name on the inside. We made little slits along the bottom to create a fringe look. 

 The children chose 2 different colors to make handprints on their vests. 

While some students created handprints others were busy with markers and crayons decorating. 

We decided to take some early photos of the finished product since I'd be too busy to remember the day of the feast. 

We're "thankful" for our local Winn-Dixie for supporting our class and Early Childhood Education. 

Preschool Keepsakes

Throughout the year I love creating keepsakes for my parents. It can be a card, a photo, or a Thanksgiving placemat. My favorite keepsakes are handprints and footprints. Two years ago, when my daughter was in Kindergarten her teacher created the cutest calendar keepsake using the students handprints. Luckily, I happened to be in the classroom volunteering one day and got to help create the handprint for that month. Take a look at how cute these are.

Mrs. Kovarik created a complete set of pages for the cover and each month of the year. They were reproduced so each child would have their own copy.  I covered my daughters name with a sticky note. But each child's name is on the front of their book. The children choose the handprint colors they wanted on the outside of the book and Mrs. Kovarik choose the colors for each month.

Here's the handprints for February Heart and the March Leprechaun.

To save time and money she only laminated

the front and back pages of the book. 

Here's the handprints for the June Tulip and the August sun.

The tulip is only the palm of the hand. 

I'm looking forward to sharing this keepsake 

with my daughter when she's all grown up!

A special thanks to Mrs. Kovarik for all of her hard work 

and making it a memorable first year for my baby girl:) 

Preschool Potato Print Families

This is a tried and true project. Teachers have done this for years but I pulled it out of my "bag of tricks" and you would have thought it was a new invention. For "Our Family" unit last week, I cut potatoes length wise. The children painted one side of the potato and made potato prints to represent each member of their family. After the print dried they added facial features, arms and legs to each family member. As with any preschool project enjoying the process was the most fun.

Books we enjoyed with this unit

Preschool Art Activity: Sandy Hands

While browsing Michael's for my beach theme I picked up these cute cards that were blank inside. Of course I had no idea what I might do with them, but since they were a dollar I couldn't very well pass them up. At the end of our lesson I took a photo of each child in our housekeeping area. One of my parents loaned us a huge colorful beach umbrella that served as a great back drop for the photos.

Each child make a handprint on the left side of the card. Then, we sprinkled colored sand on the wet hand print and placed their picture on the right side. It turned out to be one "cool" summer keepsake to send home.

Patriotic Hats in Preschool

I think hats are like shoes, you can never have too many. I found this neat little template from a book and blew it up to fit a standard piece of paper. To keep the children from super-soaking them with paint, I handed out really small tipped brushes this morning. It was hard for them to over-do it even with the tried. Since there was so little paint, it cut down on the drying time allowing us to wear them by noon! Whoo Hoo!

Preschool Activity: "F" is for Fireworks

I'm a big advocate for using and re-using what you already have. In my Valentines theme box, I had red streamers left. From our Father's Day theme we had blue streamer left. We tore off pieces of the streamers and pinched them into little balls. The children took turns squeezing glue onto the large letters and pressing down their balls. This activity reinforced the letter "Ff" we were working on, and gave them and opportunity to work on their fine motor skills. You'll see these several times throughout my themes as I find it's one good way to evaluate which of my children still need more fine motor skill activities.

See a snapshot of some pieces below. Which ones would you say could use more fine motor skill activities?

Preschool Nursery Rhyme Activity: Jack Be Nimble

For our unit on Nursery Rhymes we did Jack Be Nimble.
Here are our candlesticks.

Jack Be Nimble, Jack be quick,
Jack jumped over the candle stick.




Our candle sticks were made from white card stock paper.
The kids painted them and glued pre-cut flames inside.




During Circle Time, we sang the Nursery Rhyme and jumped over our own candle sticks.

Making Tracks (Footprints)

I had fun with our unit on forest animals. We talked about animal tracks and how we could tell where the animal went by following it’s tracks. Later that morning, we make our own tracks and posted them on our wall. It was a bit tricky but worth our efforts.


Here’s what you need to make your own tracks.
You”ll need:
newspaper
poster board or butcher paper
paint
sponge
shallow container with soapy water
markers

I laid newspaper on the floor where we would be working. I placed a piece of poster board (you may use butcher paper) on the newspaper with their name already printed on top of the sheet. I sat the kids in one chair and used the sponge to dab paint on the bottom of their feet.


I then held their hand while they walked across the poster board to the shallow pan of soapy water.


There they used a sponge to clean the paint off their feet. I listened for new vocabulary words from each child. I heard the words tickles, cold, beautiful, paint, sponge, toes, slippery, wet, and newspaper.

I didn't post my list of vocabulary words but that would have been even better to display with their tracks. The follow up activity during Circle Time was the "Going On A Bear Hunt" song by Greg and Steve.