P is for a Pumpkin Patch

During circle time we read about "patty's pumpkin patch" - perfect for P week, right!  We talked about how pumpkins grow on a vine instead of a tree or a bush.  We passed a ball of yarn around our circle making a pumpkin vine. 

During center time I had this sticky wall set up.  (I took the picture before I cut the yarn - but the other basket had cut pieces of yarn in it)

But the contact paper was not sticky enough to hold the weight of the orange pom poms.  The kids were frustrated... not always a bad thing though.  I left it that way for a while - letting them try to figure out how to get them to stay.  After a while one child came up with the idea to move the contact paper to the floor.  Problem solved!

P is for Pouring Pumpkin Soup

Materials:  Water in pin, and orange water in squeeze bottles.  Pumpkin seeds.  Salt in salt shakers.  Lots of spoons, whisks, ladles, bowls, and cups.

This was one of my busiest sensory bins ever.  There was so much going on!  And unlimited access to a salt shaker... yes please!

It kept me busy - refilling salt shakers and the orange squeeze bottles - but it was well worth it!

P is for Pasting Pumpkins

For our large group we read a great book about a pumpkin and then made some mosaic pumpkins.  We cut squares of orange paper.  And some shapes with black paper (I cut the mouths). 

Then we simply covered our paper plates with the orange squares.

then added our faces.

And a stem.  Three cheers for pasting pumpkins.

P is for Poking Pumpkins

It took me a while to decide exactly how I wanted this center to be set up.  Do I put the pins in the pumpkin first and then let them explore with the rubber bands?  Do I just leave the pumpkin bland with a bowl of pins and rubber bands?  I was unsure of the best delivery system.  I changed it a couple of times over the weekend while I was setting up. 

In the end I went with this:  A mixture of both.

I had planned on only doing this for one day.  But it was so open ended and soothing for the kids I ended up moving it to the floor and keeping it out all week.  The pins and rubber bands changed constantly with each child.  Even my own kids came downstairs to play with it during the evenings - and now it is upstairs in our living room continuing to be loved!  So many great learning objectives going on here!

P is for Pumpkin

So one part of my teaching philosophy is that I don't do "letter of the day" - in the tradidtional sense anyway.  We for sure have letters all around us that we are always talking about and learning.  And we often focus on a letter for a day or a week - but it is very meaningful and concreat. 

Well P - for pumpkin is increadibly meaningful and concreate.  We spent all week finding out what we can do with a pumpkin using P.

But first we had to explore a pumpkin - I brought one into our curcle time and we passed it around , felt it, talked about it, and learned a lot of words to describe it. 

Then we learned about the letter P.  I gave them a tin with a lot of letters, they picked out all the letter P's.  Then we wrote the letter P.

Stay tuned to see all of our P's for pumpkins!

(spoiler alert: Painting, Poking, Pounding, Play Dough, Pouring, Pie, Patch, etc)

P is for Putting Playdough on Pumpkins

I bought 3 pumpkins to explore with during our pumpkin week.  By the end of the week these poor pumpkins went through the ringer.  Here they are all nice and new. 

Our first order of business was to decorate our pumpkins with play dough.

Hair Salon

For our dramatic play I set up a beauty salon.  This was a huge hit.  So much so that on the first day I had 3 girls who played in it the whole time - not visiting any of the other centers!  Their conversations were hilarious - mostly because the one "doing" the hair would use the same expressions that their mom's use when doing their hair.  "hold still", "it doesn't hurt", "I am almost done", "stop that".  ha ha ha.  I heard several of my own expressions coming from my girls.  After all that is the point of dramatic play in preschool... right?!

The set up:

Don't worry, that hair spray bottle is empty.

Also that finger nail polish is empty and all dried out.

Also those clippers have no batteries.  I am happy to report no ones hair actually got cut!

Halloween chains

Because of fall break and a vacation we were missing 2 whole weeks of preschool right in the middle of October.  I was really sad about that because there are so many great Halloween preschool activities.  So on our last day of preschool for 2 weeks I thought I would keep preschool and Halloween in their thoughts by having them create Halloween chains.  I knew that it would be a great undertaking.  We had to make a 22 day chain - eight 4 year olds - one adult.  Originally I had planned on using staplers - but I couldn't collect 8 (I knew they would each need their own) and then I thought that many of them didn't quite have the hand strength yet to staple 22 times.  So in the end I went with glue.  I would really just need to impress upon their minds the importance of counting to 10 while pressing hard.

Before I get too ahead of myself....

We started with cutting.  The night before I had drawn 11 straight lines on orange paper and 11 straight lines on black paper.  I gave each child a orange paper and a black paper and told them to start cutting.  The different personalities of children crack me up when it comes to art projects.  Some children just plow through those lines giving little regard to the lines or the straightness of their cuts.  Some children feel very passionately about staying right on the line - even having half the line on one side of the cut and the other half on the other side of the cut.  In our family Brock was the first and Noah was the latter - so I know how to deal with both extremes.  Fortunately most of my class falls in the middle of the spectrum. 

This little gal SO impressed me.  half way through she figured out she could put one paper on top of the other and cut them at the same time to go faster!!  I couldn't believe she figured that out and pulled it off.  I am ashamed to say I doubted her, thinking that the papers would move.  But she totally did it perfectly!

Then it was time to put the chains together.  There is A LOT of thought process to these chains.  The pattern, the correct folding of the paper, putting one through the other, the gluing, the holding, often the re gluing and the re holding, counting to 22.  Sadly this project took A LOT longer than I had allotted and half way through we could hear parents knocking at the door upstairs.  I asked the kids what they wanted to do... and they all decided to have me hurry and staple the rest.  So in about 2 minutes I stapled the last 10 or so on each child's as they counted.  Next year I will remember to leave about an hour and a half for this.  Oh - and each child wrote "Halloween" on a sign and we stapled that to the top. 

Sticks

Just a bunch of twigs on our math table.  I never took any pictures of the center being used.  But letters were made, and also a few houses.

Leaf sorting and pictures

During circle time we read/looked at a book called, What can I make with a leaf?.  Then I dumped a big bag of leaves in the center of the circle.  Then we went through the large task of sorting the leaves.  We have done a lot of other sorting in preschool - so I knew they understood the principle - so I wanted to take this activity up a notch.  TO make a good picture we just couldn't sort the leaves by color, or by size or by shape.  We had to have MANY categories AND we had to make decisions about each leaf because one leaf could have gone into many different categories.

This process was really fun and very involved. The sorting was very open ended and child led.  I let them make the categories, and discoer along the way when we should make a new category, and they got to decide which leaf went where.  Some kids felt very passionate about a certain category and we got into some real heated debates about why one certain leaf should or shouldn't go into a certain category.  It was great!

Then we put our leafs on our art table.  During center time the children could come and create their leaf picture, man, animal, or design.  I did not press these leaves, mostly because I knew it would be a lot of work - but they would have made better pictures, so next year I will take the several hours and press the leaves.  But they still worked great because I picked all of them fresh of the trees that very morning - so none of them were breaking yet. 

Some kids came up with their own pictures - some copied from the book.  Either way they were learning a lot of great skills.