hand tree

In our sensory bin earlier that day I had a bunch of leaves for the children to cut.  Well... we needed something to do with those cut leaves.  So for large group time we painted our arms and hands with brown paint (the kids LOVE having me paint their hands) and stamped them onto a blue piece of paper to make our tree trunk and branches.  Then glued our beautiful fall leaves onto our tree.

We also wrote "fall tree" on a piece of paper and glued it on top.  One day I will remember to take pictures of the final product.

sensory bin: Leaves

 

A simple sensory bin.  Fall leaves and scissors. 

 

Stay tuned to find out what we did with our cut leaves.

 

During the process I decided to see if the kids would be interested in putting together leaf puzzles.  Turns out they were not :).  ha ha.  You win some, you loose some!

water dropper tree

This art center had quite a lot of "lessons" for me.  First off I needed plain white paper towels.  I wanted something more absorbent - but the nice paper towels all had decorations.  So I went with the cheaper ones.  Granted I only went to one store - next time I will look harder for more absorbent ones.  These worked fine - but I think it would have worked better with thicker ones. 

Then I drew trees on the paper towels.  With out really thinking about it I just grabbed the nearest brown marker - it was a Crayola washable marker.  When they started adding their colored water the tree disappeared into the paint.  So I grabbed a brown permanent sharpie and traced over all the trees with that.  This time the tree didn't disappear. 

Next problem was drying.  I hung a "clothes line" with clothes pins to hang them to dry.  But the paper towels were not absorbent enough and the paint was tripping all over the carpet.  So I had to set up a whole table just for drying.  They weren't drying.... just sitting in a wet puddle.  I put a towel down and put the paper towel tree on top of the towel.  Problem solved.  What was left was beautiful fall paper towel trees.

With are at this age it is more about the process than the product.  I often have to remind myself of this.  All my kids started out by just putting "leaves" around the tree branches.  But once the branches were all filled up they didn't want to stop.  Even though they knew they could get another one (I always let them do as many as they want) they just wanted to fill it with color.  In the end almost every paper towel was covered in the colored water.  I hung them up once they were all dry and they were so beautiful - Sadly I forgot to take a picture... and even more sad I sent them all home.  I wish I would have kept them up for a few weeks.

leaf rubbings

During large group one day we tried leaf rubbings.  This was a whole process.  First we gathered leaves.  Then we sorted leaves.  Then we learned about the veins.  (that was in the morning).  Then in the afternoon we first had to tear the paper off of our crayons.  I did most of them but I left one or two for each kid to di it - I wanted them to know the process and it is great fine motor practice and a lesson in frustration! 

It actually took a good 10 minutes for each child to peel 2 crayons.  Then we rubbed the leaves onto crayons (no pictures I had to facilitate this process a lot).  At first we didn't tape the leaves on the paper - but in the end it turned out that we needed to tape the leaf on back of the paper first so it wouldn't move. 

Then we cut the leaves out.

Then we taped them onto cut paper towel rolls.  They loved their trees and the process.

dot a tree

A simple art activity.  I added markers so they could add some "details" to their drawings, animals, nests, berry, etc.

This one has a wood pecker, deer, and a nest.

 

This one has a hole for an owl and a deer family.

 

Some children don't like to dot - and that is just fine.  It is beautiful this way too.

Classroom trees

In our discussion of trees we had some "formal" tree activities and others not so formal. 

 

One, of course, was chicka chicka boom boom.  Remember in a previous post we made this tree at our art table.  Well today we put it together and read "chicka chicka boom boom".  I had previously put all the letters of the alphabet around the room.  We read it all the way through once.  Then we "acted it out" on our second reading by finding the letters, putting them off the tree, and then taking them off and re-hiding them when they fall off.  After they wanted to do it again.  So we did.  Some kids in my class know all their letters and sounds, some are still working on it.  This was a good opportunity to help in the practice in a formal way."

 

One day on the white board we had a tree and fall colored pom poms for leaves.

 

Another day I wrote up green letters for leaves.  Then I had leaf magnets with matching letters on them.  One day we "formally" put the matching letters on the tree.  Then next day it was a free choice activity.  I am also going to make leaves that have the matching lower-case letters.

Flowers

The girls and I went to the temple last week on Wednesday and it was the day the landscapers were ripping out all their summer flowers and putting in their winter flowers.  Megan asked if she could have some of the "millions of flowers" laying on the sidewalks.  They gave us a box and told us we could take what we wanted.  I of course wanted to find a way to incorporate it into preschool. 

 

I put them in containers.  Filled our sensory table with water.  Set out some vases and some scissors.  I had imagined that they would cut the flowers off at the heads and have them floating in our water.  Some did that.  But most arranged flowers in vases.

 

Making a Forest

 

We started our unit on fall with first discussing the forest and trees. I read a book called "Over in the Forest" and then showed them and passed around some treasures from the forest I had collected.  I had also collected some paint cards from Home Depot of different shades of browns and greens.  We spent some time making barks and sticks and trees and leaves and grasses with our different shades.  I also learned how to draw a tree.

Later in one of our centers I put our forest treasures and some yellow play dough in a bowl.  I didn't give any other instructions. 

They all found a way to "build their own forest" and were so proud of them . They each wanted a picture with their forest.

This year I only had three bowls, so they had to be taken apart after each child was finished.  The kids didn't mind - but they were so beautiful and creative I think next year I will have it so they can really make their own and take home.  I also wished I would have bought small forest animals to put in the bowls maybe some berries or something with color.

water beads

My kids (real children) love water beads, so I knew I wanted them in our preschool - but I was unsure about how to introduce them.  For our first introduction I just put them in the water with lots of tools to pur and scoop.

 

The kids seemed to think it was enough.

Seeds and journals

I can't believe I only have one picture for this process.  A few weeks ago we sprouted lima beans in a plastic bag and some wet cotton balls.  Truth be told I had never done this before, but I read several blog posts about it and figured we should give it a shot.  The kids loved the process of soaking the cotton balls, putting in their seeds, sealing the bags up, and hanging them in a window.  We pulled out our journals and drew the seeds as we "planted" them and started to watch them sprout.  We watched them for the space of 2 weeks.  In the end none of  them did great and several of them did nothing but get moldy.  We had some tears on our last day.  On one hand it is good to learn about science and seeds and failure.  One the other hand, no preschool teacher wants tears.

Perfect Square

For our large group time one day I read a book called "perfect square".  It is about a square that gets torn up into different shapes, but rearranges itself to make new shapes and pictures.  It is a beautiful book. 

 

We then took our own "perfect squares" and ripped them up and glued them onto a paper in our own new shapes and pictures.  In the end we had, mountains, streamers, flowers, and waterfalls, just to name a few.