Candy Week for Preschoolers - Part 2

Candy Week! Should I have included all sweets?  I thought it'd be fine if I just stuck to pure candy since the concept is  so large. I wish we would have had time to do more but I do prefer doing things well and enjoying them over rushing things and doing more. This week would have been perfect for tasting bottles again for example and pretending that they are candy extract. It would have been a perfect time for smelling bottles too for the same reasons but we all know I still haven't accumulated enough spice bottles yet! :) So here is what we did instead...

Playdough Candy - Art & Fine Motor

Don't these look yummy? I personally made these for the picture but Adrian made the ones pictured below. The reason why is simple: I'm currently trying to strengthen his hands () so every so often we'll be, working with Theraputty instead of play dough. Theraputty is pretty much Silly Putty...with a very important twist...it comes in different strengths. I got him a jar of medium firmness for now and wow, towards the end of the 9th candy, it was getting a bit difficult. The stretching of the putty, the "cutting" the shaping, and finally the "candy" wrapping and twisting of the wax paper? Quite the workout. But you know what? He loves working with Theraputty so you'll be seeing more of this stuff.

Theraputty Candy - add an extra challenge!

Gummy Bear Patterning - Math

Using Haribo's Tropical Gummy Bear variety, I started a pattern on a plate which Adrian then had to pursue. I always encourage him to say it out loud: "red bear, yellow bear, red bear, yellow bear,..." as a way to make it rhythmic. That rhythm always helps him find out what comes next.

Write your name in chocolate chips - Literacy & Fine Motor

I bet your name has never sounded so yummy! :) I personally wrote Adrian's name on cards and then let him organize the cards in order to form his name (he can spell it). The last task was for him to place chocolate chips on top of his name. He had to place them the way he would write the letters of course. 

Lollipop Color Tablets - Sensorial & Math

Ah the Montessori color tablets. *sigh* I've been longing to buy them but never could justify spending that kind of money for something used "so little". Then I thought of making them with the paint samples from a hardware store but could never bring myself to "stealing" the samples knowing very well I wasn't going to buy these paint colors. In the end, Adrian is 4.5 years old, he knows his colors pretty well so I never really bothered any more than that until two weeks ago when an idea germinated in my head: lollipop color tablets! Candy week was coming! Lollipops come in many colors and I had this big stack of felt in 40 colors! I quickly set to work and came up with my own set of color tablets. Now of course, the "real" color tablets are serious business with three different sets and a proper way to be handled. Mine are more on the fun side and well, I presented all 40 colors to Adrian since he's older but when I present these to Zahavah, I'll probably present set "1" first (blue, yellow, red only) and then move on to set 2 and finally set 3.  Adrian did pretty good matching the lollies adjusting his mistakes as he went. I then asked him to group them the lollies into color families and to finally organize them within their families from darkest to lightest. 

Smarties Graphing - How many Smarties in One Tub?

Unless you live in the U.S., finding a tub (or box for my Canadian friends) of Smarties should not be too hard. This made this exercise quite easy to put together. I printed the graph here on Life on Canterbury Lane and then, using the entire tub of Smarties, Adrian put one of each color at the bottom and then sorted the rest. He finally counted them all (just because he likes to count everything) and tasted one of each (just because he could). I guess this could be done with M&Ms or Skittles. Any colorful candy would work in fact. I simply used Smarties because we do have these on hand every so often. I quite fancy them...even if they are not as colorful as they were in my youth! :)

M & M Dissolving Race - Cold VS. Hot

Will an M&M dissolve faster in cold or hot water? Have your child guess and then find out but having  him or her drop a candy in a cold tub and a hot tub. Adrian thought it was a pretty exciting race. (He also really liked how the M&M  dropped on the side of the bowl made an entire circle by the time it had completely lost its red coat.) After seeing how the candy produced such beautiful colored water, we decided to make paint out of it  by dropping more red M&Ms and then making other "paint" colors. See my previous post on Candy Week for the beautiful results. Original idea: Mamas Like Me.

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Today, I'm happily linking up to:

Living Montessori Now, B-Inspired Mama, I can Teach my Child, No Time for Flashcards, and

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!

Candy Week for Preschoolers - Part 1

Candy Week? What was I thinking? Oh wait! I remember! Candy is something so easy to find here in Germany and thus, I have access to so many more manipulatives for my trays! Or do I? I think I might have overlooked one great detail this week: we don't eat much candy at all in this household. As such: what manipulatives was I thinking about? Sure candy is available at the store but what a shame to buy pounds of candy to play with and not eat later! In the end, my idea wasn't so bright after all but the week sure was fun and Adrian loved candy week because let's face it: what's sweeter than tasting a new kind of candy every school day?

Counting gum balls

Would obviously have been much cooler done with real gum balls. I later found some in our local grocery store but then again, I'd have to chew them all later, right? (Gum in my book is not safe for the under 6) Also, I would have had to somehow raise the edge of my "machine" so as to not have the balls roll around. For this exercise, I was practicing counting and oral memory. I would call a number in between 0 and 30 and Adrian then had to count the right amount of pompoms and  fill the gum ball machine. I'd repeat the number only once. The graphic (which can be printed in a HUGE size according to the author) was a freebie found on Plum Adorable. Like her, I used pompoms but we didn't glue ours! :)

Lacing - Making a "Life Savers" Bracelet

Lacing a great activity many preschools practice. This one is  nice variation with a pipe cleaners...and Life Savers. I did take the candy out of the wrappers for Adrian by the way.

"Life Savers" Bracelet Modeled by Adrian

Marshmallow Magic - Turning a Mini Marshmallow into a Regular Marshmallow

So I was all out of the regular sized of marshmallows! How sad is that? I asked Adrian if he thought we could turn the mini marshmallows into bigger ones? With a puzzled but most certain look, he blurted out a "no". Needless to say, it was the answer I was looking for. Exploratorium (and many other resources as well I'm sure) will guide you through a very neat experiment quadrupling the size of marshmallows! Being that it was candy week, I just had to pull this one. Adrian could not believe his eyes. The mini marshmallows were turning into "jumbo" ones right in front of him. Not only that, but poking the freshly microwaved white "things" and then waiting a minute to poke them again made a huge difference in their textures. Hey, Easter is coming..you guys can also try it with Peeps! ;)

Pretend Play? Candy Store involving scooping, tweezing, weighing and more

Adrian is very well grounded in reality. He has never liked dressing up and actually has a hard time making up stories. Pretend play is just not his thing. When I prepared this activity, I was very well aware that this would look like pretend play to him so I had to make a conscious effort of having specific tasks! :) As such, Adrian had a "shopping list" on which he found a list of 4 candy listed. Next to each of them was written a number and that number corresponded to the amount of grams needed for each type of candy. Adrian then had to use the utensil found in the candy dish to fill a candy bag and weigh that bag on the scale until he had the right amount of candy noted on the shopping list. I did have to prompt him for the first bag as to how to get a bigger number of grams on the scale and then how to reduce it after he had put too many M&M. After that, it was all pure fun to him to see the numbers go and down.

Shopping List

M&M...50g

Smarties...38g

Gummies...10g

Life Savers...60g 

Candyland Board Game

Now you may think that playing a board game such as Candyland is not exactly the best way to teach anything but board games are actually pretty good at teaching a child to take turns, especially when they have no siblings and/or are being homeschooled. They can also teach a child to be a good sport and well, a game such as Candyland will teach a younger child quite a bit about colors and about counting from 1-6. When Adrian was "little" and I "taught" him Pre-Pre-K, we played a different board game every week to get his social skills developed. Candyland was his favorite. Now we didn't get to play this week but it would have fitted right in.

Painting with M & Ms

Didn't do much art this week. I don't think Adrian noticed. Not his cup of tea. :) He did enjoy the above paint though! Mind you: Not this actual painting, but the paint! :) We made it with M&Ms after completing a "science" activity I'll be blogging about tomorrow...So stay tuned so learn all about how this paint came to be...

Today, I'm happily linking up to:

Living Life Intentionally, Sugar Aunts, Teach Beside Me, Golden Grasses,  True Aim Education, Hey Mommy Chocolate Milk, Chicken Babies, Life with Moore Babies, Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas, Here Comes the Girls, Inspiration Laboratories, The Iowa Farmer's Wife, and Train Up a Child.   

If you would like me to link up with you, please don't hesitate to ask, it might take me a week or two, but I generally do!