Earth Day for Preschoolers - Part 3

When I sat down to prepare some activities for Earth Day week, I was afraid I might not have enough for the week but can you believe I actually prepared "Types of Pollution" Nomenclature cards that Adrian and I did not have a chance to go over during Earth Day Week? I guess there was a lot more to do than I thought.  One thing is sure, Earth Day or not, you know what they say, "Everyday should be Earth Day" so maybe I'll pull them out later... :)

Homemade Wind Farm

I bought these cute (and working) toothpick pinwheels two years ago. I thought I'd use them during a summer themed week but thought again when weather week dropped by. In the end, I couldn't think of how to use them but knew exactly how to if it came to Earth Day week: make a wind farm. Using a thick styrofoam board I had kept from packaging, Adrian would simply poke them in so they wouldn't touch one another, in neat rows, and blow on them to see if his farm worked. And it did! He might not remember but he was born in Denmark, one of the leading countries in terms of offshore wind farms and he saw them daily on our walks by the sea.

Endangered Species : Clay Sea turtle in Coral Reef

I really had planned on spending more time talking about endangered species and showing pictures of them but time went by fast. And we did do a lot of talking too. And we did see a lot of cards too. So...I thought we'd talk and craft a bit instead. My goal was to introduce clay this week. Clay is natural and comes from Earth so it was a perfect timing for this. I would have loved to find a source of clay here but did not so I bought a tub from Crayola instead. Then, I told Adrian we'd make a sea turtle (one of the simplest animals to make in my mind) with the clay. He tried pretty hard to model his after mine (see his on the right) but gave up after it broke up and just rolled the rest of the clay. While we worked the clay, we talked about how clay felt and how it came from Earth but also about endangered species. We let the clay projects dry for 3 days and painted them then. Adrian decided that his should all be blue. I told him it reminded me of coral. He liked the idea and made my sea turtle "swim" through it all.

Clay Project before painting

Yogurt Cup & Pompom Counters

I don't know about your children but mine are avid yogurt eaters in the morning. Zahavah eats a great color combo of Danone's/Danon's children's yogurt while Adrian sticks to yellows and oranges. In no time, I had accumulated a nice set of colorful cups for my Earth Day cups and counters. I used small pompoms for counters and for number markers, the back of a cereal box cut to pieces. Of course, these tiny cups won't contain much but they were still challenging because they were so small and light. If I remember right, these are called Danonino pretty much worldwide except in Germany but they look the same pretty much anywhere in the world anyway...

Stacking Recyclable Yogurt Cups

While you've got the yogurt cups out...why not stack them into a pyramid? Or several kinds of pyramids? The idea is to play with recyclables; to reuse them in fun ways. This was definitely fun...until I saw the kids trying to do the same next morning with cups that still had yogurt in... :)

We finally received our Moveable Alphabet...and no this is not Earth Day Related... :)

A long while ago, I ordered from KidAdvance a small set of Moveable Alphabet. Well folks, it is here! Our first package got lost but the second made it in a timely fashion so during Earth Day week, we tested it out. I had Adrian match the moveable alphabet to the Sandpaper Letters. No trouble there. Moving on to the next Moveable Alphabet exercise in my book... :)

Masca, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, aka Paradise on Earth
MY favorite place on the planet is indeed the Canary Islands. 
Don't look for me anywhere else after I retire...that is where I'll be! :)

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

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!

Earth Day for Preschoolers - Part 2

For Earth Day week, I focused on using recyclables for my activities with Adrian. I tried to make our trays look as colorful and attractive as usual but I tried to proved to him that we could reuse some of our things he called "trash". It ended up being a whole lot of fun AND a rather inexpensive thematic! :)

Wine corks and Earth push pins

I bought these cute push pins in the bargain sections of Michaels two years ago and believe it or not, completely forgot I even had them. :) My idea was to have Adrian use them on a cork board and pin "some pieces of paper" on with them. Unfortunately, we don't have a cork board...but we do have lots of corks! In the end, it became a fine motor activity with the small rubber pins and small corks.  Rather cute too if you ask me.

Corks and Earth; a fine motor experience

Coming Up with Ideas on How to Reuse Common Objects

Ever heard of Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (part of TTCT)? I remembered reading in Psychology Today that most school-aged children were WAY less creative than they were 20 years ago and somehow I was pretty sure my kid was in that lot. Earth Day. Reusing. Let's give that task an informal "try" I thought. I presented Adrian with a newspaper we picked up while traveling. What can we do with a newspaper? I knew he'd say he could read it. I was hoping he'd find other uses. He couldn't. I suggested wrapping objects in them such as when we move. He liked the idea. We searched a bit more but he couldn't think of anything else. I didn't push. We moved on to the fork. Eating was his first answer. Then, nothing. I made a motion like I was combing my hair but he thought it was wrong yet funny. Even funnier was me pretending to use the fork as a launcher. The sock, to Adrian, was to be exclusively worn on his sister's foot. *sigh* No sock puppet? Really? No polishing of window or anything? Well, I guess we'll be working on creative/divergent thinking from now on... :)

Uppercase and Lowercase Milk Caps Matching

I'm sure you've seen this before. We've just never done it before (oh the ideas I save for the sake of a theme!). Save lots of milk caps and write lowercase letters and their matching uppercase counterparts on them and have your child match them up. We're huge milk drinkers here but even two weeks did not give me that many pairs. Nevermind that...I'm still saving them for next year! :)

Giant Earth Day Dot-to-Dot Mural using a Box to be Recycled

Dot-to-dots are always fun. A giant dot-to-dot? Now that is extra fun. Since our theme was Earth day, I reused a giant box I was planning on putting in our recycle bin and opened it up flat. Drew some Earth Day drawings and numbered some dots and it was ready for Adrian. I chose to tape mine on the wall because I've been reading that it helps children achieve a proper grip on their pen when it comes to writing. Anything to help! :)

Papier Mache Earth Balloon Globe

Well this was a LONG craft for a preschooler. I intended on using a smaller balloon but Adrian insisted on using the bigger one. Umpf. Anyhow, the idea came to me from a post I had seen on Our Day Your Journey. She, like us used a balloon, covered it with squares of newspaper and homemade glue (1 cup of flour mixed with 2 cups of water), let is dry overnight and finalized with squares of blue and green silk paper the next day and a new batch of homemade glue. Using a 5" balloon would have been plenty but Adrian really wanted to use the 12" so I helped him a bit otherwise, I think we'd still be covering the balloon. :) After the balloon dried, I intended on popping the balloon so it'd "sit" but Adrian was afraid his hard work would "deflate" so I didn't but you could. The proof? His balloon fell the next day and the balloon "popped" and it is still well shaped to this day. I suggested poking small holes all over the "land" and inserting a battery operated candle inside so his Earth would look illuminated but he told me it would damage his "friend Earth". :)

Craft in Progress

Møns Klint, Denmark and its beautiful chalk cliffs on the Baltic; 
Although Adrian was born in Denmark, he never saw this magical place; He went there while in utero! 
(yes, I did hike this at 5 months pregnant...thankfully, there were stairs! :))

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Your comments make my day ! 

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

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!

Earth Day for Preschoolers - Part 1

Earth Day will be celebrated worldwide on April 22 this year again. You may wonder what a preschooler can do to celebrate the planet or even how much can be understood about this big celebration. I am presenting here, in three parts, what we did last week, in honor of Mother Earth. 

Coffee Filter Planet Earth - Art, Ecology and Fine Motor

This was by far the easiest/fastest craft of the week and I'm still amazed at the result. I mean, doesn't this just look like Earth in space? Of course, Adrian is just short of obsessed with the planets so the mention of an "Earth" craft just won him over before we even started. You'll need a coffee filter, a blue and green marker, a spray water filled with water and a black construction sheet of paper. To help Adrian in his proportions of blue versus green, I showed him a picture of Earth in Space. He quickly saw he'd need only a tiny amount of green and proceeded to color with the green marker first and filled in the rest with blue. When all the white was covered, a fine mist of water was sprayed by Adrian over the coffee filter and we then let it dry. When it was completely dried, we glued it on the sheet of paper. The idea was "given" to me by The Techy Teacher.

A little talk about Recycling, Reusing, Reducing and the other "Rs"

It certainly feels like we did a lot of talking and crafting during Earth Day week. The sheet your see above contained the main points I wanted to mention to Adrian about the "Rs". It used to be the 3 "Rs" when I was growing up but it looks like they've come up with a lot more lately. I tried to explain and give examples of those "Rs" to Adrian. We went over "reducing", "reusing", "recycling", "rethinking", and "renewing". We covered that the first day so that he would understand how the rest of the activities would tie in later.

Sorting Recyclables

Sorting recyclables is a BIG part of our daily life now that we live in Germany. (We did recycle when we lived in NY but not nearly as much as we do here.) The big box pictured above was filled with different things that are recyclable here and I simply put them in the box for Adrian to sort into "paper", "plastic", "metal", or "glass" recyclable groups. The task was actually much harder than I thought it would be. He was very excited to see the box and the content but deciding what went were was tougher. In his head, it was all "trash" because it was empty. I guess he never really paid attention to how I sort the "trash". :) In the end, we explored the materials more and it became more sensorial and he started understanding the task better. Glass was easiest of course. When all the groups were sorted, Adrian helped me put all the paper in the blue bin, all the plastic in a "Gelbe Sack" (yellow bag provided for all plastic, styrofoam, tetra pack, etc), all the glass and metal in plastic bags ready to be carried to the deposit bins at our street corner. (Adrian loves hearing the glass break when we insert the bottles in the big deposit bins!) :)

Sorted Recyclables : Paper, Plastic, Metal, Glass

Deforestation-Inspired Craft using Recyclables and Nature

I really wanted to talk about deforestation to Adrian but it seemed like a heavy topic for a preschooler. I figured if we did it while we crafted, it might be go down easier. I matched the talk to this "forest" craft made with a broken up "branch" and recyclables (toilet paper roll, green construction paper and Styrofoam board taken from a package we had just gotten). I has seen this project made on a canvas with fall colors and it was just beautiful. Now here, I simplified it since a preschooler is doing it for Earth Day (really wanted to use recyclables and really had to skip a glue gun in favor of masking tape!) and it's Spring (just green please!) but still, the result it beautiful. For a step-by-step,visit Revolutionaries. It's actually easy but will require overnight drying.

Craft in Progress

The beauty of Earth Nomenclature

Adrian loves Earth. He already does his part in helping Earth but I really wanted him to see how beautiful the world is to make him want to do his part even more when it comes to recycling and such. One night, I sat down and prepared these cards showing the beauty of Earth. I based my selection mostly on the Natural Wonders of World. The cards pictured above are only a few of the ones I made by the way. Hey, this is also a great cultural tool! :)

Prins Christian Sund, Greenland ; one of the most beautiful places I had the chance to visit

Adrian did get to experience one of the most beautiful places on Earth when he was a mere 15 months old; the ice polar caps and glaciers of Greenland. I can honestly say it was the most peaceful place I had ever been. The quietest and the darkest at night too. The air was also of the purest. If you haven't been, this should definitely be on your bucket list! ;)

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Your comments make my day ! 

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Today, I'm happily linking up to

Montessori Monday, The Kids Co-Op, Show-and-Share Saturday, Link & Learn, TGIF, Share it Saturday, Mom's Library, The Sunday Showcase, Sun Scholars's For the Kids Friday, Stress-Free Sunday, Thursday Toddler & Preschool, Tuesday Tots, Preschool Corner &5K, Discover and Explore, and We Made That.

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!