Winter Week for Preschoolers - Part 3

Winter Week is winding down and so is winter in general it seems. Snow turned into rain here and there is now nothing left for sledding and snowmen. Thankfully, the kids spent quite a bit of time outdoors enjoying the wonders of winter sports and leisure. I present here the remainder of the indoor school activities Adrian and I worked on in this end of January.

 

Free the Penguins - Addition

Ooo. I was so excited to try this mat! I found it on mathwire and they had a variety of penguin mats (perfect for winter!). I chose the "sum of two dice" mat for Adrian and he was quite happy to try it out. Anything with dice gets his immediate attention. I like that this was a different die game. Two dice had to be rolled and then Adrian had to count the dots on both dice. That number would free the penguin on that ice floe! Now the penguins did not come with the mat so I had to research some clipart but it was worth it.  I printed mine thanks to Best Clipart Blog.

Snowflake & Scissors

Well this turned out to be a bit more complex than I thought it would be. I remember making snowflakes when I was a kid but making beautiful snowflakes requires lots of folding and as such the paper is so thick that even I had a tough time cutting through. As such, I folded Adrian's in half only and his snowflake was a minimalist one, not nearly as intricate as mine. Maybe a coffee filter would have been better! Adrian's scissor work is still in its early stages so the circle guidelines I had drawn became triangles as well.. Not quite ready for non sharp cuts yet.

Snowflake Pattern Making

THE brilliant idea I wish I had come up with! My patterns are always with stamps and stickers it seems and then there's this: felt snowflake making with pattern cards! Duh! Why didn't I think of that? Thankfully, Making Learning Fun did for me and the rest of us. There was still quite a bit of work involved, namely prepping the cards and cutting all the snowflake parts but it was SO worth it and Adrian quite enjoyed it. He likes novelty in school and that quite struck his fancy. I saw this idea on My Montessori Journey and followed the link back to Making Learning Fun to get the patterns.

Melt-an-ice-cube Game

I really wish we would have had time to do this game but we did not and since it was not as educational as some other activities, I had told myself I would put it out as a bonus IF we had time.  We did not. There's always next year anyway.  If you have time though, feel free to melt your own ice cubes and tell me what we missed! :) Instructions were found with the idea at My Montessori Journey (instructions were linked directly from MMJ to Humingbirded).

Go Sledding and Enjoy the rest of winter!

Winter Week for Preschoolers - Part 2

Although our family moves every few years, we usually happen to move to an area that gets to go through the seasons which is wonderful; especially for the children. I can still remember how excited Adrian and Zahavah were when they woke up to a few inches of snow in October. It was pure magic to them. That is exactly what I mean to bring into the "Classroom" with my winter theme this week. 

Writing in "snow" - shaving foam tray

I hesitated in between bringing out a pure white salt tray to represent snow or a shaving cream tray. In the end, having just done a colored salt tray, I went with shaving cream. I guess I was slightly over-enthuasistic over the foam because I put so much in the tray that we could barely trace anything so if you intend on replicating this idea...a little goes a long way! :) We used a baking pan to contain the foam and practiced tracing numbers this time. 

Painting with colored ice cubes

I thought this would be cool to try being that ice is something wintry but it didn't work out too well. Maybe I needed to put more food coloring drops into the ice cubes (I put a "very generous" 1 drop in each) but the colors were VERY muted when Adrian painted with them. I also had intended to put popsicle sticks in the ice cubes before they completely set so he could manipulate them without freezing his fingers but completely forgot I had put the ice tray in the freezer (mommy brain anyone?) so I improvised and added some fine motor skills to the art work: I added a pair of metal nutcrackers for Adrian to pick up the cubes and paint an abstract winter scene.

Matching snowflakes

These beautiful snowflakes cards can be used as a matching game and a memory game. I put them out only as a matching game. It was an EXCELLENT one too. These snowflakes are quite intricate and there are many of them too so Adrian really had to put his discrimination skills to work. I first saw them on Living Montessori Now I think and followed the link to PreKinders to get my own set.

Sequencing the life of a snowman

We do not do a lot of sequencing here yet but I feel we should start. Story re-telling and sequencing is important in literacy and it's kind of our first step towards this goal of developing these skills. These cards were so adorable I just had to use them. They were part of a HUGE winter package found on Oopsey Daisy.

Making a Playdough Snowman

Whether you can make a real one or now, making a playdough snowman is always a blast. I wasn't sure what to use for accessories but I was sure of one thing; we needed white dough! :) So I put out white playdough and then decided to braid some wool to make a scarf and finally gathered some twigs outside. Mini chocolate morsels (eyes), regular chocolate morsels (buttons), and slivers of baby carrot (nose) were also added to the basket for snowmen decorations. I think it turned out nicely, don't you?

Or making a real snowman if you can...

Being that it's winter in Germany, we do get to make real snowmen as well...Here is little Zahavah and big brother Adrian with their latest creation (with a major contribution from their daddy of course).

I'm linking up to Montessori Monday today!

Winter Week for Preschoolers - Part 1

Adrian loves school. Adrian looks forward to Mondays because he knows a new theme awaits him in what he affectionately calls "school with mama". This week was different. Adrian was not "done" with Outer Space and wanted to go on. He had no interest whatsoever in changing topics. A part of me felt happy because one of my goals had been reached: I had finally intrigued him into a new passion that did not revolve around trains! Yet I felt a bit sad. I had prepared interesting activities and so wished he would at least take a look at the trays I had put out. He eventually did when he saw me having fun hanging mittens on the clothesline and pretending to drop them...I still followed his lead and all week, he insisted on working more a bit on outer space before doing some winter related work...

Uppercase & lowercase matching of alphabet letters

Adrian has known his alphabet since before he was 2 (thank you Leapfrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet). He's also mastered the sound of the letters since he was 3 but I don't think I ever verified whether he knew his lower and uppercase letters. I guess I always assumed he knew. After seeing these cute snowmen cards featured on Pre-K + K Sharing, I thought I'd confirm my guess... Print your own set of cards at The Kids Place Home Daycare and Preschool. 

Arctic animals and ice floes 

My Montessori Journey had a similar activity featured on their blog and I thought it looked so fun! Unfortunately, I didn't have time to get my hands on an Arctic toob so I just used the Arctic animals we had at home from Fisher-Price. Bad idea! They had little holes at the bottom and water went in and won't come out now. Live and learn I guess. Prior to the activity I froze some ice in plastic cups and bowl to make ice floes for the animals but it melted really quickly. My son still had fun playing in the water while I explained a few things about arctic animals, ice floes, global warming, and such.

How many fish did the penguins eat?

A counting activity involving little penguins cards and "Goldfish" crackers. Each penguin had a number representing how many fish he had eaten and Adrian had to count them and put them in the penguin's belly. He had just enough in the bowl to fill the bellies. Penguin cards printed thanks to CatClipart.

Clothespins, clothesline and mittens

This activity was actually a lot harder than I thought it would be for Adrian. I thought he had mastered clothespins but it seems his fingers have lost some strength lately. He was having trouble again the day we did this activity. Making the clothespins open was tough, holding them open enough added another degree of difficulty and then holding them the right way was another story entirely. It was challenging. Add to that the fact that he had to pin a mitten TO a line. Boy! It was rough but he did it and was very proud. I made a makeshift clothesline with a string of wool at his height.

Tweezing "snowballs"

White pompoms & white cottonballs can easily pass as snowballs. I was intending on using white glitter pompoms but our storage room has been a mess ever since the holidays and finding school materials has been made near impossible. So I grabbed the first pompoms I saw and felt happy I at least managed to find something worthy of looking like a snowball! :) Add a pair of tweezers, two small bowls and tweeze it all!

I'm linking up to Living Life Intentionally Today!