Seed Art

Today we learned about plants and seeds.
A little late, but better late than never!

So I'm really lucky because my mother-in-law gave me tons of seeds that she used in teaching.
We sorted seeds,
and Miss Sweetie made the cheesiest smile in the world.

 

I picked out the seeds that they would be familiar with,
{pumpkin, peas, and corn}

Then we did some seed art,
she chose the design,
and I helped her squeeze the bottle.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture,
but this was really great for her fine motor skills.
She really had to concentrate to put them in the right places.

So doing activities like this is like cross training children's writing skills.  Is great to do so young, so that when children are required to write a lot, they are not frustrated by their lack of the small muscles in their hand.

We had baby H. make one as well,
and he experimented with the tweezers,
if it's a tool, he wants to use it.

This was one of the best things my mother in law gave me,

When she student taught she made these sticks with the seed glued to it, and the seed pack.

This is M. studying the seeds and the sticks,

then we mixed them up, and she had a fun time matching them.



A Home for Hermit Crab

On with our ocean adventures!

Time to learn about Hermit Crabs...

We read the book, A Home for Hermit Crab

by Eric Carle

It is a cute story about a hermit crab who needs a new shell,

but he wants to decorate it,

so he goes around the ocean floor,

collecting things in the ocean that will make his shell more homey.

After we read the book we decided to make our own

 fancy hermit crab shell.

I pulled some colorful pages out of magazines.

and then she cut small pieces out.

I cut a square of contact paper, and taped it sticky side up.

You can see it taped to the blue file folder above.

You can find contact paper at the grocery store next to the shelf liners.

That made it so easy for her to cut out colorful pieces,

and stick them onto the paper to make a mosaic.

Then I painted her hand red,

to make it look like a hermit crab body.

After it dried,

I cut out the hand. 

I added some more contact paper on top,

 cut her magazine mosaic,

and drew a shell shape on top.

I think they turned cute!

Seriously this would be a great classroom craft.

super easy, and easy to make look great.

I know Mother's Day is past,

but this would be an easy way to make into

flower onto a Mom's Day card.

Just sayin'

:)



The Sense of Touch Scavenger Hunt

I think learning about the sense of touch was our most fun day so far in learning about the five senses.

And it also took the most work to get it ready.

Funny how that seems to work!

I started out with these materials:

 

Something scratchy, rough, bumpy, slick, and soft.

And while they watched PBS I cut them into smaller squares.

Then we went down to the classroom and got learning!

We started with the sense of touch book called

Touching By Sharon Gordon.

I had them sit the textured mats while we read,

afterwards I turned on some fun music,

pulled their shoes off and let them feel the different textures with their feet while they danced.

I kept repeating the texture vocabulary words,

Bumpy, rough, scratchy, soft, slick and smooth.

so she would be ready for the scavenger hunt.

They got to play in the texture sensory table.

I had her close her eyes and had her guess what texture she was feeling.

Then they played for about 10 minutes while I set everything up.

We put on blind folds on both of them so they could focus on the textures they were touching.

She couldn't move until I told her what texture to step onto.

The texture scavenger hunt lead up the stairs,

and into the dining room, where we had a bag filled with a little left over Valentines day candy.

We did this twice, so we didn't waste all that square cutting,

I also saved the squares to pull this out on a rainy day.

We went back down and I let them create a texture collage.

They pretty much had free reign to use whatever materials they had played with and glue in onto their paper.

She had so much fun cutting and creating.

Don't you love how it turned out?

I was inspired by Teach Preschool to make a collage.

Go here to see my pinterest board on the 5 Senses.

Here are some of my past posts that would work well with discovering the sense of touch:

Tree Painting
Where we used different tree branches to paint a picture of a tree.


Dinosaur Dig
Where she dug up the letters of her name.
 

Worm Painting
Where we used colored worms (spaghetti noodles) to paint a picture.


Indoor Igloo
Where we brought snow inside to make an igloo.

Here are all of my posts on the Five Senses: