A “Cool” Way to Paint! Penguins Love Colors by Sarah Aspinall explores what happens when six little penguins, tired of living in a world of snowy white, take matters into their own hands and give their Mama a colorful surprise! This book expands preschoolers’ color knowledge by tying each color to a different flower (which also…
winter
5 Snowman Books to Read Aloud to Preschoolers
Chilly toes and frosty fingers? These five snowman books are sure to warm every preschooler’s heart! Snowman Books for Preschoolers Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams Who-who-who is in the woods? That’s what the woodland animals want to know! The beautiful photography of Carl R. Sams is a delight for the eyes, while…
Light Table Snowflakes
“Of all the forms of water the tiny six-pointed crystals of ice called snow are incomparably the most beautiful and varied.” — Wilson Bentley (1865-1931) Make learning about science “cool” by inviting your students to make their very own shimmering snowflakes at the light table. This is a fantastic way to introduce a winter lesson…
Hot Drink Cafe
Children love to imitate real life. And what is more real than a parent, exhausted, stopping into a coffee shop for a caffeinated boost? Or a couple of moms, along with their preschoolers, on a coffee-and-cookie playdate? With this Hot Drink Café dramatic play center, children can pretend they are baristas and adults enjoying a…
Polar Bear Art Project
Preschool art can be tricky, can’t it? There is so much pressure (from Pinterest, from parents, perhaps even from other teachers) to have children make things that are “cute.” You know those projects that get a spot on the front of the refrigerator and maybe even make it into the scrapbook at home? But we’re the…
Sparkly Snow Paint
Last year, our neck of the woods got a ton of snow. Fifteen snow days, to be exact. I lost track of the number of delays. This year there hasn’t been a flake of snow in the sky, so we have to do a lot of winter art to make up for it! Sparkly Snow Paint…
Winter Name Art
Process art is such an important part of our preschool curriculum! When children are painting, cutting, collaging, molding, and drawing their brains are getting smarter and smarter. For many people (parents?!) process art is just not quite cute enough to be fridge-worthy. I get it, really I do. (I’m a mom, too, remember! I don’t need a…
Clean Mud
This week we cleaned the Insta-Snow out of our sensory table and decided to make clean mud to fill it up. We followed this simple recipe from Happy Hooligans, and it turned out great! It takes only 2 simple ingredients! The students took turns exploring the ivory soap with their senses. We touched it, observed…
Paper Strip Process Art
It really doesn’t take many fancy materials or a ton of time to set up a great process art project. For this creative activity, I cut a bunch of blue paper into long 1″ strips. We added some scissors, glue sticks and crayons and invited the little artists to get to work. It is always…
Penguin Process Art
Recently I was searching for ideas on how to incorporate more Process Art projects into our classroom. The temptation to make “cute” projects for display, or for the parents’ benefit is very strong. Most of these craft project require a lot of teacher preparation (cut out all of the pieces, make a model, etc.) and…