Fabulous Fine Motor Activities

Fine motor activities are such an important part of the early childhood experience.  Fine motor activities do not have to be nor should they be confined to the table.  By adding dolls, doll clothes, and dress up clothes children have the opportunity to practice snaps, zippers, and buttons.  They are not only working those small muscles, they are also practicing self help skills.  Even simple finger plays and sign language help develop fine motor skills.  Clay is also a wonderful way to incorporate fine motor skills into your classroom.  I like to make different scents of play dough or add items to it so it has a variety of textures. These are a few of the fine motor activities I have put out at the table. 

 Normally, I try to make my own activities, but I found this cute bee in the hive game on http://www.amazon.com/PlanToys-Plan-Preschool-Bee-Hive/dp/B003COZJXO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1380568688&sr=8-1&keywords=preschool+bee+hive+gameand had to have it for Bee week! 

 We used this during Apples week, the kids put cloves in the apple.

 Using tweezers to put apples on the tree

 This is a favorite fine motor activity, I put it out during Colors week or when I'm struggling to find a fine motor activity.  The tweezers aren't pictured, but they use them to drop the pom poms into the matching tube.  I painted the tubes myself, but you can buy them pre colored at craft stores. 

Marble transfer, we used this during Space week.  The kids used a melon baller to put a marble into each section of a clean egg carton. 

Fall...Fabulous Fall!!

Holy Cats Batman!!  I can't believe I haven't blogged since March!!  As always it's been crazy busy at The Owls Nest and at my house in general!  Summer was tons of fun as we explored the ocean, the rainforest, bugs, ice cream, and possibly the coolest theme ever, Mad Science!!  Our Mad Science theme deserves its very own post...it was that awesome!!
Our academic year started the first week of August and we kicked the year off right with our Back to School theme, followed by All About Me, and Colors.  We implemented share days, so the kids can bring something special from home to share with the group.  The Owlets think it's pretty cool and they do a great job of sharing their treasures.  I try to ask questions, one of them being "Where did you get your ____________?"  The answer...from all of them...is always...."From my home!"  Well, yes you are correct, that treasure did come from your home!!  I love conversations between 3 year olds...they are the best! 
Finally, we have made it to Fall...my favorite time of year.  The temperatures aren't as miserable, although, I would welcome a day in the low 70's compared to the mid 80's...the leaves are turning,  pumpkin patches are opening, the wonderful smell of pumpkin is filling the air...oh so many reasons it's my favorite time of year!!  I also think the best preschool themes rear their heads in the fall...apples, pumpkins, popcorn..This week we are doing our Apple theme!  This is probably one of my favorite themes during the year.  I only wish there was an apple orchard close by so that I could take the Owlets to pick their own apples!  That would be a wonderful adventure for us! 

 This is our Apple sensory tub. It is full of oatmeal, cinnamon sticks, and plastic apples.  I added spoons, scoops, and bowls.

 Welcome to The Owls Nest Orchard!

 This is quickly becoming a favorite table tray activity.  Sticking cloves into an apple...smells amazing!

Dramatic Play Apple Orchard.  I added an  apple tree so customers can pick their own apples, added baskets of plastic apples, jugs labeled "Apple Cider", a pretend apple pie, bowls, cups, forks, and a cash register with scale. 

Intriguing Leaves and Dramatic Play

Dramatic Play

Intriguing Leaves

My dramatic play area was giving me a time this week...what could I do for fall?  I thought about adding fake leaves and plastic rakes and having the kids rake the leaves...maybe adding plastic fall vegetables and having the kids make a fall meal...then it hit me...Farmer's Market!  So last night after giving my little Owlets a bath I made pumpkins out of paper bags, newspaper, and orange paint.  I moved the bench to my dining room table to the dramatic play area to serve as the table, added the pumpkins, the apple cider jugs and apples from our apple theme, and some pretend fruits and veggies.  The Owlets had a great time serving up apple cider and selling fruit and vegetables to each other! 
Our art activity for the day was pretty simple, but created a unique masterpiece.  I cut out leaf shapes from magazines and my hubby drew a simple tree shape on paper.  The kids glued the leaf shapes onto the tree! 
In group time we played a color matching game, I drew a tree (a very pathetic looking tree) onto poster board labeled it with yellow, brown, red, and orange dots, and had it laminated.  I took it to Office Depot because my little laminating machine that I love and am so glad I have will not handle poster board..the nice lady there laughed at my sad little tree!  Anyway, I cut leaves out of red, yellow, brown, and orange construction paper, laminated them, and cut them out.  The Owlets picked a leaf and taped it to the coordinating dot.  When all the leaves were on it, it was beautiful and not as sad looking! 
I added colored pencils and paper to the writing area along with some cards with fall words and matching pictures on them. I encouraged the Owlets to try and copy the letters off the cards or to draw a picture of what was on the card. 

There are more fall adventures awaiting us tomorrow...hopefully a nature walk to look for leaves, acorns, and pine cones for our discovery trays if the rain goes away!  :)

Fall is in the Air

The Tree I put in Dramatic Play

  Fall...I love fall...all things fall!  The colors, the smells, football (Roll Tide), the flavors, the crispness in the air, sweaters, and big, tall boots!  Fall and leaves are one of my favorite themes to do in school.  This weekend I have been busy creating fall in my classroom!  My hubby and I put together a tree and spent yesterday afternoon cutting out leaves an adding them to the bare branches.  I think it turned out pretty cute!
I have been coloring leaves, cutting out leaves, and laminating like crazy!   I had a lot of this stuff from before, but most of it got lost in the last three moves, so I started over!
 One of the activities we will be doing is a leaf memory game.  This activity was a favorite of the kids in my classroom when I taught before, so I went back to it!  I found it in The Mailbox Magazine from October/November 2003...wow!  My hubby drew the tree for me, but I photocopied the leaf cards and colored them myself...red, yellow, green, brown, and orange.  This is a great memory game!
I think one of the activities I am looking most forward to is the lovely leaf match!  I made twenty leaves from scrapbook paper, laminated them, and cut them out. The kids will match them based on pattern.
I have many more activities planned for our centers, group times, and special activities.  Pictures and details to come!  It's going to be a fabulous fall week! :)

My hubby drew this awesome tree for me so we can play a leaf memory game!

Leaf lacing cards

Leaf Match 

Our Little Farm

So here it is...our little Owls Nest farm!  I love the barn, it's just so cute!   I added a weather vane to the top and then some scenery.  I made the grass with green construction paper and the hay bales with empty boxes that I wrapped in yellow construction paper.  I made a mental note to use bulletin board paper next time, it will be so much easier!  The other props I added include straw hats, flannel shirts, overalls, stick horses, stuffed farm animals, and a couple of tractors!  The Owlets are having so much fun in the Dramatic Play area this week!  I love being able to change up the look of the room to fit our theme!

Getting Ready to go to the Farm

I spent most of the weekend getting ready for our farm theme!  My vision for my barn was way different then what I ended up with, but sometimes you just have to roll with it! I had a grand vision of a large cardboard box cut and painted to look like a barn, standing in a corner surrounded by animals.  My hubby went out searching for a big box, but couldn't find one and the one I dug out of the garage was too small.  So, instead of my grand vision I got a red piece of poster board that my awesome hubby cut into a barn shape and that I painted doors, windows, and trim on.  Even though it isn't exactly what I had in mind, I think it turned out pretty cute!  I'm excited to put it up and get our farm ready for the week! 

Apples Aplenty!

Our apple tree and apple orchard sign (dramatic play)

Apples and basket match (math)

Picking apples off the apple tree with tweezers (fine motor)

Mother Goose on the Loose!

Our theme for this week is Nursery Rhymes!  The Owlets enjoy nursery rhymes, so I thought this would be a wonderful unit.  There are so many fantastic rhymes, but we are only focusing on four (we took Monday off), Humpty Dumpty, Sing a Song of Sixpence, Little Miss Muffet, and Jack and Jill. 
Yesterday we focused on Little Miss Muffet.  After reading the rhyme, I read the morning message to the Owlets, "Why was Little Miss Muffet frightened?"  After explaining what frightened was, the Owlets said with conviction that "She was scared because their was a spider that sat by her and wanted her food."  Then it was center time.  Here are what the centers have to offer this week:

Language/Literacy: I wrote the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill on sentence strips twice.  I placed one set in the pocket chart, skipping a line between the strips.  I cut the other strips and placed them next to the pocket chart.  The object is for the Owlets to place the cut out words in the empty spaces underneath the matching words.

Dramatic Play: There is a lot going on in our dramatic play area this week!  The Owlets will be hanging laundry on a clothesline (made with yarn), I added doll clothes to the prop box for them to hang.  I added bowls, spoons, rolling pins, plates, and pie plates in the prop box so the Owlets can make pies.  Finally, I will be adding props so the Owlets can be doctors.  I am incorporating fine motor into this center as well by using the clothespins. 

Gross Motor:  I added a candle cut out to three different heights of wooden blocks, the Owlets jump over them.

Math: I made ten cat cutouts and ten mitten cutouts.  I numbered the mittens and the kittens 1-10.  the object is that the Owlets match the mittens to the kittens.

Blocks: The Owlets are building walls and putting plastic eggs on them.

Our letter of the week is E.  The story we are reading is an awesome classic, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.  We are doing some pretty cool activities related to this book and the Owlets used their hand prints to make elephants! 

So far in art the Owlets have made spiderwebs after saying Little Miss Muffet and added a plastic spider ring and today we made crowns after reading Sing a Song of Sixpence. 

The Owls Nest Returns to Earth

It's been an exciting week going through our Outer Space unit!  The Owlets have had a lot of fun and some new experiences that I hope made an impression on them.  Sadly, we have wrapped up our space theme and returned to Earth today.  The last day is space was certainly a fun one.  The Owlets painted with sponges and gray paint on a round sheet of white paper, the texture of the sponge resembles the texture of the moon.  They also did a little mining for moon rocks.  I crumpled up pieces of aluminum foil and hid them in sand.  The Owlets used tongs to move the sand around and take them out, then they explored the moon rocks with a magnifying glass.  Of course, this activity could be done with actual small stones!  I showed them how craters form and they got to take turns making craters in the sand.  It's so much fun to drop a big rock in sand and see the dents it makes!  The other centers were open as well, they have spent a lot of time at the pocket chart singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and pointing to the words with the star pointers!  We had a fabulous week! 

The Owls Nest will not be operating on Monday September 3rd, 2012.  I hope everyone enjoys their long Labor Day weekend!  Have fun and be safe!!

Out of This World Art

Yesterday we got a late start on school and ended up doing activities after Clever Owl got home for the day.  Our art activity was pretty cool, the Owlets (even Clever Owl) made a moonrock!  These are so simple but are fun to make and they look pretty awesome displayed during Outer Space week.  All you need is aluminum foil, black paint, and gold and/or sliver glitter.  The Owlets crumpled up the aluminum foil into a loose ball and painted it black then they rolled it in silver glitter.  We put them in a box and labeled it "Moonrocks".  We read Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, I'm Off to the Moon before we did this activity and then I showed them the page in the book that showed a box of moonrocks!

I revamped the control panel board that is in our Dramatic Play center for the week.  I covered a tri-fold board with aluminum foil and glued the pictures from the previous board to the new board.  The Owlets are loving being astronauts! 

Blast Off

This week we learning about outer space!  I am a serious space enthusiast, so I love this theme!  Recently I ordered a book from Amazon www.amazon.com, it is a Mailbox book called Prop Box Play, I was especially excited to see the awesome space themed prop box that was included in this book!  I have been preparing all weekend for this unit, cutting out stars and programming them with letters and numbers, creating and collecting props, and everything else that goes along with getting a unit ready.  Papa Owl was quite confused when I asked if he had any MRE's or emergency blankets I could have for my prop box!  I made a control panel for our space shuttle by folding a piece of poster board into three equal parts.  I glued on some lids and caps, but you could also use spools. I found pictures of a speedometer, clock, view of the Earth from a shuttle, and a control panel, printed them off and glued them to my poster board.  I also drew on some windows and controls.  In my space prop box I added backpacks, flashlights, water bottles, a magnifying glass, and tongs.  I am looking for things to use as space helmets, space suits, and astronaut food! This is our Dramatic Play activity for the week!  The Owlets had fun being astronauts today, flying the space shuttle, and doing space walks!  Hopefully tomorrow they will get to find some moon rocks!
I finally got my pocket chart hung up and it is getting used all this week for a literacy activity.  I wrote the words to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star on sentence strips and placed them in the chart.  I made glittery star wands to use as pointers and the Owlets can use the wands to point to the words while singing the song.  Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star is one of the Owlets favorite songs so you can imagine how much they enjoyed this activity.
Our letter for the week is "N".  So, we made nests our of brown lunch bags.  The Owlets glued three blue pom poms into the nest to look like little eggs.  Since we are trying to do a hand print craft for every letter, the Owlets used their thumbs to make a thumb print necklace.  
Art: I put white tempera paint into spray bottles and added water.  The Owlets sprayed the mixture onto black paper to create a solar system.  We did this activity outside because paint ends up everywhere!
Math: I cut out 20 star shapes, on 10 of them I wrote the numbers 1-10 and on the other ten I placed dots for each number.  The idea is to pick a star, count the dots, and find the matching star.  I laminated the stars for durability. 
Writing: I cut out 16 star shapes and programmed them with some of the letters we have been working on and some new letters.  The Owlets were encouraged to find the matching pairs of letters.  Again, I laminated the stars for durability!
Blocks: I found pictures of the International Space Station, the moon, and the solar system, I printed them out, laminated them, and put them in the block area with some play people.  The Owlets built space shuttles and sent their play people off to new planets, the moon, and the space station.
Fine Motor: I incorporated a Montessori activity into our fine motor center for the week.  I put out two bowls of water and some sponges.  The Owlets squeezed the water from the sponges out of one bowl of water into the other bowl.
This was a great first day of our Outer Space week! 

Here Come The Dinosaurs!

We kicked off Dinosaur Week today!  The owlets are super excited about this week so that makes it even better! In preparation for this week the owlets and I spent a morning at the library looking for books on the subject of dinosaurs, buying plastic dinos at the store, and picking up sand!  Sadly, we don't have many books at home on the subject and we didn't have any plastic dinosaurs. Yesterday after church we ran to Lowe's to get some sand.  50 pounds of sand is not a light a load to carry, but Clever Owl and I made it happen, next time though I will send Papa Owl in for it!  I spent last night cutting out dinosaurs, I was glad that Papa Owl helped or I would've been up all night!
During our "circle time", we talked about what we knew about dinosaurs, I think my favorite answer came from Sassy Owl: "Dinosaurs live with Little Einsteins."  Then we discussed what we wanted to learn about the prehistoric creatures. 
This morning I added colorful dinosaurs to two dish pans and filled them with sand.  I gave the owlets paintbrushes and shovels so they could be paleontologists and dig for the dinos.  They got so excited when they found one!  This is also a good dramatic play activity!  For art, I added food coloring to spray bottles and cut out an egg shape, the owlets sprayed the egg shape and when they are dry we will cut them with a zig zag pattern and glue a baby dino coming out of the egg.  The owlets enjoyed doing these activities outside.  I copied a pattern of three types of dinosaurs onto construction paper, numbered them 1-10, laminated them, and finally cut them all out!  This is our math activity for the week and the owlets are going to sort the dinosaurs by type and then put them into sets.  Today they just sorted them by long tails, horns, and spikes! I'm sure our letter for the week should be D, but it's not, we are learning about the letter H.  For our literacy activity the owlets made hippos with their hand prints.  I love the idea of using hand prints to make something for each letter of the alphabet!
We have many more exciting plans for the week and I can't wait to share them with Sassy Owl and Monkey Owl and of course with all of you!  Have a fabulous Monday!!