Painting With Pussy Willows

Growing up in Perth, we picked these pussy willows in Spring and always had so many uses for them. They are a weed so they grow everywhere!!! I decided to pick a big bunch for my class to play with, paint with, cut, dye or to make floral arrangements with.

Painting was the most popular activity and children who are not usually particularly interested in painting were rushing to paint with them. We used coloured dye and the pussy willows as natural paint brushes.

It's amazing how a simple activity like this can stimulate so much interest and language. Look for some natural paint brushes in your local area and have a go at an activity like this. 

Niccola

Peg Friends

I first made these little peg people with my class at the start of the year so I used very simple collage, suitable for three year olds.

If you are making them at home you can personalise your people, accessories and house. You could even make pets or animal friends. This activity has many wonderful learning opportunities from developing fine motor skills, language skills, counting, problem solving.... the list goes on!!

The children glued a head to the body, added some clothes and drew on a face.

Next we put them through the laminator for durability.

The children counted their peg arms and legs.

We helped them complete their little people by adding some hair, ribbons and they coloured some shoes.

They played with them in the block area....

Made beds for them.....

I think they are pretty cute and they children absolutely loved them.

Keep this activity in mind when you are looking for simple- start of the year activities with your little ones.

Niccola 

Noodle Box Counting

I had some disposable noodle boxes and thought I could use them on the light table at school.

I attached the numbers 1-10 on the fronts of the noodle boxes as we are working on our numbers.

I have lots of wool scraps at school and so I thought I could cut up a variety of colours and lengths to represent noodles.

The children had used chopsticks to fill the noodle boxes with wool noodles and then add the correct number of pom poms to the noodles, from 1-10.  We discussed what the pom poms could represent and the children came up with lots of ideas- meatballs, vegetables, sausage etc...

Using the chopsticks was a lot of fun and a great fine motor activity. 

This activity could be done anywhere but was very effective on the light table as the noodle boxes are transparent.

You could use bowls or plates for this activity and crepe paper or ribbons as noodles.

The children thought it was great fun.

Niccola