Colour Mixing

At the moment we are talking about colours in class. We have been wearing the colour of the day, eating food of the corresponding colour (black proved to be impossible!) and enjoying lots of colour learning experiences.

As we immerse ourselves in each primary colour I have been extending the activities to introduce colour mixing. I love hearing the squeals of excitement when the children discover the colour they have created! We tried to use different painting utensils for each experiment and still need to mix black and white paint tomorrow...

YELLOW + BLUE = GREEN

YELLOW + RED = ORANGE

RED + WHITE = PINK

RED + BLUE = PURPLE

Happy mixing!!

Learning to Use Scissors

Before I give my class of three year old children scissors to cut paper, I try to give them many different and fun fine motor learning experiences. I like to give them plastic scissors (Which are not sharp!) so they can learn to hold the scissors correctly and build up strength and confidence with handling the scissors correctly. 

We mixed the paint into the spaghetti with our hands and then cut it into small pieces with the scissors. Great red fun!!

Cutting playdough

I encourage the children to roll long sausages out of playdough and then cut the playdough into small parts. We often extend this activity by counting the playdough pieces and comparing the length. 

After cutting playdough and spaghetti we will move on to snipping strips of paper.

Outdoor Music

Musical Tree:

I often put musical instruments outside for the children to experiment with and to make as much noise as they like, which always proves to be a noisy and valuable learning experience. This time however, I thought I would hang various tambourines and bells from the branches of a tree at various heights. The children used wooden spoons, cardboard cylinders and their hands to make our musical tree sing! I hung some instruments quite high so that even the tallest 3 years old needed to jump to ring the bells!

Some of the instruments used to hang from the tree branches.

Musical Pots and Pans

Easy Shakers:

The children painted paper plates with patterns and pictures and set them to dry. I folded the plate in half and stapled around the bottom. The children filled their shakers with a variety of pasta and beans (A great fine motor activity). I then stapled the top of the shaker closed and attached some streamers. 

Let the music begin...

Early Literacy Ideas

ALPHABET CHART

I created this alphabet chart by putting together an eclectic collection of letters - different fonts, sizes, colours and various materials. Some of the letters are perspex 3D shapes that I picked up at a recycling supplier along with the cardboard. We have this hanging in the writing area in our classroom but would also be great in a child's playroom or bedroom.

ALPHABET TREE

The alphabet tree is also in our writing area. I attached fairy lights to create a magical feeling and placed the letters of the alphabet around the tree. The children try to spot all the letters of the alphabet and the letters of their name. 

IDENTIFYING LETTERS

Identifying and decorating the first letter of their name using pompoms and pegs. 

We wrote the rest of their name and attached to their initial and displayed in the classroom.

SHOE BOX ALPHABET PEOPLE

I painted peg people and put a letter of the alphabet on them. I then stuck foam letters around the base of a shoe box and let the children match and identify the letter of the alphabet.

Teaching Numbers Using Resources from Around the House

Teaching numbers in the playground:

This is a very simple and effective number activity that can be done in the garden on a path or in the school playground like this. I had collected a large basket of nuts – I love using natural resources in the classroom. As I have said before – they are all around us, they are interesting to use, can be used as an open ended, multi-purpose resource and they are free!

I drew large circles on the paving with chalk and wrote the numbers 1 to 10 in them. The children were standing on the numbers, jumping from number and number in order and counting the nuts and putting them in the corresponding circles. It was a great group activity!

Numbers @ the playdough table:

I cut out the numbers 1 to 5 from cardboard and put out various pots and pans for cooking ‘playdough dinner’. The children loved this activity! They were making playdough food to match the numbers in their pot or pan. Some of the examples were…

2 meat balls...

5 potatoes...

4 sausages...

This encouraged lots of great language. Not only maths language and counting but lots of descriptive language.

Teaching numbers @ the light table:

Children were encouraged to use the tongs to put the correct number of cotton wool balls in the cups.

These are all very cheap and effective number activities that can be incorporated into the school program or at home!

Happy Birthday, Cupcake!

It was my daughter's birthday party last Friday night and we invited her friends to come over for some "brinner" (breakfast at dinner). But they had to wear their pyjamas!

Everything revolved around breakfast.  

Sweets made from cereals

Juice!

Cereal (of course!)

And a little bit of fruit.

Here's the whole smorgasbord before we added sausages, hash browns and pancakes.  My wonderful niece Ella helped style the table.  She's soooo great.

While I had fun making little signs for all of the food I realised that, with twelve year olds, all that food would last about sixty seconds.  What to do with the other hour and fifty nine minutes?

Ella and Annie kept the girls busy with a pancake toss; Frootloop® necklace creations and a breakfast quiz.  But I needed more....

I knew I had some remnants of  lovely, bright fabric....  

And some letter stencils from another project.

In two sizes, with flowers, hearts and other accesories.  An idea was forming.

I attached some Vliesofix (iron-on fusible webbing) to the squares of fabric.

 Each of the girls used the stencils to cut out their name or other patterns.

They then queued and myself and my sister ironed them onto pillow cases. 

But who was to go first in choosing the colour of their pillow case?  

I wrote numbers onto lots of small balloons and the girls pulled them out of the fish bowl.

We filled some other balloons with helium and attached them with ribbons to small boxes of cereal to take home (along with their finished pillow case).  No photos of them today, sorry.