Block Challenge!

Blocks are a great creative tool for open-ended play. 

Kiddos will spend time making castles, houses, roads, furniture...all kinds of things! They try out things like balance and structure, learning and adapting through their own mistakes, developing perseverance and design skills along the way :) 

 Another way to use blocks is to set them up as a solo (or paired) activity to copy a design. Students will use analytical and visual skills in order to choose the blocks that are pictured, and put them together to make a copy of a particular structure.                                                            

Your kiddos will have to accomplish a multi-layered task to do this. It takes analysis, planning, and fine motor skills to accomplish. There are many skills involved - not just how to assemble them and balance them correctly. It also takes focus and patience to recreate even the simplest of these structures.

 

First, make structures - some easy, some harder - and photograph them. Print them out in a large photo format and encase them in a plastic sheet, or share this as an activity on an iPad or other tech. 

Leave a basket of blocks, including the ones they will need and others, nearby and let the building begin! 

Have fun!

 

Playing Restaurant: Social Skills and Language Building

There is no better vehicle for developing language and social skills than an authentic play experience. Children love to act out familiar scenes, take on roles that are interesting to them, and interact in pretend play scenarios. Playing “restaurant” or “diner” or even just at-home eating can be a great time to practice those skills with little or no adult intervention. For those with little or no dining-out experience, this is also a way to gain knowledge of an unknown situation. 

You don’t need a lot to get started :) A simple play set is great, but you can also work with cast-off kitchen pieces and recycled containers - your kiddos will take over whatever you make available. Just make sure they’re clean and unbreakable, for safety reasons. 

If you have access to a pretend play kitchen area, your students can work with that, but a simple disposable plastic tub, turned over with Sharpie details was embraced by our friends as a cooktop :) 

This post - Make Your Own Toys!  - is all about making your own set from things you have at home :) Kiddos will work with whatever they find ... and a healthy dose of imagination! 

 

For “dining out,” don’t forget an order pad for students to role play and take down all their customers’ food orders!  Small friends may draw or make little marks, while older kiddos will get excited to try out their spelling tricks! 

Making a menu board or some menus might be another fun writing exercise. Invented spelling and drawn pictures, or illustrations cut from magazines, will complete this task :) 

Social skills such as taking turns and sharing supplies will get lots of practice, as different roles are taken on. Push in to work on specific vocabulary and language skills with those who would benefit from intervention, but sit back to observe the natural conversations that may emerge. 

Have fun!! 

 

“Creepy Math” with Crawly Manipulatives

 

Math is magical when you do it with fun, touchable objects in the classroom or at home. Seasonal things like plastic spiders and pumpkin erasers are fun, but so are simple things like bottlecaps or buttons. It’s all about the sensory element and interest factor 🕷

“Hide” the objects in a wrapped tissue box to make them extra special ~ there’s something about reaching in and grabbing that makes it spine-tingly fun! 

You can teach how to use tally marks for counting by pulling each item out and simply tallying first, one by one, showing how to cross at 5. Then switch to grabbing handfuls, tallying and comparing. So many early math skills here ... practice forming the numbers while you’re at it! 🕸

  

Making tens and counting can be done with seasonal ten-frames, seasonal objects - or both! These were found out there on the internet but they would be easy enough to make on your own. Giving kiddos the visual of ten in the ten-frame allows for simple counting and “how many more to ten?” It also begins to set up fact families, as your friends can count to see which numbers go together to make 10. 

Empower your math learners to make up their own spider stories (number stories or word problems) by verbally providing an example or two. “There were three spiders in the web, two more came ... how many altogether?” Let them take it from there and bring back the tally marks to pull it all together :)

Have fun! 🕷🕸🕷🕸🕷

Halloween 2020 Fun!

Looking for alternatives or add-on activities this Halloween? 2020 and COVID-19 have presented us with new challenges - and lots of folks are looking for creative ways to still have fun. Here’s a few ... 

Scavenger Hunt

Search out some scary or not-so-scary Halloween images on Google and make your own neighborhood scavenger hunt. Or go around and snap actual photos to make it even more personal :) Put them into a document and let your kiddos check them off when they see them - they’ll love it even more if there’s a clipboard involved! 

(Try this Clipboard hack: use a binder paper clip (the kind you squeeze) with a piece of cardboard or something sturdy to hold your paper.)

Here are some images I found easily by just Googling :)

BINGO

Use those same images to make BINGO boards - copy and move a few around each time - do doubles if you need to :) Your kiddos will love to play this again and again so make copies! It’s great for visual discrimination and matching skills, too!

Trick or Treat Treasure Hunt

If trick or treating isn’t on your agenda, try a Treasure Hunt style event, using images glued onto envelopes with treats or tricks inside. Hide in the yard similar to an Easter Egg hunt, and let your littles hunt for goodies! You can make it as easy or hard as you want ... grab and go, search for specific scary pictures (find all the ghosts, find all the skeletons), check off finds on a list .... whatever your group goes for :)

Have fun!! 🕸🕷🦇👻🎃💀

 

We Are Scientists: Learning with Leaves 🍁

Nature is a great equalizer - all students can be a part of a shared activity when the subject is something that they can all access, like leaves. 

Go on a nature hunt or ask students to bring in interesting leaves, pine cones, twigs, etc. Build a collection in a series of small tubs to allow for social distancing, but shared experiences. 

Sort and Match

For matching and sorting, look for a set of leaf ID cards on the internet, or have students help make a set :) Look for simple pictures that display size, shape and color. 

Sorting Mats with boxes (large construction paper, draw on boxes and maybe laminate) offer a focal point for slowing down observation to really look at samples, and a way to divide up leaves by similarities and differences. Seeing up close that all leaves are not the same may lead to closer inspection of the trees they come from :)

Scientific Observation

Encourage students to look carefully at the parts of leaf, and to try to draw what they see. Magnifying glasses are a great tool to introduce here. When they get close up “like a real scientist” and take a look, they may notice the veins and stems - don’t forget to look for nibble spots where insects and small animals may have feasted. 

Make Patterns

Use clear contact paper or packing tape to cover leaves, in order to make a group of leaves for forming patterns. Model a few simple patterns and see where they take it! 

Tracing and cutting leaf shapes from card stock or construction paper would work, too :) 

 

Remote Learners

If you have remote learners, encourage them to fill their own basket at home with natural finds. As an alternative, have a basket of samples bagged to take home outside your classroom. If available, send small magnifiers and sorting sheets to complete the experience.

Leaf Art

There are so many ways to explore leaves through art. For a list of Art applications see this post : We Like Leaves!

Have fun! 🍁🍂

Make Your Own Pumpkin Patch

It’s hard to make a plan these days for traditions like pumpkin picking! Just getting through each day is a lot, but if you’re thinking about it .... Some schools have arranged for farms to come by, some are doing virtual visits, some are coming up with other creative ideas! If your class is hybrid, it’s time-challenging to do anything together, but teachers are making it work, as best as they can :)

Having the whole class contribute to a project is one way to build community amongst the various sections of the class. In the past, when challenged by schedules or transportation/budget issues, we made our own pumpkin patch on the school property. This might work for this crazy year, too! 

Ask families and community members to contribute any item(s) they are able ... hay bales, corn stalks, scarecrow decorations, milk crates, clothing for a scarecrow, etc. They could drop it off in a specified area outdoors, so some may come before school, some after school, and some at drop off or pickup times. Put all the pieces together and let the children come up with a plan - and execute it. Since we had a few classes participating in ours, it was done bit by bit, which would work this year, if cohorts/remote is your model. 

  

Groups could also make a giant leaf pile and use it to stuff a scarecrow’s body, so he could sit-up :) Add a pumpkin or plastic jack-o-lantern for a head and think about a silly hat for your guy! Our kiddos had so much fun doing this, that we dumped him out and started over with the next group :) Why not even make more, if you get more clothes? 

Of course, our scarecrow needed a name, so that became another task ... coming up with and writing down suggestions, and reviewing them all to vote for our favorite! Spelling, writing, charting results ... all kinds of skills there! 

Our pumpkin patch became a place to read stories, observe nature, find natural treasures, and, ultimately, find a small pumpkin on Halloween. One class decided to supply their own, bringing a small pumpkin to share in the patch, while another class chipped in and got minis and painted them up as an activity after “picking” them outdoors. A hybrid class could pick a few with each cohort, and have remote learners stop by after hours for their own, then use markers or paints to decorate them all together, but apart :) 

Tip: Make sure that a volunteer only puts out the pumpkins as needed, so no friendly neighborhood critters grab them for snacks :) 

Have fun! 

We are Scientists: Pumpkin Exploration

There is nothing like hands-on experience for really learning and remembering about a topic. Pumpkins are a great subject for diving into and learning about in a multi-disciplinary way! 

Measuring is a fun way to start out .... try it with non-standard units of measure that you can compare to other objects. You can use something flexible like a rope or length of yarn to see how much it takes to go all the way around the pumpkin. You can also see how tall the pumpkin is this way, or use blocks or connecting cubes to get your answer. Hands on measuring and comparing are great math activities :) 

Talk about how your pumpkin grew and where it came from. Show photos of the stages of growth - from a seed to a sprout and changing colors - there are great non- fiction (and fiction) books that highlight this. You can find videos of pumpkins growing and even virtual pumpkin patch visits! 

Cut into your pumpkin for some slimy, hands-on fun next! I like to make a cut in the top and also cut out a “window” in the side, to make it easier to see in and reach in - the hole on the top offers more light.   

Lots of kiddos love to reach in and pull out all the pulp and seeds. Use as many of your five senses as possible - to see, smell, touch and maybe even taste seeds or pumpkin products. Run a hand around the outside and count up the ribs - or try guessing and counting as a fun predictive activity. For those with sensory differences, try for a little exposure at a time to the pulp in order to get them more comfortable with the squishy feeling. 

In-class learners can go back again and again to see and explore ...  remote learners may benefit from leaving a basket of baggies with pulp and seeds outside for them to pick up after school hours. Planning ahead can have all students on the same page with this activity. (If you’re up for it, watching it rot over a few days is also interesting.) 

Playing with sealed bags of “pumpkin guts” can be a fun counting activity - make sure there is pulp and seeds and have students mush around and count the numbers of seeds inside. 

Using a variety of gourds and small and large pumpkins can also be a fun sink or float activity. Introduce some other classroom items - maybe a pumpkin eraser, or some plastic scoops - and guess whether things will sink or float. Then, take turns testing out your theories. Your little scientists will love it! 

Have fun!