Apple Webbing, PreK Style

A quick K-W-L wrap-up of our apple study.

I gave each child a chance to tell me something they learned about apples during the week.

As you can tell I got some great responses and almost everyone had a unique answer.  I did need to prompt a couple of them with questions such as "What do you know about apple trees?' and "Can you think of something we can make out of apples?"

 This is always a great study as we always have an apple taste test and graph our responses of which apples each of us like the best. We also enjoy applesauce, apple pie, talk about Johnny Appleseed and take a walk to a small apple orchard that we have on campus.

Apple Patterning, PreK Style

Preschoolers love painting in any form so when I got out the paint and sponges for this activity I had no problem getting volunteers.

Very simple patterning with apple shaped sponges and long strips of tag board. These sponges were actually kitchen sponges shaped like apples that I found many years ago at a thrift store. I also have a couple shaped like lemons for a little variation in the type of patterns we are doing.

I let the children choose two of the three colors of apples to make their patterns with and put the paper lengthwise in front of each of them. I choose to do this activity one child at a time to ensure each child was successful and understood the concept of A-B patterns. Most were able to complete their pattern with very little help.

For a little challenge with those more advanced children you can use all three colors. A-B-C or an A-B-B pattern.

Scarecrows, PreK Style

Thanks for those of you who have been asking me for more blog posts. An unplanned quick trip out of town and time to take a few pictures put me a little behind but I have lots more to share with you. (:

Fall is my absolute favorite time of the year so hopefully you will find something your looking for.

These were from our Scarecrow study last week. I found several different variations of these on Pinterest and came up with my own based on the supplies I had on hand. I suggest you do the same to save time and of course money.

We set this up in two stations. First I wrote the names of each of the kids on the bottom of a brown paper bag. This helps me keep track of who still needs to complete the activity, saves me the struggle of trying to write on the bottom of them after they are completed, plus trying to remember which one belongs to which kid. lol

At the first station each child chooses which shapes to use for cheeks and a nose and glues them on the bag. They also choose eye stickers and drew a mouth from one cheek to the other.

Giving the foam shapes just a couple minutes to dry they were called a few at a time to the second station to complete their scarecrows. I had previously unwound about twenty feet of twisted paper cord and cut it in about 8" pieces and instructed them to cut the paper lengthwise to make the scarecrows hair. Since the hair doesn't need to be precise by any means I gathered what each of them had cut and stapled it across the top of their bags. This is a great cutting activity for those children who are struggling with controlling the scissors. The paper cuts easy and it's okay if the cuts are crooked or jagged. While the kids cut their "hair" I wadded up one full sheet of newspaper and pushed it down into each of their bags.

It all gets stapled shut with a coffee filter hat on top and the kids get to finish them off with sticky flower foam shapes for their hats. I later added the string so we could display them for our upcoming fall festival (:

Great project, the kids loved them. We talked about basic shapes as went along. Our bags were rectangles, eyes and hats were circles and they choose from squares, triangles and circles for the rest of the facial features.

A couple of things I may do different next year: The coffee filters made great hats but next time they will get a little color. Watercolors in nice fall colors will look great on them. We could make our hats a day or two before so they are dry the day we make our scarecrows. The other is to fill the bags with shredded newspapers. Mainly because tearing paper would have been a great fine motor activity for some of my kiddos. Instead of doing this individually I could let the children tear (or cut) paper during the week so it would be ready to grab a handful when we needed it.