Spring in Quarantine

It's been a quiet spring with the Covid-19 Quarantine, but we have been having fun in simple ways with everyday things.  We added easter eggs, dollar store bird houses, and silk flowers/leaves to the block area.  It's been fun to build color castles and bird apartments that burst with texture and vibrancy!

We pulled out new dress-ups that include flower crowns and bunny ears.

We've assembled countless Potato Heads, each fantastically silly!

We've ventured outside to splash in water, mix up sand, and get our Vitamin D.  We tossed out leaves and discovered all kinds of new blooms.

We've built with legos to make cameras, houses, gardens, and castles.

We've hidden, found, climbed, bounced, and run around.

We've had fun!

5 Christmas Math Ideas for Preschool

1.  Spatial awareness- Use cookie cutters to explore size and shape.  *Bonus* The child can count the number of "cookies" made in the dough!

2.  Shapes, size, and counting- Use different shaped Christmas boxes and tins to fill and dump with bows, cotton balls (snow balls), and jingle bells.  How many bows fit in the square box?  Will the biggest jingle bell fit in the biggest box?

3. Number recognition and sequencing- Cut "light bulbs" from craft foam and use a permanent marker to write numbers on each one.  Challenge the children to toss the "light bulbs" and then organize them back in the correct order.

4.  Sorting and matching- Find the matching ornaments and Christmas ducks.  Sort matching objects into groups.

5.  Find the number- Invite the child to look under ornaments on this Christmas tree to find the correct number.  Locate where smaller numbers are on the tree, and where larger numbers are on the tree.  Count up from one to twenty-four.

Most of all, have FUN!  Preschool math rocks, and is super easy to bring into your classroom!

Tis the Season to be Jolly

We welcomed December with festive new work in the Explore Table and House Area.  In addition to singing "Jingle Bells" on repeat, this new table filler encouraged lots of conversation about shapes, sizes, textures, materials, colors, quantities, and sounds.

We have one unsolved mystery as of now.  Not one jingle bell could be found that would fit in the smallest circle Christmas box.  We are on a mission to find a bell small enough to fit inside with the lid on tight.  :)

We also filled the boxes and pretended to exchange Christmas gifts, and it was SO hard to wait to open them up!  We would shake the boxes and listen to see if we could figure out what was inside!  Super exciting!  ;)

We had a cookie party today with the new Christmas cookies!  Snuffy even got in on the action.  We "fed" him so many cookies he got a tummy ache!

Poor Snuffy.  He had to lay down and take some medicine.  That's what happens when you eat too many cookies at Christmas!

Waffles Anyone?

When Baby "E" turned one, she was given this little waffle block set with animals.  She loves carrying around the animals, but the school friends have loved using the waffles as building materials.  They are amazing!  Easy to use, conducive to imaginative play, and SO fun!

At "E's" birthday party, the school friends opened the box and said, "Wow!  These are just like the blocks in your yard but tiny!"  So true!  But also, these have more kinds of shapes, including circles and rods, that are cleverly planned out to be compatible with the other pieces.

Today, Friend "Sandwich" literally worked to make this "playground" for 30 minutes.  He designed it to be an obstacle course for the people included with the toy.  He assigned voices to his figures, and helped them "race" through the obstacle course.  Then he decided it would be a "video game" where he held the pretend controller to push imaginary buttons, and Ms. Harmony guided the players through the course where they received medals at the end.

We had ladders to climb, merry-go-rounds to spin, slides to descend, climbers to leap on and off of, and more.  It was truly amazing to spend a solid 30 minutes on a single plan... and the only reason we stopped working on this was because it was time to carry on with the day.  I'd say this was waffles for the win!

DIY Cheapest Lightbox Ever!

Light tables are amazing to play with!  Shapes and colors just seem brighter, clearer, and more magical on the light table.  But they are often SOO expensive!  Here's how we made ours for Harmony's House, for less than half the cost of buying one new.  :)  You might already have some of the materials at home.

What you need:

• 1 clear plastic box with lid- I used this box because it was transparent but the lid was almost completely free of bumps and ridges, and better for building and playing
• 1 can of white spray paint
• about 4 button lights (more or less depending on your preference)  
• batteries for your lights

What you do:

1. Spray paint the interior bottom and sides of the box.  Why white?  It will reflect all wavelengths of visual light, and minimize light escaping out the sides and bottom of the box.
2. Lightly spray paint the interior side of the lid.  You want the most light to come out the top of the box to illuminate your light table toys, but you don't want to be blinded looking directly into the lights.
3. Install batteries into button lights.
4. Determine how many and where you want to place your button lights inside the box.  (I used four lights, evenly spaced from the four corners of the box.)
5. Turn lights on, click lid into place, and start playing with toys!

Pumpkin Spice Sensory Math

You cannot say that math stinks at Harmony's House!  We have been using the pumpkin spice rice to develop math concepts here at school for the last two weeks.  Some of our learning objectives have been to explore volume with measuring cups, funnels, and bottles.

Some friends worked around the Explore Table for an additional 15-20 minutes following the introduction in Small Group Time.  It was fascinating to pour rice from one container into the other.

 Funnels make filling things with small openings (like the bottles) much easier.

Sometimes our Small Group work was to find shapes hidden in our rice.  Then we sorted them by color, yellow or red.  This was so exciting to unearth the hidden objects and practice saying shape and color names!

The last day we had counting bears hidden in the rice!  The challenge after finding the bears was to organize them into families: "red bear families" or "small bear families" etc.

The children had to look closely at the bears' sizes because the medium and big bears look similar at first glance.  We had lots of conversations about size during this activity.

Most of our friends made bear families according to color, but some organized the bear family by color and size order as well.

Then everything got dumped back into the Explore Table for further play for anyone who wanted to continue this work during Work Time.