Lots of Pumpkins!

Last week I went to Sprouts Farmers Market to get a couple of pumpkins for our classroom. They were so cheap I ended up getting about twenty pumpkins and gourds in all different sizes and colors. Since then, we have been using them in all areas of the classroom and even in the playground. Here are some of our favorite ways to use pumpkins at preschool.

1. Pumpkin Hammering

We hammered golf tees into one of the bigger pumpkins with the hammers from our work bench. Holding the tee still with one hand while hitting it with the hammer requires concentration and works fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. 

2. Pumpkin Geo-Boards

This one was my co-teacher, Miss Erin's, idea. Once our pumpkin was full of nails, we stretched rubber bands around the nails to make shapes. 

3. Dry Erase Pumpkin Drawing

We drew faces that could wipe right off with our dry erase markers. 

4. Pumpkin Houses

We drew doors and windows on some of our pumpkins and added them, along with the little people, to the play-dough table.

5. Pumpkin Mummies

One of our class' favorite Halloween books is Skeleton Meets the Mommy. After reading it several times, we used gauze to make our pumpkins look like mummies.

6. Pumpkin Stew

 I saw this wonderful idea on the blog My Nearest and Dearest.

I simply set out the invitation to play and the children cooked up a delicious, pumpkin spice stew!

7. Pumpkin Painting

We dipped pumpkins and gourds in paint and rolled them across a big piece of paper. 

8.Pumpkins in the Playground

Sometimes it's best to just put out the materials and then let the children decide what to do with them. We took the pumpkins outside and added them to the other loose parts in the playground. Here are some of the wonderful and creative things we saw the children doing with them.

Some Halloween Ideas from the Two's Room

Here are some things we did last October in the two's classroom.

Pumpkin Science Center

We put out different pumpkins and gourds along with pumpkin seeds, magnifying glasses, bowls, and rulers for the children to explore. 

Pumpkin Predictions 

Each of the children chose one of the pumpkins from the science center. We measured and weighed each pumpkin and I wrote down how the children described their pumpkins. Then each child predicted what they thought would be inside the pumpkins before we cut them open. Some of the predictions we got were a dinosaur, another pumpkin, and candy. 

 

Of course once we cut the pumpkins open, we saw that there were seeds inside. Everyone helped to scoop out the sticky seeds. 

And we made a jack o' lantern.

 

Seed Collage

We saved the seeds from the pumpkins and used them to make pumpkin seed collages.

Halloween Sorting

I found these Halloween erasers at Target.  We had lots of fun sorting them and making patterns with them.

 

Halloween Costume Dress Up

I found lots of Halloween costumes at Goodwill earlier in the year.  We put them in the dramatic play area along with Halloween bags and we pretended to go trick-or-treating. 

Spider Webs

We opened a bag of fake spider webs and the class helped to hang them around the classroom and put plastic spiders on them. 

Candy Corn Sorting

As a treat, we all tasted some candy corn and talked about the different colors on the candy. Then we cut strips of white, yellow, and orange paper into squares and glued them onto a paper candy corn cut-out. 

 Besides being a sorting activity, this also used lots of small motor skills as the children cut and glued. 

Happy Halloween!

Fall Leaf Necklaces

Autumn is here and, although we live in San Diego where not many trees lose their leaves in the fall, we were able to find a good number of very pretty leaves during a walk around the neighborhood. 

After our walk, we used plastic needles to sew the leaves together. 

The children asked to add beads to their necklaces. 

Beautiful!

Loose Parts In the Playground

I've been away from blogging for several months now mostly because our preschool, Aspen Leaf Preschool, has been very busy. We've been growing so quickly and will soon be opening a third classroom! My classroom has also been busy learning lots of new things. In the next couple of blog posts I want to share some of our favorite activities from the past few months.

Loose Parts in the Playground

Loose parts are items that can be used in a variety of creative ways during play. They promote imagination, team work, and open ended play. Some examples of loose parts are logs, sticks, boards, stone, tires, ropes and other objects that children can move around and use for many different purposes. Our playground has always had some loose parts available to the children but a few weeks ago, I added some sheets to the mix.

These are some of the things we saw:

Tents in all kinds of places

Picnics

Princess veils

Sleeping bags

Team work

Baby beds

As we add more loose parts to our playground, I'll keep you posted on the wonderful ways that the children are using them. If you would like to read more about the theory of loose parts, Let the Children Play has a nice blog post on the topic.

 

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Independent Art Center

Our classroom has always had a center for independent art. It is always stocked with paper, glue, markers, and scissors. I never put anything else in this center because I was afraid that the children wouldn't know how to use other art supplies on their own without making a huge mess. I always saved paint and other messy supplies for project time when a teacher would be supervising their use. The problem with this was that it didn't always give children the time they needed to explore different art supplies and techniques because the teacher-led project time is usually confined to a half-hour period. Some children wouldn't even get a chance to do the art project because they would be busy with something else during that half hour.

In order to give the children in our class more time to do involved art projects and the freedom to choose when to do them, I set up a new independent art center in the classroom. I choose a spot near the sink for easy clean up. Then I printed out easy, step by step instructions with pictures so that the children would know how to use the new art supplies. Today's art project had four steps:

1. Choose a coffee filter

2. Drip some colors

(we used eye droppers to drip liquid water colors onto the coffee filters)

3. Hang it to dry

(I provided clothespins and a line to hang the finished products on)

4. Wipe up your spills

(because it is important to clean up the center for the next artist)

We kept the center open all morning and the children really enjoyed the freedom to choose when they would do art and how long to do it. Besides allowing the class to try out our new liquid water colors, this art center encourages independence and self-reliance. It also promotes reading skills as the children make connections between the words on each instruction card and the action in the pictures. This art project itself helps to develop small muscle coordination and control as the children squeeze the eye droppers and clothespins.

Here are some of the finished products hanging to dry.

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Dinosaur Footprint Painting

As part of our dinosaur theme this week, we made dinosaur footprints by walking our toy dinosaurs through "mud" (black and brown paint) and across paper.

Of course this quickly became finger painting.

In the end, we had to give the dinosaurs a bath to wash off all that mud.

 

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Marble Balancing

This is a great small muscle activity for toddlers and twos. It requires the children to use their fingers and thumbs in order to get the marbles balanced on the golf tees.

I stuck the golf tees into a block of styrofoam so that they were perfectly upright.

Once the children mastered the skill of balancing the marbles, they took all the golf tees out and reinserted them into the styrofoam on their own.

This made balancing the marbles quite a bit trickier because many of the tees were now at an angle.

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