Cooking in the Outdoor Kitchen with Herbs and Sparkles

 

 

We use sand and water a lot in our outdoor sensory table. Last week I noticed that the children were collecting leaves and grass from the yard to add to the water in the table to make "soup". I decided to set up the sensory table on the porch, where there is more space for the children to work, and to add a few new sensory items that would expand the cooking experience.

 

I had just purchased a big supply of sparkles for the art cupboard that I thought would add an appealing visual element to the sensory experience. I mixed some sand with the sparkles to make them last longer and poured them into some empty spice containers. I also picked some fresh and fragrant herbs from the garden and put them in a basket near the sensory table along with bowls, pots, pans, and mixing spoons.

The sparkles were very popular and we had to refill a few times. I was really glad that I had decided to add sand to the sparkles, otherwise we would have gone through our entire supply. 

 

The children "cooked" lots of different things, but wedding cake and soup were the two most popular dishes today.

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.

Getting Ready for Valentine's Day

We've had lots of fun getting ready for Valentine's Day this year! Here are some of the things we have been doing.

Tie-dye Hearts

This is a fun and simple activity with beautiful results. The children painted coffee filters with watered down paint. As they painted, the colors ran together to produce a lovely tie dye affect. When they dried, I cut them into heart shapes and we hung them on the window.

Glitter Hearts

This one is also easy but can be messy. Our class loves glitter and glue so they had a blast making these. I cut out heart shapes and had the children glue a smaller heart onto a large heart. Then they put glue all over and sprinkled glitter on top. We hung these from the ceiling in our classroom and I must say they look very pretty!

Sorting Valentine Shapes

I bought most of these shapes at Target last year and decided to bring them out again this year. There are some hearts, Xs, Os, and other shapes. Last year we used them on the sticky board but this year we decided to sort them in bowls.

I also found these heart shaped bowls that are fun for sorting.

Valentine Art Center

I set out art supplies, hearts, and stickers so that the children could create their own Valentines. This free art encourages creativity and was a big hit with our little artists.

Pink Rice

I added pink rice to our sensory table along with some more of the shapes we used for sorting.

Pink Play Dough

I love this microwave play dough recipe because it is easy to whip up in the classroom with the children. We made a batch of pink for Valentine's Day and used heart cookie cutters with it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Some Plant Themed Ideas

Over the past couple of weeks we have been doing lots of plant-themed projects. Here are some of my favorites.

1. Silk Flowers in the Sensory Table

I filled our sensory table with potting soil, added some shovels and flowers pots, and let the children "plant" silk flowers.

2. Bottle Print Flowers

We used recycled plastic bottles to make flowers. Then we drew a little stem on each flower.

3. Sprouting Seeds

Each of the students put a seed in a ziplock bag with a damp paper towel. We hung the bags in the front window and watched them sprout!

 

4. Q-Tip Flowers

I had the children draw stems on a piece of construction paper. Then we used Q-tips to make tiny flowers at the top of each stem.

5. The Parts of a Plant

For this project, I cut out stems and leaves from green paper. I used pieces of brown pipe cleaner for the roots and real seeds for the seeds. I gave each child a set of plant parts and let them glue the parts onto a piece of paper. When they were finished, they drew a flower on their plant. As they worked, we talked about the names of all the different parts of the plant.

6. Gardening

You can always do some real gardening with children too. To read more about this, check out my post on gardening in preschool.

 

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Water Play Board

Recently I've been in playground improvement mode. After looking at hundreds of ideas on Pinterest, I came up with a list of things I wanted to try at our school. The project at the top of my list was a water play area where children could pour water into tubes and watch the water flow through and come out the other end. I'm not sure where I got this idea, but it was pretty clear in my mind what I wanted. All I had to do was find the right pieces to make it happen. Since we had a three-day weekend for MLK Day, I enlisted the help of my fiancé, Howard, and we made a trip to Lowes for supplies.

After about two hours at the hardware store, this is what we had.

Howard attached all the tubes to a 4-foot by 4-foot board.

This is what it looked like when it was finished. We hung it on the side of the deck so that some children could stand on the deck to pour the water into the tubes, and other children could stand on the other side to watch the water flow through.

At the top of each set of tubes, we installed a two-way "Y" hose shut-off connector, which the kids could use to open or close each valve. This way, we could have the water flow into both tubes or just one as we wished. Then we put funnels at the top to make pouring a little easier.

The children loved pouring water into the funnels...

And watching it come out!

I put a bucket at the end of each tube so that we could catch and reuse the water.

Playing in the water as it came out was also lots of fun!

At first I was calling this the water board, but Howard pointed out that it might not be a good idea to send the children home saying that they had been "water boarding" all morning :)

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