Another Rainbow Bin {Alphabet Pasta}

All of the amazing rainbow inspired crafts & sensory bin activities that are popping up over on Pinterest have really given me spring fever! Unfortunately, winter has other ideas... primarily that he's never leaving & spring will never arrive!

Yesterday, while waiting for the snow to melt on yet another snowday, I made these fun rainbow alphabets for our sensory bin.

I love using Kool-aid for dyeing things (check out this recent post for more Kool-aid fun!) It always smells so yummy and the colors always come out beautiful. I used pretty much the same recipe and process that I used for dying the beans a couple of weeks ago.

Here's what you'll need:
6 boxes of alphabet pasta (my boxes were 12 oz each)
2 packs of Kool-aid for each box of pasta you intend to dye
extra food coloring for more vivid colors
1/8 c. rubbing alcohol per box of pasta
1/8 c. of very hot water per box.
Large Zipock baggies

How to:
1. Pour hot water, alcohol, Kool-aid & extra food coloring into baggie. Seal & shake until Kool-aid is dissolved.
2. Add pasta to colored liquid, seal & shake until coated. Only leave the pasta sit in the liquid for a short time -- less than 5 minutes preferrably as the tiny pasta begins to soften quickly & will start to stick together easily.
3. Pour pasta out on cookie sheet to dry. Allow to air dry for several hours stirring frequently to prevent pasta from sticking together.

We put ours in the oven to dry the rest of the way over night - CAUTION: Do not put pasta directly into oven, as the rubbing alcohol is very flammable!

It didn't seem to take very long to dry, but we did get some pasta clumps because I didn't stir frequently enough during the drying. I imagine if I did less pasta at a time, this clumping problem wouldn't have been as bad. When making sensory bin materials, I'm always making large quantities so that I can take them to school for my students when my son is finished exploring them... so a cup of each color just won't cut it around here! 

Here's the lovely alphabet bin that I made with the finished pasta. It reminds me of fruity pebbles in both look & smell.

I think that we'll pair this bin with Dr. Seuss's ABC book or Chicka Chicka Boom Boom sometime in the coming weeks!

Rewind {Snow & The Mitten... }

January was a strange, long month... filled with 2-hour delays, snow days, sick days and other odd interruptions to the usual routine. I'm glad to say that the month is over, but looking back, I realize that I blogged about only a few of our classroom activities from last month. Here's a quick recap of the month...

Snowball Counting Tray  - The kids counted out white pompom snowballs on to the numbered mittens and then checked their work with a filled out tens frame on the back. We used one of our 'Fine Motor Gloves' to practice pinching one snowball at a time with thumb and pointer finger.

Salt Tray - A simple, but classic tray! A little iridescent glitter makes the salt look a bit more like snow too. Students traced sandpaper letter cards with a finger, then copied the letter in the salt tray with a finger. 

Magazine Letter Cut & Paste -  For this tray, I used my printable magazine letters and alphabet worksheet. This tray was time consuming and we worked on it over the course of a week+ Students found & matched letters, cut them out and then pasted them on top of the matching letter on the alphabet worksheet.

Pipe Cleaners & Beads - I really love this activity & have many seasonally coordinated sets of pipe cleaners & beads for other times of the year! Preparation was simple - just hot glue little laminated mittens to the ends of the pipe cleaners, write a numeral on the mittens and provide beads for stringing. Some students worked on making sets of beads to match the numeral, while others just worked on the fine motor aspect of stringing the beads - there's one of our fine motor gloves again!

Foam Alphabet Puzzles & Hammers - What preschooler wouldn't be motivated by the opportunity to hammer something? I found these small individual letter puzzles at a dollar store a while back and was smart enough to by several sets of them. I've sorted out the letters needed for each child to construct their name and added a fun little wooden hammer - students find the letters they need for their names, put them together and hammer the pieces in to make their names. I provide a picture of the finished product for students who still need a model to correctly order the letters of their name. 

The Mitten Cut & Paste - After looking all over the internet for a cut & paste activity with the animals from the mitten, I ended up making my own - that had straight lines for simpler cutting! 

We used this as both a retelling activity & a vocabulary/preposition practice activity. The students had to listen for the name of the animal & the location to place the animal. With more advanced students, I gave longer directions that included a list of 2-3 animals and their locations all at once. It was great practice following orally given directions!

Roll-A-Mitten Color Game - We used this game, from my Roll-A-Mitten activity pack, as a small group game for color practice, waiting for a turn, following directions and more. Students rolled the dice, named the color, found a matching crayon and colored a mitten.

Tubes & Balls Exploration - I bought a variety of tubes (black plastic drainage pipes & dryer vent tubes) at the hardware store and collected a basket full of white balls of different sizes & weights - snowballs. (Our favorite balls are these 'Snowballs' that are like giant pompoms) We cut and hung the tubes along the window using suction cup hooks (the kind you'd use in the shower) and rubber bands. Then we did experiments to see which balls would go the furthest and/or fastest. The kids also explored the tubes using other toys including blocks and animal figurines - some things got stuck and others did not. It's been a great activity for students of all ability levels - with so many great concepts to talk about and try out!

Exploring Melting...

In class today, we read an old Scholastic reader - from January of last year! The kids usually enjoy reading the 'newspaper' and I love the great photos & easy to understand text....It's perfect for my students!

Today, we used it as an introduction to the concepts: frozen & melting - which the kids have had lots of experience with lately -- with all the wintery mixed-up weather that we've been having!

On the back, there was an activity where the kids were supposed to identify which items were 'frozen' and which items were 'melting.'

They had so much trouble showing that they understood the difference between the two, that we just had to do our own experiment to better understand what frozen & melting really meant!

We went outside & collected bags of snow. Once back inside, the kids came up with places to put the bags of snow - after some prodding & suggestions they came up with the fridge, freezer, next the heater & on the window.

To add another twist, we added some other ingredients to three of the bags: salt, hand sanitizer & flour.

We checked on the baggies several times over the next 2-3 hours & the kids were very excited to find that some of their snow had turned into water - it had melted. We took pictures of our observations to make into a book...

Some of my students were also able to figure out what ingredients made the snow melt faster - the bag with the salt even had 'frost' that formed on the outside of the bag (a neat little chemical reaction to make observations about!)

We ended out the day by reviewing the pictures that we took, discussing our observations & creating a little book about the melting snow!

 

At snack time, we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats - and the kids knew exactly what was going to happen to the snowball that Peter put into his pocket ... it MELTED!

Hopefully tomorrow, when I ask them about 'melting,' they remember our experiment and can easily differentiate between 'melting' & 'frozen.'

I'm back!! {Five for Friday}

I've been away for far too long... but, I'm back! I can only hope that a rough ending to 2013 and rocky beginning to 2014 means that the rest of the year will go smoothly...

Just to catch everyone up on what I've been up to at home & in my classroom... here's a Five for Friday...

1. Gingerbread Man! Before holiday break, we read The Gingerbread Man and did lots of gingerbread inspired activities. One of my favorite activities from our Gingerbread unit was making and playing with these giant chalkboard gingerbread men:

They're made from thick cardboard, masking tape around the edges and painted with homemade brown chalkboard paint. I added some ginger, cloves, cinnamon & nutmeg to the paint for the final coat of paint to add a little gingerbread scent.

2. Snow Sensory Bin - this has been one of the longest living sensory trays out our house! Seems that my toddler preschooler doesn't tire of it and my 8 year old stepdaughter loved it too! When everyone tires of it, I plan to add vinegar in spray bottles and droppers for continued fun & experimentation!

It's a pretty simple recipe: baking soda, hair conditioner, buffalo snow. We used a couple of cups of baking soda, about half as much hair conditioner and a couple of cups of shimmery buffalo snow.

And we've since added other items to the tray for playing... currently it's filled with little construction trucks from Christmas!

3. Maryland Science Center - This year, instead of tons of useless toys for my 3 year old, we put his Christmas gift money towards a membership to the Maryland Science Center so that we can enjoy weekend activities all year long! I've decided that memberships are really the way to go, usually only 2 visits makes it economical for a family of 3+... here are a few pictures from our first visit of the year...

4. Looks who's Three! My toddler just turned three last week. I love watching him grow and learn every day... I just cannot believe that he's growing up so fast!

5. Back to school & mother nature - the 2014 school year has been off to a shaky start... we've had several snowdays & 2 hour delays that have interfered with getting back to the normal routine. Not that I'm complaining about a few extra hours of sleep ... but looking forward to getting back into the groove.

Snow Day & Snowmen

Snow day off school and my toddler is napping ... it's a perfect opportunity to catch up on blogging - or my lack of blogging during the past week. I've been busy with preschool shenanigans, university end-of-semester tasks and holiday preparations at home. Managed to get our Christmas tree up - while not as organized as usual, it's up and my toddler LOVED decorating it - that's all that matters really!

We've been reading lots of Christmas books at our house lately. I had wanted to post a whole 25 days of Christmas reading, but couldn't get it together fast enough. However, we will be doing a '12 Days of Christmas Books' with some great vintage books and some new favorites ... stay tuned beginning December 13 -- I'll be sharing our favorite books in posts between the 13th and 25th of the month... probably a few at a time rather than one every day (I'm just not that organized to write a post a day!)

As for what's been going on at preschool, here are a few of our pictures from last week that I never got around to posting....

 We made a big ball of sparkly snow play-doh roughly using the microwave dough recipe from a while back.  I can't say we were champs at measuring this time, but it worked out well - microwaving did take extra time because we made a quadruple size batch! I put out assorted odds and ends for making a snowman and let the kids go to town.

Check out the biggest snowman with the black beads on the sides of its head -- those are hearing aids! I've got a student who has recently become very aware of his hearing aids and has started putting hearing aids on all of his drawings, sculptures ect.

The sparkles in the dough were about a cup or two of Buffalo Snow that I picked up on clearance somewhere last year. It makes a heck of a mess by itself, but in playdoh, it's really quite charming!

I also changed out the materials for light play and introduced a couple of sheets of cheap snowflake window clings. The kids are still getting the idea of the whole 'light play' thing... and many of them just aren't all that interested in it yet, but we'll keep trying to find just the right materials that catch their interest...

We sang "Five Little Snowflakes" (to the tune of "Twinkle Twinkle") with the snowflakes, adding one at a time with each verse, and overhead that went something like this:

One little snowflake with nothing to do 

along came another, then there were two 

Two little snowflakes playing with me

along came another, then there were three 

Three little snowflakes calling for more

along came another, then there were four

Four little snowflakes dip and dive

along came another, then there were five 

Five little snowflakes having so much fun

whoooo! went the wind, then there were none!

I can't say that I remember where it came from, but there are similar versions all over the internet!

Lastly, we made this simple letter craft. S is for snow ... or snowballs. Pretty simple.

I have to say that I've enjoyed my day off... catching up on house work, laundry, blogging, time with my own child... They're calling for more snow late tonight and early tomorrow morning... two snow days in a row? We'll see...

{snow}

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, we've officially moved on to "Winter" themed activities in my classroom. I currently work at a school that does not really celebrate any holidays; our mantra is something like 'educate don't celebrate' ...  so this season can be a bit challenging!

Although we don't have any snow (yet), we've moved on to books about snowmen, snow, hot chocolate and other wintery themes. This week might be uncharacteristically warm, but next week they're calling for snow!

Here's our new sensory bin for the week- Snowballs Bin! containing cotton balls, a bag of glittery decorative balls from the craft store, plastic snowflakes, tongs, scoops, pots, pans, bowls and spoons!

 A few new fine motor trays - one for using tongs and one specifically focused for pincer grasp. Both contain simple items: various size pompoms (some sparkly), ice tray, empty oatmeal container and tongs. We also use both of these trays to practice reaching across mid-line by strategically placing the bowl and the tray/canister so that the students much reach as far across mid-line as possible -- then we switch placement, so that they must reach with the other hand across the other side.... my students HATE when I do this... so we only do it for a designated period of time, then I allow them to complete the remainder of the activity however they choose!

And this afternoon's craft activity - make-a-snowman gluing activity... contents included simple pre-cut shapes for mittens, stick arms, hats, boots, buttons, scarves, mouth, nose and eye stickers. The snowmen were cut from watercolored paper from earlier in the day - we painted with liquid watercolors using turquoise, blue and sliver paint and sprinkled salt over the wet paint for a 'snowflake' effect!

I think that our snowmen turned out great! There's more winter fun to come! What have you been up to?

{sticks & stuff} Christmas Ornaments

Aside from being today's featured guest post over at Tutus & Tea Parties, I haven't really thought much about the upcoming holiday season. I usually don't start thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving... but I made an exception this year!

Check back soon for more of my ideas for nature inspired ornament crafts!